Water treats
Dear ER:
Trent Larson’s letter arguing for a desalination plant in the South Bay makes reference to technology being the “golden goose” laying technological eggs for our future (“Water everywhere, to drink,” ER Letters Jan. 14, 2016). One sentence before invoking the technological goose, he shrugs off increased waste water recycling with a decidedly nontechnical assessment of “freshwater is good” and “treated sewage is not so good.”
Fortunately for us, the “technology, ingenuity, creativity and the might of American industry” has already been brought to bear on water recycling. In Orange County 2.4 million residents are fed from an aquifer which, since 2008, has been refreshed with billions of gallons of recycled wastewater. All water we drink is recycled in some way. Recycled wastewater is not technically difficult, it is actually more pure than other “fresh” sources. Uninformed opinions like Trent’s are slowing, not advancing, the progress of technology and sustainable water strategy.
Christopher Reed
Hermosa Beach
It’s not waste water
Dear ER:
The Hyperion sewage plant next to El Segundo dumps 300 to 500 million gallons of partially treated toxic wastewater five miles out into the Santa Monica Bay every day (“Water everywhere, to drink,” ER Letters Jan. 14, 2016).. This water could be used in purple pipes or further treated, as is done in a treatment plant in El Segundo that sells the ultra-pure water at a premium to Chevron for their refinery cooling systems. The treated water could also be used for aquifer replenishment. Why not promote using this wasted water instead of investing in desal plants that cost $1 billion each and only produce 20 million to 50 million gallons per day at best? The comment, “Treated sewage water slated for human consumption is not so good” is severely flawed. One-third of the water we get from the Colorado River and treat for drinking, includes already treated wastewater from upriver sewage treatment plants that dump treated water into the Colorado River. Desal plants are financially wasteful and unnecessary.
Mark Shoemaker
Website comment
You don’t know what you’ve got
Dear ER:
I sympathize with Steve Shoemaker and deplore the CenterCal plan (“Man in the Middle,” ER Jan. 14, 2016). I don’t think there is much wrong with the Redondo Pier as it is. The open space on the Horseshoe Pier is inviting, spacious and beautiful Why would we, as Redondo Beach residents, want the inconvenience, expense and overdevelopment of leveling the existing pier and construction of new restaurants, garages, a hotel, and movie theater? I think Shoemaker’s plan to put a vintage carousel in the space of the former Octagonal building is a no brainer. Also, rather than demolish the existing garage, just repair it. If any demolition is to be done, it should be the demolition of the semi-Cape Cod type buildings (ghost town) above the existing garage. Is it called Pier Plaza? I think that should be replaced with an art house movie theater, like the Laemmle. There is no art house theater in the entire South Bay. It could be constructed in the Spanish Revival style of the old Fox Redondo.
Jim Phillips
Redondo Beach
Renewal rights
Dear ER:
Imagine if you owned a house but were forced to remain with the same paint, furniture and style from the ‘70s (“Man in the middle,” ER Jan. 14, 2016). Telling a landlord they have to keep a tenant forever is like someone telling you you can’t improve your property. If everything was to remain the same we would never see clean, updated and improved shops.
Tami Wick
Facebook comment
Fun Factory fight
Dear ER:
Four years into my lease, the City of Redondo Beach refused to consent to a promised extension for my only tenant. The City wanted more money. The city lost. In 2001, the City got the idea of doubling my rent. The City lost. In 2011 the City got more serious. The next five years of arbitration cost me about $400,000. The City lost. Judge Kennedy, the third arbitrator, agreed that the City could not charge my lease, Fisherman’s Cove, twice the percentage of other City Lessees.
Between December 18, 2015 and January 7, 2016 I received three letters by Certified Mail and Legal Process Server. These letters again demand the rent be doubled. On the surface this looks pretty good: The City doubles my rent. I double my tenant’s rent. The City and Fisherman’s Cove double their income. But look deeper. My restaurant tenant cannot pay 18 percent rent while their neighboring competitor pays 6 percent. The Fun Factory cannot pay 24 percent when a location at the pier entrance can operate an arcade for 14 percent. The restaurant goes broke. The Fun Factory goes broke. Fisherman’s Cove goes broke. The City gets what it wants – the property in the middle of the proposed Center Cal development for free.
I think this is a terrible way for the Mayor and City Council to do business.
Steve Shoemaker
Master Lessee
Redondo Fisherman’s Cove Company
Redondo Beach
Coast to coast coverage
Dear ER:
I am disgusted by CenterCal and their disingenuous attempt to fool the residents of Redondo Beach into thinking the New York Times wrote an article on the waterfront because they were interested. The PR firm, Cerrell & Associates, which is representing CenterCal, crafted the article, sought a freelance writer and then celebrated it on their website. The most shocking part of this is that the article was riddled with wrong information, including statements ranging from “Fred Bruning, the chief executive of CenterCal and a long time Redondo Beach resident,” to the incorrect size and cost of the project. Bruning is not a resident of Redondo Beach. CenterCal’s reckless disregard for our community is irresponsible and serves as a red flag for what is to come.
Please join Rescue our Waterfront as we come together as a community to preserve our city from money hungry developers who don’t live here, but continue to dictate the quality of life in our beach community. Check us out on Facebook or our website at RescueOurWaterfront.org.
Candace Allen Nafissi
Redondo Beach
Culture caution
Dear ER:
Randy and D’Marie Chambliss’s wish to help others is commendable (“Hermosa couple volunteers in harsh places,” ER Jan. 7, 2016). As the father of a daughter who holds an European passport and who might one day again live on her home continent, however, I have to take exception to Chambliss’s admonition regarding the ongoing migrant influx into Europe. “We should keep an open mind to people coming from other countries,” he stated, adding that, “Jesus was a refugee too.” While that is a noble thought, the cold reality of what this particular migration wave portends for the women and girls of Europe demands that European countries take a very different approach. Instead, do everything possible to shut down the influx.
It isn’t Jesus who is marching into Europe. It’s hundreds of thousands of present-day Middle Eastern and North African men. As Chambliss concedes, the migrant influx is largely comprised of adult men and unaccompanied male teens (69 percent of Mediterranean arrivals according to the International Organization for Migration). Collectively, in the formerly safe cities of Europe, these men are making life hell for the local women and girls. According to the New York Times and the UK Daily Mail, on New Year’s Eve in cities across Germany organized gangs of migrant men unleashed an unprecedented wave of sexual violence; groping, fondling, and even raping women and girls in group attacks at the central train station in Cologne. In Vienna, the situation has gotten to the point where the chief of police has warned women not to leave the house alone. Should such advice become universal, the girls of today’s Europe will lead very different lives from those of their mothers – with enjoyment of safe public spaces and freedom of movement becoming things of the past.
All this isn’t to say that migrants do not deserve our help. That help, however, does not have to include giving legions of young men from women-hostile cultures free passage through six or seven safe countries (starting with Turkey) to the European destination of their choice. A nation’s humanity does not require that it abandon its responsibility to protect its own citizens.
Rodger Deuerlein
Hermosa Beach
