Save Trabuco Canyon From Developers’ Greed

Re “Board OKs Homes Near Trabuco,” Jan. 29:

The four sitting supervisors gave their unanimous thumbs-up to yet another assault on the land by tract developers seeking virgin soil on which to extend their urban sprawl.

What is different about this land grab is it cuts at the heart of Orange County’s last and, arguably, most cherished backcountry -- the old-growth oak lands of Trabuco Canyon. All this without a public voice on the matter from the very district in which the two tracts in question are located (due to supervisor Todd Spitzer’s ascendancy to the state Assembly), leaving the 3rd District unrepresented.

In the course of public testimony from an overwhelming majority of speakers opposed to the developments, a few cynical references were made to the large emblem of our county seal that hung prominently on the wall behind the supervisors. The depiction of verdant farmlands and hillsides in the background with three ripe oranges bountifully in the foreground, these critics claimed, bore no resemblance to a concrete, built-out, present-day Orange County.

Supervisor Chris Norby defended the county seal as a “historical symbol” of where the county is coming from.

I submit that a symbol, by definition, should imply, through its depiction, an active and commonly held belief or vision. Verdant fields and bountiful fruit do not depict the county today or, judging by this latest of many developer-friendly decisions, where it is headed. Unless by verdant fields you mean private golf courses, and by bountiful fruit you mean the profits that line the pockets of a few developers and their collaborators, who generally enjoy that bounty behind the gates of the high-dollar urban sprawls they build.

John Underwood

Los Alamitos

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The Orange-less County Board of Supervisors needs to get out of their chambers and take a good look at the place they call home. If they did, they might realize there isn’t anywhere left to build that does not take away from the character and beauty of the county, and the wealth of its citizens as a whole. Trabuco Canyon, where the board agreed to allow development, is one of these places. This tree-speckled wilderness is one of O.C.’s last treasures, and it is something that cannot be replaced.

It was not even reported how the land was purchased under the assumption that existing development law (i.e. the Foothill Trabuco Specific Plan) could be sidestepped.

I do not consider myself an environmentalist. However, I am an Orange County resident who regularly sees every corner of the county, and I am sick of watching every open space we have be consumed. This trend needs to be stopped, and it needs to stop at the entrance of Trabuco Canyon.

Bill Field

Westminster