Letter to the Editor — Fire Ring Decision Was ‘The Pits’

Byline: George Heath

Does anyone — other than the handful of people who are lucky enough to own a house on the sand in Newport Beach, within sight of a public beach fire ring; or the handful of environmental activists that would ban anything manmade from every one of our state’s beaches, if only they could — really want to ban fire rings from Southern California beaches?

Personally, I think the answer is obvious. It’s “no.”

But that didn’t stop our government representatives — the elected ones on the city council, and the appointed ones in the South Coast Air Quality Management District — from turning this non-issue into the hot-button “must-act-now” waste of time and public funds that it became this summer.

Now that they’ve paved the way for a ban of these fire rings that mainly only affects Newport Beach waterfront homes, they’re working on new time-wasting and money-wasting strategies: They’re going to study ways to convert every fire pit in the region to run on gas, in order to make it “non-polluting.” Any guesses what that will cost?

Aren’t there some important problems we should be dealing with — and some much more worthy recipients of our taxpayer dollars — than this?

The fire pits decision, in my opinion, was “the pits,” but I’m sure the aftermath will cost us more money — and cause us more headaches than any of that fire smoke caused any waterfront homeowner.

George Heath
Corona del Mar