The Mountains Need More Time

There are very few happy chapters in the history of modern man’s relationship to the incomparable natural environment he found--and despoiled--in Southern California. One of those rare episodes currently is being written by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

It was set up in 1980 to purchase land that would protect and connect parcels being acquired by the federal government as part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. It has succeeded brilliantly; thus far, nearly 10,000 vital acres have been acquired. In 1985, Sacramento, recognizing the importance of the conservancy’s work, extended its life for another five years. Last June, 71% of Los Angeles County’s voters directed that the conservancy receive an additional $30 million under the Wildlife, Coastal and Parkland Conservation Bond Act. Much of that money will go unspent, however, unless the Legislature and Gov. George Deukmejian agree to extend the agency’s life for at least another five years.

Today, the Assembly Ways and Means Committee will hear a bill, SB 1323, designed to do that. Introduced by Democratic Sen. Herschel Rosenthal of Los Angeles, the measure already has cleared the Senate with but a single dissenting vote, and the Assembly ought to approve it and send it to the governor as speedily as possible. In fact, aside from that single dissenting senator--who holds the eccentric view that there is “too much public land in this state”--the only opposition to extension of the conservancy’s mandate comes from the Department of Finance. It inexplicably--and, more important, incorrectly--alleges that the conservancy has not done enough to promote public access to the Santa Monicas. Gov. Deukmejian, who surely is aware of the conservancy’s efforts to promote use of the mountains by everyone from hikers to handicapped horseback riders to blind school children, should disregard the finance analysts’ ill-informed objections.

The dream of a great urban park in the Santa Monica’s began in 1913 with William Mulholland, the visionary engineer, who not only gave this city its great aqueduct, but also the 24-mile scenic mountain parkway that now bears his name. In 1930, Olmstead Brothers and Bartholomew, the firm of landscape architects whose founder, Fredrick Law Olmstead, designed New York’s Central Park, proposed a detailed plan for a Santa Monica Mountains preserve. Much of what they envisioned can no longer be realized; it has been lost to money and blind appetite. But much that is beautiful--and irreplaceable--still can be saved, if we have the will--and the wisdom--to do so.