Mailbag:

An open letter to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher:

I follow your House voting record closely and am pleased that nearly all of your votes are aligned with my thoughts and values. I have voted for you since your inaugural run. In my opinion, you represent our district well.

But casting a vote is no longer enough, sir.

Our free market economy, our economic well-being, our freedoms and ultimately America are all under full-scale attack. The new enemy of this, the greatest republic the world has ever seen, comes from within. They believe government is the end all. They believe government must control everything we touch.

They now control the financial industry and the automobile industry, they are making a full-scale grab for our health care, and they wish to tax the economy to oblivion via “cap and trade.” The dollar slides further every day as our printing presses print money to spend on stimulus programs, and China’s hold on our economy threatens to make America its colony. Meanwhile, we acknowledge our faults by bowing to emperors, affording citizen’s rights to terrorists and placating nutjobs in Iran, North Korea and Venezuela.

Your constituents need you to take the fight to the next level. Simply voting the right way is not enough. Your voice must become one of the leaders in this fight against tyranny and the road to socialism. Those who value our freedoms, our way of life and what America stands for, can no longer sit back and let the process run its course, and you, Rohrabacher, are needed to actively lead us against this new enemy.

Project will not harm wildlife

In response to Lou Murray’s Nov. 19 article, (“Workshop garners public input on center,” Natural Perspectives), once again, assumptions regarding the Bolsa Chica mesa project must be addressed.

Murray attended one 20-minute synopsis presented by the Bolsa Chica Land Trust many months ago. It was a brief overview of the project and the many specific design details were not discussed, and those shown were conceptual drafts. She writes that we will be using the typical wind turbines with propeller blades to power the nursery. This is not the case.

The turbines that will be used on the mesa are vertical axis blades, which are used in other wildlife areas. They are designed so that they present no danger to the birds or other wildlife of the reserve.

To quote one manufacturer, Windspire, “[C]ollisions with small wind turbines in general are very rare — overall they account for less than 0.003% of human-caused bird death, although the media has tended to hype them.”

It is extremely insulting of Murray to assert that we would cause any harm to the wildlife of the area we have worked so very hard to protect and improve. The Bolsa Chica Land Trust has invested literally thousands of hours of research into this project to make it as environmentally sound as possible, and Murray’s snide comments are not fair to us, to the community who supports this important project, or to the readership of this paper.

CPR for the Mesa is an incredibly detailed, multiphase project. As the project components are approved by the Department of Fish and Game, information will be shared with the public through future open town hall meetings and on www.bolsachicalandtrust.org. We invite everyone to visit the website for accurate and current project information or to call us at (714) 846-1001.

Editor’s note: Kolpin is the director of the Bolsa Chica Stewards, the restoration team for the Bolsa Chica Land Trust.

New corridor wouldn’t benefit commuters

Regarding “City seeks ‘lifestyle center’ along Beach Blvd.,” Nov. 19:

“Revitalize” by adding 17,000 more people and providing “significant” impacts to traffic in the area. Might that be those traveling by freeway to get to work? This appears to be a runaway train if we keep the makeup of the City Council. Be thinking of a change, a big change during the next election, unless living in rabbit hutch conditions has a certain appeal.

Remembering a local doctor, and an activist

Along with all of the previous writers on Dr. Jan Vandersloot’s premature passing, I and my family wish to express our deepest sympathy to his beautiful wife and children.

Vandersloot was my dermatologist, and we found a common interest in the “saving of the Bolsa Chica in its entirety from the bulldozers waiting at our city’s gates,” as he put it. During my visits to his office, where he removed many a sun spot for this sun-loving beach resident, he would ask how I felt about the many meetings by fellow citizens on what had to do with the Bolsa Chica — always in a humorous way.

At some point, I was a student at Cal State Long Beach with a major in public administration. When he found this out, he suggested that I do a paper for one of my classes, and when the Amigos agreed to a coalition meeting with the developers, I took time off from work and class to attend and sat next to Harriett Wieder. She knew I was anti-coalition because of its structure and format. At Long Beach, I talked about this idea in class, and my instructor wondered about the feasibility/workability of coalescing two absolutely opposite ideologies. I recall my disgust with our City Council via Wieder’s pro-developer stand, and found myself exiting membership, as did Vandersloot and hundreds of others.

The record is out there on the hundreds of public speeches, informing the public on the dangers to our Bolsa Chica Wetlands ecosystem here and elsewhere. I am astounded that David Carlberg, author of “Bolsa Chica — Its History from Prehistoric Times to the Present,” did not list Vandersloot’s name in his index. Perhaps an innocent omission? I hope so.