Wetlands Idea Still Makes Sense

Re “Make Playa Vista a Park,” by J. William Gibson, Opinion, June 17: More than 100 neighborhood groups, environmental alliances and civic organizations have now joined with Sierra Club, Wetlands Action Network and others in a united coalition actively working for protection, public acquisition and restoration of the entire 1,087-acre remnant Ballona Wetlands ecosystem. It is distressing that the voices of these many leaders in the community are not being heeded by the L.A. City Council, instead being drowned out by the obviously louder chorus that developer lobby money can buy.

Joy Zedler, professor of restoration ecology at the University of Wisconsin, told a wetlands restoration conference that biodiversity is diminishing at an alarming rate in Southern California. She recommended preserving all 1,087 acres of the remaining open space at Ballona and raising up and reconfiguring roadways that inhibit natural tidal flow to the wetlands. This restoration work could be just as much, if not more, of an opportunity for union jobs that labor leaders have been promised for the proposed Playa Vista development.

Marcia Hanscom

Exec. Dir., Wetlands

Action Network, Malibu

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The state, county and city have had since 1982 to make Playa Vista a park as Gibson suggests. That was when the last Hughes Aircraft activity (of which I was a part) was transferred from the Culver City facility to the new one in El Segundo and what is now known as Playa Vista became available for development. Since joining Hughes in 1952, when I first saw the wooden oil derricks of Venice every day and later watched the development of Marina del Rey from marshland, I gained an interest in the outcome for this historic property. It is a shame that Gibson’s suggestion was not practical at the time the property first became available. If not practical then, it certainly is not now, after 20 years of very contentious battling between various owners, environmentalists, government agencies, etc. The present development is clearly too far along at too great an investment to set back the clock to circa 1982. I am disappointed that The Times would publish this article.

Allen J. Curtis

Palos Verdes Estates