Conservancy Decision

Re “In This Case, Conservancy Is Wise to Save Cash, Not Land,” April 20.

It does not feel good to read your editorial congratulating the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy for blocking conservationists from protecting the mountains and the Mulholland corridor, stating there are more important places of greater diversity. Where can you find a more important area of cultural and biological diversity than Rustic [and] Sullivan canyons, dirt Mulholland, the Garapito Wilderness and upper Santa Maria Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains?

Isn’t the conservancy meant to dispense public funds for the benefit of the public? Why wasn’t the bulldozed [Tom] Steers-owned 37 acres purchased when it was offered in 1989? Perhaps the proposal did not benefit the network of growth interests that [conservancy Executive Director Joseph T.] Edmiston aims to please. The conservancy also needs to buy the connected 1,950-acre Rustic-Sullivan canyon wilderness for $4 million, using Proposition A funds.

The conservancy owns 350 acres on the ridge adjacent to the Corbin tank and 600 in upper Topanga. This is a perfect spot for parking, picnic tables, landscaping and a small interpretive center on the upper pad. The disinterested conservancy has not extended the protected Mulholland corridor over the county line, protecting this area, perhaps anticipating the freeway bypass construction intended to obliterate the present park road.

Our goal is preservation. It is so beautiful that it is difficult for me to understand why you published an editorial that comes right out of conservancy public relations. I know that you would like to blame opposition on some nameless NIMBY group, which is a code word for those grass-roots women, because real men run bulldozers, don’t they?

SUSAN BARR-NELSON

Friends of the Santa Monica

Mountains, Parks and Seashore

Encino

* This is the first time I have ever seen a quarter-page ad taken out by the conservancy in the guise of an editorial. It raises questions that beg for answers.

How many owners of property were contacted along the 8.9 miles of dirt Mulholland by the conservancy in the last five to 10 years? These properties could be purchased at a fair and agreeable price, donated or purchased with a tax benefit for the purpose of preserving against development, an alternative highway or a toll road.

Can the conservancy tell the public how many properties have been acquired by them in the last 20 years in this high-priority area?

What efforts were made by the conservancy to protect the 7,000-year-old Indian site adjoining the subject property? Documents were available for the conservancy to intervene.

Yes, $2.5 million sounds like a substantial amount of money, but it isn’t when you compare this to other properties acquired by the conservancy.

To think that political hacks, bureaucrats and developers can abuse and ignore the beautiful surrounds of the City of Angels and the magnificent Santa Monica Mountains is heartbreaking.

PATRICIA BELL HEARST

Los Angeles

* Re “Conservancy Purchases,” Letters to the Valley Edition, April 27.

Whether to buy 37 acres in the middle of “dirt Mulholland” is a difficult question, suffused as it is with emotion for an undeveloped part of our heritage. But one thing it is not is a question over paving Mulholland Drive.

The City Council has established the Mulholland Scenic Parkway by ordinance. No paving of that parkway can be permitted except by City Council action. The developers of the Rancho Estates property have no right, no entitlement, to pave Mulholland and the City Council will not permit them so to do.

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy sponsored the nomination of dirt Mulholland for the National Register of Historic Places; nothing we will do will ever foster the paving of this part of L.A.’s rural past.

At well over $1 million a mile, paving Mulholland for the Rancho Estates development is wildly uneconomical, even if the developer could get City Council approval. Rancho Estates, 3 1/2 miles from the nearest paved road on either end, will not be the demise of dirt Mulholland.

As esoteric as development economics can be, there is no substitute for a thorough appraisal of each potential acquisition; emotion--for or against a project--has no place in the evaluation process. That is the reason why, committed as we at the conservancy are to protecting the Mulholland Scenic Parkway, we are not going to fall for the developer’s “buy us out or we will destroy everything” argument.

JOSEPH T. EDMISTON

Executive Director,

Santa Monica Mountains

Conservancy