Canyon Oaks Would Be a Death Blow for Topanga

* Alexander Cockburn’s column “Speculation vs. Democracy in Topanga” (Feb. 3) sounded the alarm. May the Board of Supervisors hear it.

Our downstream community would be seriously threatened by the Canyon Oaks project, which includes a golf course, country club, sewage treatment plant and 97 home sites that would be engineered into the steep headwaters of Topanga Creek. While subjected to increased flood hazards, the extra runoff and “nuisance water” described in the environmental impact report would soon convert our intimate, fragile creek environs into a treeless drainage ditch spewing pollution into Santa Monica Bay.

Topanga and other rural communities in the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles have painfully discovered the direct connection between floodway mapping and urbanization of the mountains. The result is accommodation of development for the upper watershed while exposing the downstream community to economic and environmental degradation and, over time, termination. Our community views these regulations as having a devastating effect on the Santa Monica Mountains.

The county’s policy for permitting land developments such as Canyon Oaks to increase storm water discharges to natural watercourses lacks proper concern for public health and safety.

An integrated watershed management plan is the enlightened way to protect people and the mountains. If this development should be approved, it will deal a death blow to the plan and our existing community below.

RABYN BLAKE

Topanga Canyon

Creekside Homeowners Assn.