Water

Development has drained our water The letter by Deborah Dentler regarding water conservation (“We ought to pull together on water,” May 1) really raised my blood pressure. She has all these helpful suggestions about how the citizens of Glendale can conserve water, i.e. take shorter showers, water your lawn less, don’t let the water run when you brush your teeth. Meanwhile, any thinking person with two eyes in his or her head has only to look around them and see the result of the massive building boom that has totally changed the character of our town.

GAINS CELEBRATING OUR ROOTS On consecutive weekends, the streets of Montrose and Glendale have been packed with people of all nationalities celebrating. The Oktoberfest and the Days of Verdugo Parade were wonderful community events. The 23rd Oktoberfest in Montrose had its usual variety of sausages, crafts, crowds and beer. The German-style event has proved to be a popular one that can be looked forward to each year. On an even grander scale, the Days of Verdugo Parade filled Glendale streets for the 53rd time.

Jackson Bell Amiee Klem was changing her 16-month-old daughter's diapers Sunday afternoon when she heard what sounded like a runaway semitruck smashing into the back of her house. Frightened, Klem grabbed Eve and escaped to the safety of her frontyard, where she saw that a 70-foot maple tree had crashed from her neighbor's yard onto her Crestview Avenue home. "My initial reaction was that half my house was gone," she said. "When it crashed, we heard what we thought was a lot of glass shattering, a lot of snapping and popping.

Apparently, I was wrong. When I described the water as frigid a few weeks back, it was a bit of an overstatement. This time, it really was frigid. As I ever so slowly waded out into the water -- described by surf instructor Scott Morlan as in the low 60-degree range -- last Saturday just north of Newport Beach Pier, I started questioning why I took this class in the first place. The rust-bucket color water -- also described by Morlan -- and the occasional meandering jellyfish didn't help the situation.

The sound of water rearranging the landscape in Bob Demont's backyard was like thunder. "We heard it the night before last," Demont said Tuesday, "About 11:30. ... I said to my wife, 'No, that's rocks.'" A portion of the steep hillsides that make up the back of Demont's bowl-shaped property had given way, pouring mud, rocks and a few trees into an 8-foot-deep catch basin and plugging the storm drain. For the rest of the night, and the next day and the next night, the water that would have collected in the catch basin and run down the storm drain instead ran through Demont's backyard and down the 250-foot driveway he shares with several neighbors.

"Wetlands and waters of the United States"? Reading Marc Stirdivant's lengthy anti-Oakmont V letter causes me to write this short letter to point out someone's "hallucinations" on "wetlands and waters." Take a walk up there, during this dry spell, and point out where all that water is. The only water you'll see up there is from a pop bottleful that you carry with you and dump on the ground. I suppose that to all of you against the Oakmont V homes, that dumped bottle of water constitutes "wetlands and waters of the United States."

In response to Mr. Raymond Roy Marshall's letter in the Feb. 27 issue of the News-Press, "He smells a little hypocrisy in the air," I must correct his statement that there is less than a "pop bottleful" of water in the Verdugo Hills where Oakmont V has been proposed. On the contrary, during my morning hikes into the area, I have come across two blue-line springs, and can clearly see where another two probably exist. There is water in the hills year-round.

There are people who think Newport-Mesa residents live a charmed life, what with "The OC" and other such glossy portrayals of life in this part of Orange County. Truth be told, however, it's been a tough summer around here, particularly at the beach. There have been red tides keeping people out of the water, and black jellyfish to sting those who got too close. In the water, there was the surf, or more accurately, the lack thereof. Until this week.