MAILBAG:Lennar building $5M bonus not enough

Welcome to Newport Beach (“Newport to spend $5M in fees on city parks,” July 26).

Give us lots of money and have at it!

So the Great Park people are going to build in Newport Coast. Then I demand the same coastal drainage plan the Irvine Co.’s five-star Pelican Hills Resort is building, but at the same high level.

Lennar, the nation’s biggest developer and owner of the El Toro Marine Base property (Great Park), needs to know loud and clear, “not one drop of water from your project into Crystal Cove or Corona del Mar, period.”

So, you can build in Newport Coast for $5 million. OK, then we should charge Lennar at least $500 million for the Great Park that is in San Diego Creek’s watershed (covering 112.2 square miles, eight cities and unincorporated areas that all drain into our bay) that will deliver toxic urban runoff right through our bay.

Our bay is in peril because we, the city and the county, allowed a nothing little stream in 1968 turn into a huge flood control system called “San Diego Creek.”

There’s no pipe, no filters, just tons of microscopic sediment, loaded with toxins floating past your wonderful view of the bay, daily. The water is cloudy, toxic to marine animals, plus reefs have been covered by siltation for years.

New state laws are demanding zero runoff to these areas, and everyone’s coming up with ways to avoid fines, but not to eliminate the runoffs.

Now we know our local dolphins frequent our bay. That alone should have you all up in arms. We see our local coastal dolphins come in our bay and eat fish that are documented to be highly toxic to marine animals.

Have fun driving through Corona Del Mar!

RANDY SETON

Daystar not right for KOCE ownership

If Mr. Righeimer (“KOCE-TV Foundation, district’s deal done dirt cheap,” July 21) had any understanding of how much of the public’s money, time, energy and work had gone to achieve the success of KOCE, one of the top PBS stations in the country, he might have thought twice about why a church network was not a proper bidder.

The bids should have stated that bidders must be those dedicated to the interest of all of the public and to the advancement of education. Instead, the bidder with the most money was apparently a church.

Not a surprise, and if Righeimer read Column One in the Los Angeles Times the same day, he might have learned something about church wealth, as if he didn’t already know.

The OCC has attempted to correct its mistake and has taken into consideration the public interest, as is required for limited resources such as the airwaves.

Daystar already reaches a huge audience of devout religiosos, without our dedicating rare public assets to chiseling the wall between church and state even more than our founding fathers could have ever foreseen.

Iryne Black

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