Ballona News

Friday, May 9, 2014

Destroy our Ballona Wetlands in order to save them?

Do the Ballona Wetlands Need a Big Fix?

Frequently we read letters in the local press from the new directors of the Friends of Ballona Wetlands who say the wetlands need major bulldozing by the owners, the State department of fish and wildlife, to fix them, or they'll "die". Source: http://www.ballonafriends.org/blog/2013/12/restore-ballona-wetlands-now/

12/12/2013: "Continuing to drag out the environmental review process only allows the Wetlands to further degrade (threatening species) and makes it more expensive to restore. Second, we are fighting “Tea Party” type groups that don’t want the government to do anything and consequently would effectively let the Wetlands die."

Really?

In 1981: "We, (and this includes the biologists who run our monthly walks) pointed out how rich and varied the wetlands are in their present state, that they are NOT severely degraded....and that even if not one cent were spent on them, they would continue to serve as an irreplaceable resource, both for wildlife and for people." Ruth Lansford, chair of the Friends of Ballona Wetlands, June 1981, Letter to the L.A Times

source: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5SGRAMv8RXuQUFYZXRFX1JnYUE/edit

It certainly sounds like the Friends didn't buy the claims of advocates of restoration by bulldozing. In the 1980's, the Friends were the sole environmental group standing up to protect the wetlands. In 1989, the Friends made a deal with the landowner, Playa Vista, to save more of the land. Unfortunately, the deal required them to repudiate others who disagreed with the deal.

"In 1994, MTP demanded more. Friends of Ballona Wetlands were asked to sign a supplement to their 1990 settlement agreement. Under the new terms, MTP can require the Friends to appear before a public agency and disavow any statement (made by a group that has at least one current or former member of the Friends) that "criticizes the Wetlands Restoration Plan or states that the Revised Playa Vista Plan will have an adverse impact on the restoration of the Ballona Wetlands." After the Friends denounce the criticism, the supplement requires the group to say that its position is unequivocally to the contrary."from the L.A. Weekly 11/24/1995

Source: http://ballona-news.blogspot.com/2007/12/first-major-news-article-covering.html

In 2003, our state's taxpayers handed over $140 million to Playa Vista to double the size of the preserve saved by the Friends in 1989. Did the Friends retire, happy to save the wetlands that did not really need to be restored? No.

Fast forward to 2014: the organization's board of directors and managers are almost entirely new, with several being current or former top employees of Playa Vista. Others work for wetland restoration engineering firms. http://www.ballonafriends.org/about_directors.html

So now, it is intriguing to compare the Friends' revised views on the health of the wetlands:

"we know, based on detailed surveys and the professional judgments of many of our members, that the Wetlands have been severely degraded"

source: http://www.ballonafriends.org/blog/2013/02/the-l-a-times-sensible-editorial/

The Friends are very proud of their partnership with the project managers at the State bureaucracy. The State's restoration newsletters feature a prominent plug for the Friends. And on the Ballona Wetlands restoration website created by the State's project managers are several large photos of trash and homeless camps, which creates an impression that the wetlands are a mess in need of this major bulldozing job. Source: http://ballonarestoration.org/need/

This website is jointly run by the State and the Annenberg Foundation, according to the State's newsletter titled Baywire (April 2014 edition)

And while the Friends support the Annenberg Foundation's proposed supermarket-sized nature center and pet adoption facility on top of the reworked Ballona Wetlands, they have said this previously: "Feral cats, or free-roaming pets, hunt and kill birds such as the endangered Belding’s Savannah Sparrow, and the South Coast Marsh Vole. Allowing access of these animals and pets into a protected Ecological Reserve is both harmful and illegal."

source: http://www.ballonafriends.org/blog/2012/09/dumping-your-pets-at-ballona-is-illegal-irresponsible-and-cruel/

It is our opinion that the definition of "restoration" used by the advocates of major bulldozing is so flexible that it is junk science, all attempting to justify a project that is the most expensive for the taxpayers, and the most profitable for engineering firms. Given that we have shown already that the State's proposal is not historically accurate (http://ballona-news.blogspot.com/2012/08/first-big-public-hearing-on-ballona.html), and unnecessary, and ecologically unsound, we hope that those who claim the wetlands are "dead" give it a rest.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Why is Playa Vista drying up the Public-owned wetlands at Ballona?

4/11/2014--California Coastal Commission Rejects Claims of No Wrongdoing by Playa Capital LLC, California Department of Fish & Wildlife

For years we have battled the public statements of the Playa Vista developers that the wetlands were too dry and degraded to be worth saving. Thus development of thousands of condominiums would be allowed under state wetland protection law. Later, after the State of California bought the land, we have had to combat the plans of the State's bulldozer-loving bureaucracy which believes that the only way to fix these degraded wetlands is to massively remove virtually the entire site, and drown most of it under deep water, instead of taking a gentler approach and restoring the historic shallow creeks on the land, thereby protecting a mix of water and dry land and a balanced ecosystem of wetness for fish and birds and dry land for mammals and reptiles and butterflies.

So we have viewed with suspicion the revelation that Playa Vista actually installed a drainage system with no permits over 10 years ago that dries out a large area of their former land now owned by the state, seeing it as part of larger scheme to make the land either safe for development or so dry that a really drastic and destructive restoration plan is required.

See the Press release from the Grassroots Coalition:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140429007307/en/Grassroots-Coalition-Announces----California-Coastal-Commission#.U2FE0XaRJiY

For Coastal Commission 's 4/11/2014 letter:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5SGRAMv8RXuaGxobDljTnFoUmM/edit?usp=sharing

More information:

http://www.saveballona.org/playa-vista-ballona-wetlands-drainage-device-press-coverage.html

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

First Big Public hearing on Ballona Wetlands "restoration"

NOW'S THE TIME TO SAY YOU WANT BALLONA PROTECTED, NOT RIPPED OUT AND TURNED INTO SOMETHING IT NEVER WAS

RESPOND TO THE MASSIVELY DESTRUCTIVE STATE PLAN FOR BALLONA

Scoping Meeting Date, Time, and Location:

A public scoping meeting to receive input on the scope of the DEIS/EIR will be conducted on Thursday August 16, 2012, from 4:00-7:00 p.m. at the Fiji Gateway entrance to the Ballona Wetlands (13720 Fiji Way, Marina del Rey, CA 90292, across from Fisherman's Village and Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors).

ON THURSDAY, SUPPORT SAVING OUR TRAILS, KEEPING POLLUTION OUT OF THE WETLANDS, AND "RESTORING" THAT SERVES ALL THE WILDLIFE THAT IS THERE NOW! SUPPORT BEEP'S ALTERNATIVE VISION PLAN! (see picture at bottom of this page)

Comments may also be submitted until October 23rd, 2012 to DONNA.MCCORMICK@icfi.com.
Or mailed to:
Ballona Wetlands Restoration Project
C/O Donna McCormick
1 Ada, Suite 100
Irvine, CA 92816

THE STATE'S PROPOSAL INCLUDES:

--Removal of most long-used public trails

--Removal of the Ballona Creek levees and the pouring of billions of gallons of polluted street drainage into the Ballona Wetlands

--Permanent discharge of fill (dirt) within 43.5 acres of non-wetland waters of the U.S. (435,000 cubic yards) and within 65 acres of wetland waters of the U.S. (600,000 cubic yards),

--Conversion of a balanced ecosystem featuring three rare and fragile wildlife habitats into nearly entirely an arm of the ocean filled with polluted urban street drainage

FOR FULL NOTICE AND DETAILS:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2012/07/25/2012-18166/intent-to-prepare-a-draft-environmental-impact-statementenvironmental-impact-report-for-the-proposed

MY OPINION, (by Rex Frankel, director of the Ballona Ecosystem Education Project --BEEP):

There are miles of trails in these wetlands which the State wants to eliminate. They say the public will damage the land by walking on it, yet they want to unleash massive bulldozers which will do massively worse damage in the name of "restoration". Thus, the State has declared the entire area closed to the public. I believe this is because the state wants to keep the public from seeing what a thriving natural habitat it is, believing we then won't counter their scare stories that the place is a disaster and must all be ripped out and replaced with the bureaucracy's non-historically accurate vision.

NOT HISTORICALLY ACCURATE?
It's not a restoration because it won't be returned to what it was before man arrived here. The State plan takes it back not 200 years but 4000 years to when it was an arm of the ocean and home to only sea creatures--what scientists call a monoculture. But 4000 years ago it was clean, not filled with urban pollution. (See this video presentation by Dr. Travis Longcore of USC explaining how the history of Southern California wetlands contradicts the State's preferred vision for Ballona restoration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1viLaZaVhQY)
Now, just like 200 years ago when man arrived, Ballona is a biodiverse ecosystem and has three natural habitat types: salt marsh, freshwater marsh and wildflower and sage covered uplands. Under the State plan, two of those three natural habitats and their wildlife will be mostly eliminated. So it's not a restoration to what it was when man arrived, but a return to a date that happens to coincide with their plan to to turn it into an all polluted urban street drainage dump, while now it is protected from L.A. 's pollution by the creek levees. Yes, the levees along the creek are not natural but serve an important natural purpose, which is to keep all the urban trash and grease and dog poop from flowing from the creek into the clean wetlands. Given that L.A. is here to stay, to rip out the levees with no plan to clean up the creek first is a recipe for disaster.

A POLLUTION DUMP?

Why does the State bureaucracy want to dump L.A.'s polluted urban street drainage into the Ballona Wetlands? Because they are under a court order to comply with a federal law that requires the massive L.A. urban region to stop allowing its storm drain system from funneling urban pollution to our ocean and beaches. But rather than planning and creating their long-promised upstream treatment system (see posts on this here: http://ballona-news.blogspot.com/search/label/Restoring%20and%20Unpaving%20Local%20Open%20Spaces%20to%20Clean%20Up%20Santa%20Monica%20Bay%20Beaches
), the Ballona Wetlands, which lie between L.A. and the ocean, have instead been chosen to be sacrificed as a massive pollution filtration system.

The State's plan is, to put it bluntly, just crazy! We need a plan that protects the three existing wildlife habitats and our trails AND allows some re-wetting of appropriate portions of the wetlands, and brings in clean water from the ocean--like it was 200 years ago. Every time we suggest this to the squadron of state bureaucrats, they say sorry, we've made up our minds. Well the public is speaking out and we want a new plan!

ON THURSDAY, SUPPORT SAVING OUR TRAILS, KEEPING POLLUTION OUT OF THE WETLANDS, AND "RESTORING" THAT SERVES ALL THE WILDLIFE THAT IS THERE NOW!

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WE HAVE THREE CHOICES FOR THE BALLONA WETLANDS:

LEAVE IT LIKE IT IS TODAY.

DO THE MASSIVE STATE BULLDOZING PLAN.

OR FIND SOMETHING IN BETWEEN THOSE TWO.

BELOW--BALLONA WETLANDS TODAY--ok, it's drier than it was 200 years ago due to road construction which blocked the ocean from getting to it and it has problems with trash dumping and non-native weeds. But it has huge areas of clean natural wildlife habitat that with a sensitive and non-destructive plan could be easily restored to its pre-urban L.A. glory days.