Excessive Spending on Reseda Ridge Project

* Thousands of supporters of the 1.4 million-acre East Mojave desert preserve created by Congress last year are indignant (and rightly so) that there isn’t even $300,000 “to build facilities for visitors and augment the skeleton staff now busily gearing up to manage the sprawling new preserve,” as you reported on May 28.

Compare the Mojave’s minimal need of $300,000 to the over $2 million being wasted by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy for an upscale, fancy entry to Topanga State Park, the Reseda Ridge project in Tarzana.

County Proposition A ($1 million) as well as State Transportation Commission money ($175,000) is being combined with $800,000 “free grading”; an $85,000 set aside (by a prior developer) for a ranger facility; and dump fees generated by home builders in Tarzana who haul their surplus dirt atop the Reseda Ridge. Total for the Reseda Ridge “entry”: $2,060,000--not including the current dumping fees allegedly set and collected by the conservancy.

Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) should ask fellow Republicans and presidential hopeful Pete Wilson how they could condone such profligate and unnecessary spending in the San Fernando Valley entry to the Santa Monica Mountains--an entry that should have stayed within its original $175,000 budget from the State Transportation Commission in 1992 for a publicly approved restoration project.

JILL SWIFT

Tarzana