The Malibu Lagoon controversy is caused by the city

By Hans Laetz

There are two ways to handle major issues: fight endlessly, or work for compromise and solutions. Our city council ducks the issue, over and over again, setting up huge fights.

What should the city do now? Some people in Malibu will be furious with Hans Laetz for saying these truths. But he is a reporter. He looks at facts. Here are the facts:

Lagoon cleanup opponents filed a lawsuit, and picked a sympathetic judge in San Francisco to hear their case. But the opponents' legal arguments were weak from the beginning. They won a preliminary injunction because the state screwed up and failed to file its case on time. Once the judge got the whole record, he looked at the facts, the law and the scientific arguments raised by the opponents. And he ruled that the lawsuit was totally and completely without merit.

The fact is that the science and legal process used by State Parks were vindicated by the judge. Every single legal and factual argument raised by the opponents was rejected by the judge. That is the simple record. The had their day in court and they lost.

So, now the opponents are filing an appeal. Their grounds for appeal look even weaker than their original suit. No one can ever predict what the appeals court will do, maybe the opponents have done a better job and discovered some sort of legal error in the first judge's ruling that the project is good and legal. That is unlikely.

The opponents have strong passion and deep feelings. We can respect that. Their passion and those feelings should have been addressed years ago, by a past city council. They failed us.

Is the lagoon project a good idea? Not with this history. But our city is powerless at this point. Opposition from Malibu now would be too late, and based on emotion, not facts. Because the opponents have already lost in court, no new lawsuit can be filed. Joining the hopeless appeal is a waste of tax money. Our city already faces a possible huge, expensive legal fight on the sewer issue. We are already spending $750,000 on the pointless lawsuit filed by NRDC.

We're stuck, and the inactions of past city councils got us here.

That's why local control is so important.

Compare that now to Trancas Lagoon. Acting by himself, Hans Laetz won a legal agreement to preserve this lagoon and the old Riders and Ropers lot with a permanent conservation easement from Trancas Country Market. The landowner and Laetz disagreed and went to court. But they negotiated and compromised. They are working together. It would have been nice for the city to have done this for us. Laetz saved Trancas Lagoon without the help of our City of Malibu -- not with them. We need Hans Laetz's kind of appropriate, constructive and responsible local control.