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Voice From Santa Barbara: Lee Moldaver
04/09/04
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In third grade, no matter how often you tell your teacher that 2 + 2 = 6, it still always equals 4. Amanda Yee's March 25 Gaviota coast guest commentary implies that if you present a string of errors often enough, they could become "true" just by their repeating.
The Bush administration is dealing with a recession, federal budget deficits, homeland security and concurrent military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, so it's not surprising they don't rate creating a Gaviota National Seashore as a high priority.
But the writer's notion that the Park Service Gaviota feasibility study endorses her "stewardship" capacity is wrong. The study rated the Gaviota coast's resources to be of "national significance" in several areas and worthy of serious consideration.
After a two-year, $300,000 anti-seashore lobbying campaign by Interior Department executives ruled that a seashore was not feasible primarily because neighbors oppose it. They don't endorse local stewardship. That lets them avoid issues like private water diversions, erosion, grading, pollution problems, illegal crops, chemical use by several "stewards."
Coastal landowners rightly noted risks attached to a major federal management role. But where are their local alternatives? After two years of publicly subsidized work, Ms. Yee's Common Ground allies have yet to offer any coherent local plan to protect the coast from suburban development, or acknowledge how few of the coast's major eastern landowners earn their livelihoods from agriculture.
Ten years ago, I staged a UCSB coastal preservation conference. It was open to the public, widely advertised; most was free, one part had a nominal cost-recovery fee. Sign-in records show Ms. Yee didn't attend. So it's odd reading her use words like "secret" and "scheme" about events free to the public and widely covered by the press.
Robert Kallman and Paul Relis co-chaired. Mr. Kallman had served as a county supervisor, Ronald Reagan's deputy assistant interior secretary, and written about the Santa Barbara Channel's naval and marine history. Mr. Relis was Gov. Pete Wilson's appointee to the state Waste Management Board and founding director of the Community Environmental Council. Bixby Ranch's John Baucke and Arroyo Honda Ranch co-owner J.J. Hollister were invited to speak on behalf of historic landowners.
Other presenters included the Trust for Public Land's Margaret Eaddington, who made such a positive impression she was invited back to help broker the Wilcox Property drive; Tom Carey, the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County; Ray Belknap, the San Luis Obispo County Land Trust; Dennis Machita, Tahoe Conservancy director; Jerry Friedman, co-founder of the Marin Agricultural Land Trust; State Parks director Don Murphy; and several top UCSB scholars on coastal ecology. The National Park Service's Ray Murray was their only speaker, and he got no more time than anyone else.
The writer refers to federal ambitions to dominate the Gaviota coast. But the Park Service's Mr. Murray was emphatic that "of all the tools for coastal protection discussed today, a major federal role will almost always be the slowest, the least certain and the most expensive."
Which is why he advised the conference that "almost any package of locally based efforts to protect this area (i.e. Point Mugu to Morro Bay) from development would probably prove superior to waiting for a new federal role here."
The Gaviota Coast Conservancy began forming after the conference and listed studying a potential Gaviota coast national seashore as one of 10 key goals to protect the area from future development.
The writer's notion that the meetings were secret or exclusionary is wrong. She fails to note that the conservancy rated coastal private property rights, farming, ranching among its top priorities, or how many of her rural "stewards" refuse to waive their "right" to urban, spec development. Why?
Lee Moldaver is a long-term civic and environmental advocate in Santa Barbara.