Wetlands Deal Was No Bargain

* Alexander Cockburn’s Feb. 28 column, “Losers in the Bolsa Chica Giveaway,” highlighted some important points that have been lost in all the win-win hype.

* The Koll Real Estate Group received $25 million for land on which it could never get federal approval to build.

* Agencies like the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles usually are required to retain continued responsibility for maintenance of wetlands restoration, not merely write a check and walk away. The public will have to pay if, or more accurately when, the funds prove to be inadequate.

* If Cockburn’s claim that Exxon Valdez cleanup funds are being used to assist the Bolsa Chica oil operators in their cleanup is correct, that is outrageous. What happened to “you’re responsible for your own mess”?

* The news that a state-appointed board and not the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is going to oversee the cleanup is not encouraging.

DAVE SULLIVAN

City councilman

Huntington Beach

* I felt the commentary was excellent. Cockburn hit the nail on the head.

Koll Real Estate Group never wanted to build houses on the wetlands. If it built it had to restore the wetlands that they had degraded, plus there is a lawsuit against the Coastal Commission for violating the 1976 Coastal Act and allowing 900 homes to be built on the wetlands. So as Cockburn states, Koll is paid $26 million for not building. And it never intended to.

EILEEN MURPHY

Huntington Beach

* Thank you Alexander Cockburn. Someone finally exposed the Bolsa Chica “victory” as worthy of a Lewis Carroll logical nonsense award.

So what did the public get from the Koll Real Estate Group’s promise of “restoration without taxation” (also known as the win-win solution): high-density development on sensitive upland habitat, complete destruction of one of the most significant archeological resources in California, and diverted port money which by all rights should have been used to restore another wetland.

But perhaps best of all, the California Coastal Commission has now set the ugly precedent that residential development is a permitted use in California’s remaining wetlands. How did Koll get to Wonderland? By following the advice to Alice: “When I choose a word it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.”

DEBBIE COOK

Huntington Beach