Reseda Ridge Project Destroys Parklands

* Why does Joe Edmiston, director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, point to the Reseda Ridge project in Tarzana as an example of the best, boldest and quickest kind of “people improvements” the conservancy can make?

The conservancy was set up to protect public health by conserving land in its undeveloped state that provided the purest air and watershed in the region. It was supposed to work cooperatively with citizens and property holders to create a contiguous national recreation area that would conserve plant and animal life in its most natural state. The Santa Monica Mountains are a national treasure of a rare “elfin forest” ecological system. To build roads or structures is to erode and destroy their delicate balance. Yet this is just what Mr. Edmiston defends as the conservancy’s goal.

I appeal to Rep. Anthony Beilenson, co-author of the federal legislation that set up the national recreation area and the conservancy, and to his political opponent, Rich Sybert, who sits on the conservancy board, to correct Mr. Edmiston’s misguided policies.

The Reseda Ridge project is literally destroying state parklands and spending between $1 million and $2 million in public funds for a development that has not even provided the public with a grading plan. State parks experts have testified that the restoration of Reseda Ridge should cost no more than $40,000.

The conservancy has become a very expensive loose cannon, and we need a force majeure to remove it from the public trough.

JEAN E. ROSENFELD

Tarzana