SOUNDING OFF: A mountain-to-the-sea trail isn’t enough

What is the Montage going to give us besides a big headache “” which I’ve already got from having to review the extensive number of documents involved with these two massive development projects. The Montage has bragged about supposedly giving us this great gift of having a mountains-to-the sea trail.

We already have several mountains-to-the sea trails. We have mountain-to-ridgeline trails, we have mountain-to-mountain trails; we have sand-to-sea trails. What is it you are giving us besides a big headache while you wreck (excuse me, I believe the preferred developers term is “improve”) one of the most significant geological features of this community? This project will destroy the very features that attracted you to this canyon in the first place. However, that is what you do. You build high-end resorts so that the inexplicably rich can delusion themselves into thinking they are getting in touch with nature, due to your glorifying one or two of its remains.

Now I understand why Aliso has been allowed to remain so polluted for all these years. It’s not because they could not coalesce the cities involved to be proactive. It’s because they knew that more aggressive measures would in fact be the final deathblow. Similar to capital punishment, some support the concept, but no one wants to be the one to hit the switch.

Aliso Creek is a deeply creviced canyon, a flood plane. It used to be a large marsh and estuary. While trying to make it sound as if you’re giving the residents something, you are, as usual, only trying to serve your one and only objective.

Aliso Canyon currently only has one means of ingress and egress. However, based on your proposed development plan you intend to change all that. Your mountains-to-the-sea trail is really going to be the 26-foot-wide road that you need as a secondary means of access. While you’re in there, are you sure you don’t want to work some deal with the county and tunnel out to Riverside and slip in a high speed rail while you’re at it? However, I am tired of saying, “Please just give me that ugly green fence back.” Please just leave that ugly hole in the fence that I walk through when I want to make that trail a mountains-to-the-sea trail.

Your project completely overlooks the 5,000 or so federally endangered thread-leaved brodiaea that currently sit adjacent to the secondary access road you intend to create. This foliage was well documented by Dudek & Associates in the Spring Survey Report for the Aliso Creek Emergency Sewer and Park Improvements Projects dated October 2001, prepared for Aliso Water Management Agency and Moulton Niguel Water District.

However, maybe the government will let you attempt to salvage one or two of these plants, put them in a planter box at your front entrance and still receive your “take” permit for the despoliation of the remainder of this species.

I am confident that our city will approve the project. Our city is no longer a “green” seeker, as trends put it. Our city pursues “greenbacks,” which can be confusing because they both use the word “green.” In case folks have not noticed, our city will approve anything they can get “greenbacks” from related to square footage.

I believe there are other solutions to the problems associated with this canyon than what you are proposing. If this canyon is to maintain its beauty and continue along its evolutionary process, as it has managed to do for the last few centuries, despite our interference, it will be up to the people to see to it that this happens. Start warming up your tennis shoes because it may be time to take another “Walk in the Canyon.”

DEVORAH HERTZ lives in Laguna Beach.