In O.C., a Day of Celebration, Not Protest

Twenty years ago on the first Earth Day, Robert Wilson was ankle deep in muck, supervising a tree-clearing effort in the rainy upper reaches of an Oregon forest.

“I was a logger, and I remember how the crew joked about hippies celebrating Earth Day,” Wilson recalled of the April, 1970, rallies and protests about the environment’s demise. Retired and now living in Santa Ana, he just shook his head Sunday thinking about his foresting days.

“I realize now I was the crazy one. . . . Thank God I came to my senses.”

To show his “green attitude,” Wilson joined thousands of other Orange County residents who took to the outdoors Sunday from La Habra to Dana Point to plant trees, remove garbage and attend rallies marking the 20th anniversary of Earth Day.

The mood Sunday was one of celebration, not protest, and there were bittersweet reminders of the initial Earth Day as 1960s-era folk tunes and rhetoric filled the air. Pamphlets on water conservation, how to eat organic and shop “environmentally smarter” were distributed by the hundreds.

And exhibitors gave it their best environmental pitch.

“Bees are going to be our saviors” proclaimed David Marder, operator of a bee-removal service known as “Bee Busters,” one of 50 vendors and groups at Santa Ana’s Centennial Park. As he talked about the insects’ pollinating virtues, about 5,000 bees swarmed inside an enclosed hive on his display table. “They have so much energy,” he said.

A few feet away, people fed aluminum cans into a machine known as the “munch monster” that crushed the cans for recycling.

In Laguna Niguel, a health-food booth at the city’s ecology fair was jammed as activists bought meatless chili dogs known as “tofu pups” and leafed through copies of “Cruelty-Free Shopping Guide,” a book about companies that test new products on animals.

At the Santa Ana Zoo, retired schoolteacher Betty Tobey slowly cooked hot dogs in a solar oven, hoping to give passers-by some samples. Only one hitch: The clouds kept blocking the sun, so the oven never got hot.

And in Huntington Beach, one enterprising teen-ager was selling for $2.50 each vials of sand he said had been contaminated by oil from the 394,000-gallon spill in early February. He called his product “Oil of L.A.”

Not everyone, however, was on the environmental bandwagon.

In Irvine, a pair of protesters with the group Young Americans for Freedom carried signs accusing that city’s activist Mayor Larry Agran of being an “Eviro-alarmist” and an “Environmental Chicken Little” for helping pass restrictions on the use of chlorofluorocarbons by Irvine businesses, a law some say is not necessary.

Even as Earth Day unfolded, environmentalists worried that Earth Day 1990 would prove to be anticlimactic after weeks of headlines and buildup.

“I am anxious to have all this falderal over,” said Jean H. Watt, a Newport Beach councilwoman and longtime activist. “All the attention has been so concentrated that I am worried that people may get turned off.”

In fact, organizers of the county’s single largest Earth Day event, “Earthfestival” at Centennial Park, had hoped to attract up to 10,000 people, but less than a third that many attended.

About 1,000 people did walk nearly seven miles from the park early Sunday along the Santa Ana River to the ocean near Newport Beach. Wearing green ribbons, the marchers tried to draw attention to ocean pollution and the need to develop more parks and greenbelts along the channelized river which cuts through some of the county’s most populated neighborhoods.

“There’s some sort of crazy idea that Orange County doesn’t have any environment, that it is already lost,” said Wilfred Donaldson, a 55-year-old Placentia aerospace engineer who marched with his three teen-age sons. “That’s bunk. It’s still here. We’ve just got to recapture it.”

But Brenda de Jong was pessimistic about Mother Nature’s chances of recovering from decades of dirty air, tainted water and overdevelopment.

“I feel like this is a wake for the demise of an old friend,” she said as she helped her 2-year-old son fly a kite at Laguna Niguel’s Earth Day event. “I’m still hopeful, but I’m not sure if we as a human race can do anything at this point.”

The message was far different at South Coast Plaza, where several hundred shoppers, many of them children, crowded around a makeshift stage and lined escalators to view a children’s play, “Clean Up Your Act.” Performed by seven trash-covered children, the short musical was about the need to recycle newspapers, cans and glass bottles.

“This is most likely the least green place in Southern California,” said Diane Doyle, the play’s author, who is director of the Young Conservatory at South Coast Repertory theater company. The group chose the shopping mall to present the play, hoping to persuade at least a few people to sort their trash and recycle.

“We’re doing our little part” she said. “You can’t do the whole globe. We got South Coast Plaza.”

Lona Eid, a 19-year-old Fullerton College student, passed up a day at the beach to staff several informational booths at the Earthfestival. Some environmentalists, wary of all the corporate hype associated with this year’s Earth Day, have expressed concern that once Earth Day ends, so, too, will much of the newly generated interest in the movement.

Eid said she is involved for the long haul, but she is uncertain about others. “I hope to God they remember this,” she said.

Some, like Kevin Smith, said they never even knew Sunday was Earth Day.

As he does almost every Sunday, Smith showed up at the Centennial Park pond just beyond the Earthfestival to race his radio-controlled, gas-powered boat with several buddies. At times, the loud reverberating sound of the model engines drowned out the festival music.

“I heard something about Earth Day on the news,” said Smith, a 27-year-old construction worker. “But really I don’t know anything about it. We just come here to race our boats.”

Times staff writers Marcida Dodson and Ted Johnson and correspondents John Penner, Shannon Sands and Leon Teeboom contributed to this report.