Port Might Send Help for L.A. Marshes
In a move sure to please some environmentalists, the Harbor Commission has decided to review its spending of funds on conservation projects mandated by agreements governing their expansions. In a shocking twist, they've decided to actually look at projects IN THE CITY!!!!! I know, to good to be true. Acording to the LA Times, red tape is sure to stop this forward thinking process, but at least it is a start in the right direction.LA Times: Port May Help L.A. Marshes
Posted by Anonymous @ 9/26/2005 05:10:00 AM
7 Comments:
This is an excellent idea, one which community people have put forward for years. There has always been some bureaucratic reason why the projects had to be done in San Diego and Orange counies.
Any wetland restoration is desperately needed. The Bataquitos and Bolsa Chica projects have been excellent projects, and the idea of doing something closer to home is even better. On the other hand, if you don't fill in the bay, you don't need to offset that impact.
The bigger question, however, is what projects the Port has in mind in Wilmington and San Pedro which will require these mitigation credits. When this question was raised at the last Harbor Commission meeting, the answer was silence.
The Coastal Commission has required the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to spend over $100 million on these projects in the last few years to mitigate for the loss of marine wildlife habitat to the ports' landfills. This is only fitting and proper.
The problem is that, in Los Angeles, over 700 acres of the bay has been filled in, paved over, and decorated with giant cranes, tens of thousands of containers, and all of the other facilities of an industrial port.
While the California Environmental Quality Act requires that aesthetic impacts be analyzed and mitigated, there has never been one dime of mitigation for the blighting visual impacts on the surrounding communities of this massive industrial development, let alone any effective mitigation for the toxic air pollution.
These credits are needed because the port intends to create more landfills and industrial impacts upon our community. The question is, what projects, where, and what will be done to mitigate for the negative impacts here at home?
Hey Noel, where were you when they built on the Ballona Wetlands to build the Playa Vista Development?
Huh, No where to be found! Why don't you go back to your toxic Auto-body shop and stop your grandstanding!!!
2:12
Playa Vista built on the old Howard Hughes plant. Wetlands were haven't been there in decades.
We need more housing!
The Ballona Wetlands have plenty of advocates. Even though I agree with them, I have all I can do to try to help a little to protect San Pedro from your friends.
My body shop is not toxic. It is highly regulated by the AQMD and has emissions of essentially nil. The ports, on the other hand, have a free pass from the AQMD and emit thousands of tons of toxic, carcinogenic, diesel exhaust every year.
Read the L. A. Weekly article this week for a good profile of how the "goods movement" industry's lobbying power has perpetuated this free pass, to the total detriment of the health of the public.
The blogsphere is forever entertaining. A person posts a comment supporting the spending of mitigation funds on wetlands and is attacked for not being there sooner. The agrument behind this criticism being, why didnt you fight to save every wetland and by god sniff your heavily regulated body shops effluent as penance. I guess if I had to choose I would be tempted to eat body shop emissions and live before I ate deisel and died. I hate to bring that chant back from the basement but people think about what you are saying. Noel Park eat deisel and die because hey its toxic for you but obviously not for me. A person is left to think that the eat deisel and die camp must be waging jihad by supporting development that will inevitably kill them, in order to win a war against that evil doer Noel Park. Bizarre!
The BirkenPlanner
There are plenty of good local (LA City) projects to spend wetlands money on. I say, keep the money local, and spend it on expanding the Cabrillo Beach Wetlands, which currently is an unsustainable 3 acres. Expand it to 10 acres so it actually does the coastal environment some good. Another good project which has been knocking around for years is to turn the polluted Consolidated Slip in Wilmington into a wetlands preserve, in order to "naturally" clean the waters of the inner harbor.
The Port of LA should do these 2 small projects anyway, without worrying about credits for future expansion. After paving over 3,500 acres of wetlands over 50 years, it wouldn't kill the Port to give a little nature back to the community.
I agree! The backlog of unmitigated impacts should well cover it -- regardless of "credits." But it will have to be pushed by the community, because the ports are not motivated to do any environmental remediation in the area. New leadership is desperately needed.
Hopefully, Freeman can advocate successfully for this money to be spent locally.
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