State Purchase of Bolsa Chica Wetlands

Hooray! At long last the largest unprotected coastal wetlands south of San Francisco will be saved from the developer’s bulldozers (Feb. 15). Bolsa Chica will be restored for the benefit of thousands of waterfowl that migrate each year, the fish, the hikers and the general public. Hats off to the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, the oil companies, the developers and the federal agencies for working with the environmentalists in preserving these great wetlands.

I grew up near this great marsh. In 1929, we kids had a swimming hole at the west end, near the junction of Warner and Pacific Coast Highway. Some of us even shagged downed ducks for the rich duck club owners at the Bolsa Chica Gun Club. The Huntington Harbour development wiped out the marshland back of Sunset Beach where I lived. Thank heaven, the Bolsa Chica Wetlands will be saved.

HAZEN WHITE

Rancho Palos Verdes

Congratulations and thanks are due the conservationists who struggled for so long to secure a future for the irreplaceable and biologically priceless Bolsa Chica Wetlands, and finally largely succeeded over Valentine’s week. As your Feb. 12 article had it, this was indeed “one of Southern California’s most fabled and fought-over coastal properties.” Now, with the wetlands crown jewel of Orange County secured, it’s time to secure commensurate protection for Southern California’s other fabled, fought-over coastal property, the Ballona Wetlands of Los Angeles.

The majority of L.A.-based conservationists who have been fighting for the preservation of this land have not been taken in by the developer’s canard that construction of the massive development of Playa Vista will somehow save Ballona, or that their promised “restoration”--with no stated source of funding--of a small portion of the land will make up for the destruction of the majority of it, or that the DreamWorks studio complex will have no impact on the area’s largest and most sensitive wildlife habitat.

Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, the State Lands Commission, Koll Real Estate Group and two oil companies somehow managed to sit down and hammer out a deal that will save 880 acres of Bolsa Chica. To aid in the creation of the Ballona Wetlands National Wildlife Refuge, it would seem that Maguire Thomas Partners, Hughes Corp. and Steven Spielberg owe Ballona--and the people of Los Angeles--at least as much.

ANDREW CHRISTIE

Board Member

Ballona Wetlands Land Trust

Los Angeles