Blame Aplenty for Seal Beach Pollution

* Marlene Falcione of Buena Park (Letters, Sept. 5) eloquently, if a bit extravagantly, noted changes for the worse in Seal Beach’s turf and sand. And she pointed a finger of blame at city government here.

There is blame aplenty to go around.

The Gabrielinos lived for centuries along the San Gabriel River and in the area now known as Seal Beach, between the mouth of the river and the entrance to Anaheim Landing harbor. And they left it all pristine for those who came to wipe them off the landscape.

What we have recently wrought along the river and otherwise, to be dumped onto Seal Beach, Marlene properly decries.

When I first visited Seal Beach in 1928, it was still pristine. And when I moved my family here after World War II, its native habitat was still essentially undisturbed.

In the early ‘50s, Monterey Oil Co. built the oil island offshore and began drilling wells. This brought the first real focus on possible pollution. There was already a growing burden on City Hall, to keep up a beach used by visitors from inland communities. So a few of us, helped by like-minded folks in other beach communities, sought to change the Public Resources Code, to give “localities of origin” a fair share of the revenue the state gets from offshore production.

Our bill failed in the legislature, and those of us who went to Sacramento to lobby for it were told why: What Los Angeles had done to the Owens Valley was still seen as reason for quashing anything that might be a boon to a southern area.

So, Marlene, the “sins of the fathers” can come to roost on a little town like Seal Beach, and deprive it of funds that would have made it possible to keep a beach cleaner for those who come to enjoy it. And who too often leave their trash on it.

WILLARD HANZLIK

Seal Beach