Outback’s Appeal Is Its Undoing

Re your series, “Orange County’s Outback,” Sept. 8-13:

California is truly overpopulated by this rampant development craze. This “We’ll make it and they’ll buy it” mentality drove the manufacturing industries from their markets decades ago when reality set in. But nonresident developers are unfazed!

They build, build, build huge projects among other huge projects, and then dump them on the market and advertise like heck so that hyped buyers come around. It is like a narcotic, with the burdens of overwhelming traffic, utilities and public safety services dropped into the laps of the local governments to provide the funding! Worse, will the Seacliff and Bolsa Chica developers tell first-time buyers up front, beforehand, that these tracts are sitting right on or very close to four earthquake faults, which disclosure I believe has been required by law for about two decades now??

The way to stop overdevelopment is to require subscription building: Sell 85% of the projected properties with nonrefundable deposits and then build. Require that no more than one-third of each property may be covered by structure, one-third by patios, driveways and walkways, and one-third must be landscaping. The developer must arrange for all services, schools and public safety to be completed and ready before going on the market, in a way that is compatible with the community; and all development officers, investors, and sub-contractors must be personally liable for damage to buildings--without possibility of escape by bankruptcy or statute of limitations--for building on earthquake fault or liquefaction or slide or flood zones! That would put sanity in this whole picture and put us back into building for normal population growth.

RONALD KINUM

Santa Ana

* Re “Orange County’s Outback”:

I remember leaving my North Santa Ana suburban home every weekend of my childhood to hike the trails in Silverado, Modjeska and O’Neill Regional Park with my family. Far from the smog and noise of the city, my mother would tell us children to be still, to listen, look and smell the real world. I used to dream at night of crossing the creek in O’Neill Park, climbing the hill and finding only more hills, stretching out endlessly.

Well, I visited O’Neill park recently, wanting to realize those recurring dreams. But when I climbed the hill the only view I had was endless, ugly, stucco houses filled with people who want to kill the mountain lions, poison the coyotes and uproot the sage, but still live in the “country.” There are some nice stucco houses for sale in my suburban neighborhood. Why don’t they leave what remaining wilderness we have left? By the way, I don’t dream of the view in O’Neill Park anymore.

ANNA MENDIOLA-BESANCON

Santa Ana

* The people of Orange County stand at a crossroads as the naturalistic future of the county, one of the last open tracts of land at the edge of the American frontier, is hotly argued.

The issue appears clear: jobs and development versus preservation of natural resources. The economic imperative to provide jobs for the citizenry cannot be denied, yet the intangible qualities of Orange County life that have attracted so many residents during the past two decades inevitably enter the debate.

Southern California’s place as the symbol of the hope and expression of individual destiny has gradually disappeared under a succession of subdevelopments and suffocating population densities, placing increased symbolic pressure on the open ranges of Orange County to fulfill this need.

Ironically, the fragile beauty of this ancient land is its undoing--the rounded hills are easily graded, the golden chaparral easily dismissed as unproductive wasteland ripe for development.

The tragedy lies in the betrayal of the implied promise of the frontier experience that so many Southern Orange County residents buy into, an experience existing only until the project sells out and grading of the adjacent hills begins for the next subdivision.

Through our compulsion to develop we strangle that which we need to live, leaving pathetic pockets of land too inhospitable on which to build, which are gratuitously referred to as a “park.” Is the legacy of Orange County to be simply a repeat of Los Angeles County? Is the final frontier destiny to be only an endless progression of characterless strip malls and choked parkways?

The discourse surrounding the fate of Orange County is about ways of living for all residents, not simply growth versus no growth. The destiny of Orange County is not quite played out; the future deserves careful consideration of the long-term ramifications of land development policies beyond simply weathering current economic downturns. The only remaining option is to start searching now for that unspoiled place just over the horizon, if it exists at all.

VINCENT BAILEY

Orange