Mailbag: Homeless should not be exempt from laws

To lump everybody together with one catch-all label is lazy and disrespectful. Those who have suffered a financial setback and want to work to get back on their feet again should have their own category such as “hopeful.” Those with mental health issues should also have their own category such as “sick” or “ill.”

Alcoholics and drug addicts are “substance abusers.” Tramps, vagrants, lazy or shiftless people, and especially those who seek to live solely by the support of others are by definition “bums.” (Hey, I didn’t write the dictionary. I just know how to use one.)

All of these groups happen to be homeless but they all need different types of help, and of course, there is a big difference between helping and enabling someone.

Now if someone defecates in public, gets drunk or uses drugs in public, harasses, intimidates or assaults others, vandalizes public property, shop lifts, robs or steals, then they are simply common criminals and I don’t really care if they have a house, an apartment or sleep in the park. They should be held accountable for their actions.

The rich don’t deserve a pass, nor do the poor.

It would be nice if the City Council did something about crime in Laguna Beach. According to the Register, Laguna Beach has a violent crime ranking of 16 in Orange County. That means 15 cities in OC have a better violent crime rating.

If your parking meter expires or you walk a dog off leash on the beach, you will be cited and fined almost immediately. If you drink alcohol or urinate in the park, the police will not even issue a citation unless they are there to see the infraction.

The council doesn’t want the police to patrol the park. They don’t want to offend the ACLU. If you are unhappy with this situation, contact your city council. They can be found hiding from the ACLU underneath their desks, working on a plan for a new city entrance or perhaps saving the world from a few anglers that want to fish at the beach.

If you are happy with the current situation, well this is America, and you are entitled to your opinion even if it is wrong.

MARK BOSKO

Laguna Beach

Mayor misinformed on proposed fishing ban

In a recent commentary, Mayor Kelly Boyd wrote a letter urging the public to stop the creation of a Marine Reserve in Laguna Beach (Sounding Off, “Reserve will hurt local economy,” June 26).

This followed an action of the City Council in which four of the five members supported the Marine Reserve Plan.

In the letter, Boyd states: “The plan will take control of over seven miles of our coastline from Laguna Beach and give that control to the state of California.” He also says, “Consider the economic results. As if times weren’t bad enough, they will become worse for our city. A fishing boycott could be devastating.”

First, as the mayor should know, the state owns all lands from the mean high tide out three miles. Therefore, this plan is not taking anything away from the city, since the city has no rights or control of these offshore areas.

Second, none of the currently proposed areas would close all seven miles of Laguna’s coastline “” only a portion of it.

Additionally, mayor, please tell me how a closure could have a “devastating” effect on Laguna’s economy. We do not have a harbor or any fishing industry.

The only thing that will happen with a closure is that there will be a handful of divers that will not use our beaches for spear fishing or diving for lobster for a few months each year.

It is doubtful that that will have a huge economic effect on our one dive shop or visitor-serving businesses. Besides, most divers are day users (night users when diving for lobster) and spend little money in the city.

It is important that we base our decision on facts and I just have to call our mayor to task for spreading such misinformation. The decisions that he (and we all) makes are only as good as the information upon which they are based.

As a full-time recreational and part-time commercial fisherman in this area for more than 50 years, I have seen our fisheries take a dramatic drop. It sometimes takes us knowing how plentiful the fishing was years ago to truly appreciate how much we have lost and the need to make changes in the way we manage our natural resources.

If a closure is approved, I will miss the opportunity to dive and fish in the affected area. And yet, there will be other areas where I can try my luck at spearing a white seabass or catching a lobster.

I will know that while I and others like me have caused the decline in our fisheries, our support of a closure will allow these areas to rebound.

LYNN HUGHES

Laguna Beach

Protect ocean, no exceptions

The June 16 City Council meeting left me, like many others, with plenty of questions. One thing I know for sure: I take exception to the City Council’s State Marine Reserve (SMR) “exception” of the Aliso Creek Ocean Outfall Pipe (ACOOP). If anything needs to be included in an SMR protected area, it is the ACOOP and Aliso Creek. Allow me to clarify.

The last known creek and tide pool research (2006) indicates a constant high creek and runoff toxicity, the major cause of tide pool and near shore depletion.

I, too, believe that water pollution and human trampling, illegal take and other tide pool abuses are probably almost equal culprits in our tide pool and undersea life demise.

How do we address these areas most effectively, using “protection” methods without losing all of our beach rights and privileges as well?

Ken Frank originally approved Toni Iseman’s plan for the full 7 1/2 miles of uninterrupted reserve with the outfall pipe included, then declared “mea culpa” when Elizabeth Pearson brought up the need to omit the outfall pipe due to the possibility of heavy fines. Well, Ken, I believe that you may have been right all along if, in fact, any SMR plan is to be adopted.

Two things of note: Aliso’s Ocean Outfall Pipe carries 25 million gallons per day of secondary treated wastewater. It has a stand-alone NPDES permit (No. R9-2006-0055) issued by the San Diego Regional Board (Cal/EPA).

Laguna would not be responsible for said major fines because it would be the sole responsibility of South Orange County Wastewater Authority of which Laguna Beach is only one of 10 members.

By excluding the outfall pipe, we could actually be protecting pollution offenders instead of our “Blue Belt.”

If we continue to allow polluted runoff and lack of enforcement upstream, then we actually should be heavily fined, as we would then be allowing continuance of non-compliance.

Perhaps Aliso Creek, too, needs to lie “fallow.” At the very least, diversions (controversial and outdated) should be disallowed for five years. This would include the SUPER Project reclaimed water “cleanup,” which could kill off everything in both the creek and the very areas we are trying to protect merely by questionable and very possibly unfavorable sediment transport.

Our creek and Blue Belt cannot afford to be an untested science experiment. Rather, let’s move forward and consider how to implement Advanced Waste (tertiary) Treatment, which is a third and finer cleansing of the water.

JOANNE SUTCH

Laguna Beach

Sport fishers support conservation

I am a sportfisherman and Laguna resident who fishes along the Laguna coast from my kayak more than 50 days a year. While attending the Marine Life Protection Act meeting at Aliso Creek Inn on July 1, I introduced myself as a sportfisherman to a supporter of the Laguna fishing ban. He said, “Stop calling yourselves sportfisherman. There is no sport in what you do; it is not sport, it is slaughter.”

I wondered how someone could be that misinformed about what sportfishermen do with their single line and single hook? I tried to tell him that sportfishermen have been and are true fishery conservationists, but he did not want to hear those facts.

Hopefully, others on the side to ban fishing in all of Laguna are more willing to learn how sportfishermen provide their time, money and leadership to help ensure a healthy marine resource in the future. As for being the “slaughterers,” sportfishermen and sport dives actually remove only about 15% of the seafood from California’s waters with commercial fishermen taking 85%.

Here are a few examples of the sportfishing communities marine conservation efforts: For starters we contribute some $85 million (far more than any other group) from our fishing licenses and self imposed excise tax on fishing tackle to help the state conserve and manage California’s fisheries.

This is a small portion of the $1.3 billion of economic output and 20,000 jobs generated in California by our more than 900,000 saltwater anglers.

To date the most productive event in the effort to protect and conserve Southern California’s marine fisheries remains the passage of Proposition 132, the 1990 ban on the use of destructive gill nets in state waters south of Point Conception.

That effort was conceived and led by the sportfishing community and its friend Doris Allen and resulted in a dramatic recovery of both the white seabass and halibut populations.

To help further assist Mother Nature in that recovery, the sportfishing community supports the Hubbs Sea-World Research Institute in its Carlsbad White Seabass Hatchery effort which has released back into the wild 1.5 million sea bass.

Fishing clubs in 13 locations throughout So Cal contribute over 20,000 hours of volunteer time annually to raise fish in pens located in their home harbors. Dana Angling Club members, some who live in Laguna, collectively contribute more than 1,000 hours each year to raise fish in Dana Harbor for release to the sea and will find it interesting that some folks in Laguna imply that they and their fellow anglers are uncaring takers from the sea.

The Rigs-Reefs program designed to keep thousands of tons of habitat and ocean life undisturbed when offshore oil rigs are eventually decommissioned has been driven in large part by the sportfishing community.

United Anglers of Southern California worked to ensure that longlines were not allowed in California waters so the marine resource is not be burdened with this destructive gear as it is in other coastal states. They also continue to work to eliminate the use of bottom trawls in state waters as this type of gear causes major damage to the ocean floor.

The sportfishing community has a proven record of supporting the resource, not destroying it.

Yes, there are a few irresponsible anglers as there are in every group.

However, is it reasonable to so severely impact the other 99% of us who care for the resource and fish responsibly, when the potential benefit and science of doing so is questionable at best?

The sportfishing community, through its Partnership For Sustainable Oceans, is on record with supporting Marine Protected Areas that are based in sound science. We support some closed areas off Laguna, but not closing the entire Laguna coast.

It is a shame that our city council did not do their homework prior to their irresponsible full closure recommendation.

Rather than suggesting that the state cut the legs out from the sportfishing and diving communities with a total city wide ban, real progress might have been made if they had sought input from the sportfishing and dive community as they did with the environmental community prior to the June 19 city council meeting.

If that had been done, or could be done in the future we might develop a more reasonable and inclusive recommendation that MLPA process could actually take seriously.

BILL SHEDD

Laguna Beach

EDITOR’S NOTE: Bill Shedd is president of American Fishing Tackle Company; co-founder of United Anglers of Southern California; chairman of American Sportfishing Assn. Government Affairs Committee; chairman of Hubbs/SeaWorld Research Institute; trustee of International Game Fish Assn.; and board member of California Artificial Reef Enhancement program.