MAILBAG: Homeless are now camping on the beaches

Are we losing our beaches to the homeless?

There is a tent city encampment on Picnic Beach below Heisler Park. It has been there for almost a month, and the growing population is quite assertive in claiming its territory. Inhabitants glare at anyone daring enough to make eye contact. People are visibly drinking beer, acting intoxicated and urinating in the sand.

It is an unfortunate change for us. Allowing homeless to sleep and live on the beaches will ultimately hurt Laguna Beach’s image and its appeal to residents and tourists. On a personal level, I have gone to Picnic my entire life with my parents and friends. Now that I am starting a family of my own, we have been frequenting Picnic because of its protective qualities and family setting. It is perfect for our toddler “” until recently.

The housing and economic meltdowns will perpetuate this problem. Many people are losing their jobs and homes, the government has less to spend on basic services, and philanthropic activities are competing for fewer dollars. As a result, more homeless will come to friendly Laguna Beach. Hopefully there will be some resolution to this matter before the issue escalates to levels experienced in Sacramento and Ontario.

GARTH JORGENSEN

Laguna Beach

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Kayaks will lead to more beach businesses

I arrived at the City Council meeting of April 8, as the town’s latest environmentalist cum laude.

I left the meeting sadly chastened.

The ocean belongs to no one. But we who are environmentalists like to think we are its stewards. We take care of our ocean. It takes care of us.

We sit between the two boating mavens. We swim, we surf, we meet the ocean, clad in trunks or wetsuits, not yachting caps and scrambled eggs. In the water we propel ourselves. We need no boats. No stinkpots. No dinghies. No kayaks.

Well, not so any longer. On April 8, the City Council nixed the Planning Commission’s action of a few weeks earlier, when the commissioners voted “Yes, but,” to a project to permit a kayak franchise to set up shop at Treasure Island beach. Yes, the operator could have kayaks for rent, but no money could change hands on the beach and no kayaks could be launched from Goff Island.

Why not from Goff Island? Goff Island is a protected marine preserve, declared so by official fiat of the city.

Some days after the Planning Commission action, I encountered new Commissioner Bob Whalen. I told Whalen I was disappointed that the commission had not turned down the project outright. He shrugged and said, “But we kept it off Goff Island.”

On April 8, the City Council put it back on. It trashed the Planning Commission’s yes, but approval, by removing the “but.” Kayaks could be launched off Goff Island. Money could change hands. Just do it discreetly. A rental sign could go up. A city park and beach had become a business stand. Our public asset had become a private asset.

The council did attach one condition. It gave the operation a five-month trial period. History tells me such trial periods end up winning longer approval.

In fact, history was the big loser. This council thinks history is so yesterday. It think history extends as far back as last Thursday. It does not remember how a bulldozer blade leveled the honky-tonk structures that once stood where Main Beach Park now stands. That bulldozer blade wrote an act of historic significance. Which now lies just as flattened as those honky tonks.

The council acted without Verna Rollinger present. Rollinger was on a well-deserved vacation in Italy (where she undoubtedly went to work to clean up what she could of the terrible earthquake that occurred the day she arrived). It is possible that her presence that night might have made a difference. Rollinger has suddenly emerged as a major player in Laguna politics.

In her absence, a sea change occurred. The beach became a place for business. It became a place for moneychangers. It has put the ocean up for sale.

Shame!

ARNOLD HANO

Laguna Beach

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Council ignored Heritage advisors

After reading Barbara Diamond’s excellent article (“Heritage of home put to the test,” Our Laguna, April 17) about the City Council’s decision to overturn the Heritage Committee’s denial of heritage status for the home at 451 Hawthorne, I was quite disturbed.

In fact, I was upset enough to take a ride over to the questionable home to do a look-see. It’s tough to see this property, as hedge and fences surround it, but from what I could view from the gate on Hawthorne, it certainly doesn’t appear to look like a home built in 1924.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see the home before it was renovated/remodeled. It appears to be quite a large home. Has the size been increased?

Unlike Mayor Kelly Boyd, however, I can see many differences in the before and after examples.

In fact, I can’t see any similarities except they are both two stories in height and they both have gabled rooflines. [Councilwomen] Toni [Iseman] and Jane [Egly] had “reservations,” but voted for it anyway? Mayor Pro Tem Elizabeth Pearson wanted to “reward” the owners for putting their hearts into the renovation? What the heck is going on?

Why is it that the City Council gives responsibility to a group of nine dedicated citizens who have quite an impressive resume, and then ignores their unanimous decision?

LINDSAY TOGNETTI

Laguna Beach

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Why not recycle waste water?

Potentially, a significant tool for assuaging California’s water crisis already exists, the technologies and public facilities already in place. They’re called publicly owned waste treatment plants and they’re capable of producing billions of gallons of non-potable water for outdoor landscaping by simply recycling what we send them.

Since no one seems interested in aggressively curbing population growth and we continue to build out exponentially, we are getting desperate. In our fear, we are pursuing terrible long-term strategies: Draining our surface waters to the diminishment of our riparian and aquatic biota, extirpating species by dehydrating their complex web of interacting eco-systems.

Water Rights Permits, either new ones or increased entitlement requests are really only temporary, don’t fully address our future requirements.

One solution is mandating that all waste treatment facilities clean their “influent” (the wastewater they receive) to meet Titles 17 and 22 standards per California Code of Regulations. Many sanitation districts only process to so-called “secondary” levels, dump these partially-treated yummy leftover gallons by the billions into our Pacific Ocean.

Cal/EPA should have required some form of third stage (tertiary) long ago to assure safe, healthy recreational and commercial uses of aquatic environs. Another emerging, popular strategy for noncompliant Clean Water Act chronic violators is diverting storm drain pollution to these treatment plants: Out of sight, out of mind. Thus we send increasingly large, concentrated volumes of carcinogenic toxic soup through the ocean outfall pipes, further degrading our marine habitats.

Many do not know that the most harmful chemicals and contaminants we pour down our own drains, the urban runoff flushed from our streets daily, pass through these plants relatively unreduced or removed. Thus the “effluent discharges” pollute the ocean near our shores and through bio-magnification, build up in the tissue of biota and are passed along to their progeny and other aquatic species that ingest them.

Plants already have some Advanced Waste Treatment capabilities that lower pollutant levels, that provide tertiary “purple water,” reused potable for our landscape needs. Presently they achieve about a 62% recovery rate of influent. Licensed by the State, why not demand that they increase their existing volume capacities and storage, they’ve already got our water in house, don’t they? Yes, we’ll be paying for it again, but isn’t that preferable to some of what’s being proposed?

High water-demand emergencies like the fires we’re so prone to could be assisted by building larger AWT reservoirs, by piping some upstream into high risk zones and injecting into our aquifers. With siphons and hydrants our firefighters would have an adequate supply closer to the calamity. Ditto in case we have an earthquake.

Instead of complaining about decreased allotments from the state, fanning the controversial flames of winner-take-all contests between endangered or threatened species and humans, it’s about time that the water and sanitation district providers who profit by our business stand and deliver proactively. They have a sworn, fiduciary responsibility to do so.

It’s a self-perpetuating money machine, and they’d just be selling us back over and over what we already paid them for to begin with, so why not now instead of when it’s too late?

ROGER VON BÃœTOW

Laguna Beach

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