Delays on Canal Work Unnecessary

As longtime canal residents and property owners, we found Nancy Hill-Holtzman’s April 22 article on the Venice Canals misleading.

The original concrete bulkhead project sponsored by the Venice Canals Assn. was acknowledged as environmentally unsound in the Environmental Impact Report that the VCA bought for the city. That city bureaucrats and some property owners chose to repeatedly ignore numerous environmental and historical cautions from the federal and state agencies does not warrant a revision of the facts.

Simply put, the VCA lobbied the city, reality was ignored, and hundreds of taxpayers’ dollars were spent developing a project that was predictably unacceptable to the state and federal agencies that had final approval. It is to Councilwoman (Ruth) Galanter’s credit that once she assumed office she refused to allow the city to waste anymore Coastal Commission time on this fiasco.

We are disappointed that Councilwoman Galanter is going to allow the VCA to delay the project for another 18 months. During the past two years, at the request of the VCA, the city has conducted many studies of Amorflex and Loffelstein (types of concrete blocks). These studies always come to the same conclusion, that Amorflex is safer, more environmentally appropriate, and significantly less costly (two to three times) than Loffelstein.

Councilwoman Galanter needs to bring this to a closure. Trying to satisfy the VCA is expensive, time-consuming and impossible. There is nothing to debate and the city should stop pandering to the VCA. All of the experts say that Amorflex is the material to use.

HELEN and BART FALLON

Venice