Tujunga Wash Golf Course

According to “Tujunga Wash Golf Plan Gets 2nd Chance,” (Feb. 11) the city attorney has struck a deal with Foothills Golf to reconsider the golf course development in the Tujunga Wash. It will be the job of the City Council to shove a stake through the heart of this horror project and fight, in court if necessary, for the concept that the people have the right and authority to place reasonable restrictions on development and business enterprise if the needs of the community warrant it.

The Tujunga Wash is the home of an endangered species, the slender-horned spineflower. Building the course will mean the end of this life form. The golf course will be built in an area given in recent history to major floods. It is reasonable and appropriate for the community to limit development in this area.

There is currently a popular political philosophy, neo-liberalism, which declares that there is no such thing as the community but only a cash nexus between human beings. Since a common interest does not exist, any restriction for a common good is a “takings” for which compensation must be given. Foothill Golf’s threatened lawsuit was based on the takings issue.

I am confident that the City Council will reject this a-social and self-satisfied logic and again reject this environmentally unsound project.

JOHN YARD, Sunland

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During the City Council process last year about Tujunga Wash, there was a lot of information in your paper that I appreciated, explaining the hazards of the development and what part of nature would be lost. Since it has recently been rerouted to City Council, I was hoping to hear more of the same from your editorial page.

The hazards to drinking water in the Tujunga wells, in light of the recent articles you have run on drinking water quality, should be enough to convince the City Council to vote against it if it comes back to them.

I think that the city attorney’s office must have a pro-development agenda to be pushing this back for another vote, assuming that the courts would approve the development in spite of the federally listed endangered species that is found there, the water quality issue, the value of the land as a flood plain. City employees and officials have a mandate to protect our safety, health, and welfare. In this situation, the city attorney’s office is doing none of the three.

THERESA BRADY, Chatsworth

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Caving to the developer’s logic is attune to agreeing that if one invests too much in ecologically rich flood plain property that the government’s only option is to approve a large enough project to bail him or her out. The council should continue to exert its power to shape land-use decisions that benefit open space preservation for the whole public and not elite golfers.

An approved project--such as a nine-hole golf course--should fit the constraints of the land, not the ill-fated investment debt and liens of layers of corporations. If the case is that the City Council’s only legal options are to approve the proposed golf course or, through a settlement to buy the developers out of a poor investment, then why bother the council at all with debating the merits of land-use decisions? This is a critical case for the individual council members to keep their backbones firm, both in terms of potential land-use case law and with preserving the scientifically appropriate portion of an indisputably unique open space area between Hansen Dam Recreation Area and Angeles National Forest.

ANN H. EDELMAN, Los Angeles