Buying Bolsa Chica From Developer

* Re your editorial “Momentum on Bolsa Chica,� March 25:

While it was good to see The Times giving so much attention to Bolsa Chica, it certainly would help if those in Sacramento who hold the purse strings on the $2.1 billion of Proposition 12 park-bond money would look to the south. So far, the money has traveled overwhelmingly to areas in the north. Take for instance: Chico, 2,000 acres; Mendocino, 71 acres; Mount Diablo, 1,300; Cambria, 417; Sonoma, 532; Calistoga, 525--and this is not a complete list. The bond issue was passed by Southern California voters too.

When will we get some fair portion, and why shouldn’t it be for Bolsa Chica?

VICTORIA BLOOM

Huntington Beach

* Purchasing Bolsa Chica from the developer and Wall Street investors has always been the goal of organizations fighting to protect our community and creation’s creatures that inhabit that little ecosystem.

Dozens of Wall Street institutional and mutual-fund investors are the real investors and owners of that land. They, through Signal Landmark, speculated on agricultural land and the rest is history. Signal Landmark and their investors probably did not understand the community opposition or the many laws protecting coastal zones. Yet they own the land. Buying it is the solution we need so that our community can move forward with other issues.

However, the obstacles are a willing seller and the price. Yet how do you determine the price?

Over the years, Bolsa Chica has become a fight over local community values versus outside investor values, local democracy versus Wall Street, public interest versus developer interest, honest government versus corrupt government, and citizens’ concerns versus developers’ manipulative public relations firms.

Citizens should not have to pay to make corporations obey laws. There is nothing that can compensate them, except saving that glorious jewel of our coast called Bolsa Chica.

PAUL ARMS

Huntington Beach