About Town Redondo: White sea bass, STOPBCHD looks to cities, Beachlife donations
City looks to bring back white sea bass program
Plans are underway to restore the former white sea bass program at King Harbor.
The city council gave direction June 21 for staff to re-start the work, which used a tank in the S.E.A. Lab building, until its closing in 2019.
“There’s a lot of sportfishermen in the harbor who want this back,” said Harbor Commission president Roger Carlson.
The Commission determined last Monday night that a submerged, sea-lion proof pen — about the size of a small sailboat — is preferable to an above-ground, indoor tank.
Harbor Commission members will walk the harbor in the next two weeks to mark potential spots for a pen in the water, while checking temperature and oxygen levels.
A Carlsbad hatchery would again supply the fry for the program. The fish feed and grow in the pen. In the past up to 12,000 were released yearly into Santa Monica Bay.
STOPBCHD further declines to meet, looks to cities
STOPBCHD, a group opposing the proposed Healthy Living Campus at the site of the
former South Bay Hospital, continues to refuse to meet with Beach Cities Health District leaders.
Mark Nelson, a former member of the Healthy Living Campus Working Group – disbanded in 2020 – states that the focus of STOPBCHD is now on outreach to the three beach cities which the public agency serves, and Torrance.
On June 27, Tom Bakaly, CEO for Beach Cities Health District (BCHD), issued a public call to meet with the detractors.
Concerns about the Healthy Living Campus cited by STOPBCHD include character of the neighborhood – if a larger structure than the hospital is built at the edge of the hill – construction noise, traffic impacts, effect on property values of surrounding homes and more.
The project is to go before the Redondo Beach planning Commission this fall.
“We have built a thorough legal record already for use (at the planning commission hearing), for an appeal at the city council, and for a Superior Court challenge of the city council if it approves the project, while ignoring parts of its own municipal code,” said Nelson.
In recent months, STOPBCHD has issued public comments on non-agenda items to the planning commission.
Bakaly maintains that there have been ample opportunities for public feedback on the Healthy Living Campus, and the project has been adjusted (multiple times) because of it.
His request to meet remains in effect.
BCHD is a public agency originally established in 1955 to build South Bay Hospital. After it closed in 1998, BCHD shifted its mission toward wellness, serving Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach.
May’s BeachLife raises $120,000
BeachLife Festival helped raise more than $120,000 for its local, and national nonprofit partners at its May 2022 edition. Among them: Heal the Bay, Surfrider Foundation, Redondo Beach Educational Foundation, Redondo Beach Police Foundation, Life Rolls On, Walk With Sally, South Bay Parkland Conservancy, the Wyland Foundation and the Rob Machado Foundation.ER