Letter to the Editor: Looking Forward to Fireworks

Byline: Dan Jennings

After last year’s dark Independence Day evening with no fireworks over Marina del Rey, I was glad to read in the June 8-21 issue of The Log Newspaper that fireworks are coming back for this Fourth of July.

My family and I would like to thank the Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors and everyone else involved with lining up private community sponsorship and funding to continue this great local fireworks show and longstanding waterfront tradition. It just goes to prove that when people work together for the good of their community, good things can happen.

While the Marina del Rey fireworks show was almost a permanent casualty of government budget cuts, our friends to the south, in San Diego, have had their fireworks shows threatened for a different reason: a promise of lawsuits against communities that organize fireworks displays on the water.

To the folks at that environmental group in San Diego County who are threatening to sue everyone in sight, if that’s what it takes to shut down waterfront fireworks shows in California, I say there’s a name for you: “Grinch.” How else would you describe an attempt to ruin the Fourth of July holiday of millions of beach-goers, boaters and residents of waterfront communities?

I only hope sane heads prevail — in San Diego County and throughout our state — to prevent environmental group lawyers from stealing our holiday celebrations.

All the alleged “pollutants” from all the fireworks shows in the U.S. in 2011 could not possibly equal even one day’s output of pollution that is going into the ocean and San Diego Bay legally from municipal sewage outfalls and unregulated military waste.

Why the attorneys don’t seem at all interested in fixing that problem — yet they’re eager to fix a “problem” that most people believe doesn’t actually exist — is a mystery to me.

Dan Jennings
Culver City

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