Series a Wakeup Call to Salvage What’s Left of County Wetlands

Congratulations to Marla Cone on her fine article about the failing wetlands restorations. She also did an excellent job of pointing out how we peons can pass all the environmental laws we want to but big money usually has little trouble evading them.

We Westerners have always had pride in having a little elbow room, but now we find that we must continually fight off the over-development that our multimillionaire developers are always so eager to saddle us with (so that they may add millions more to their coffers).

I would like to add one more restoration failure to Ms. Cone’s list. It’s not a wetlands restoration failure, but it is the same idea. Go take a walk in Orange County’s new Whiting Ranch Regional Park and note the hundreds of dead oak trees that now line the creek bed. These trees were removed from the adjoining hillsides, and replanted there so that the builder could jam in the maximum number of houses on these said hillsides. Nine out of 10 of those replanted oaks died within a few months, but who cares? Our quality of life continues to deteriorate, but who gives a damn as long as big money is being made?

JAMES R. GALLAGHER, Huntington Beach