Our View: RBOC should see the light

October 05, 2001 - Pasadena Star News

THE grand greenspace that is the Arroyo Seco -- or at least the part south of the San Gabriel Mountains -- is no more truly wild than is Olmsted's Central Park.

Every square centimeter of the canyon has felt the human touch in one way or another over the last 150 years. From JPL parking lots to the former rock quarry in Hahamongna to Devil's Gate Dam to the 36 holes of Brookside Golf Course to the Rose Bowl itself, pure as the driven snow the Arroyo Seco ain't.

But it is the greatest open space in the suburban San Gabriel Valley, and for many years has very much been the center of a political battle over just how wild it should be.

For about 15 years, the activists who might be called the Greens on arroyo issues have seen some significant victories. Hahamongna Watershed Park, however slowly, is coming along. Trails have seen some restoration work. Both the reclaiming of the more or less natural wetlands area under the Colorado Street Bridge and the human-engineered creation of a native-plant, artificial stream area down by the (cement) casting pond have been viewed as successes.

It's never going to be a place to backpack. Some of the oaks on the golf course may be well over a century old, but they are fenced in and surrounded by manicured fairways. It is a recreation area, some paved, some not, some groomed, some dusty, with the wonderfully hallowed Rose Bowl at its heart.

The properly entrepreneurial Rose Bowl Operating Company is charged with keeping the stadium and its surroundings financially viable.

The RBOC's purview is where the tension over the arroyo's future -- between the need for money and in many cases more hardscape and the desire for nature in the city -- most often collides.

This week that tension came into the spotlight, as it were, again as the RBOC seeks to permanently install some parking-lot lights south of the stadium where temporary lights have been used before.

"Light pollution!" was the call from some neighbors. Very much to its credit, the RBOC responded quickly, lowering the proposed light-pole height, reducing the area to be lighted. The lamps would be hooded, keeping the glare down. A test was held Tuesday night. And it occurs to us that not having to use the diesel-powered temporary lights would certainly ratchet down arroyo sound-pollution levels.

But the fact that 70-foot poles -- that's huge -- were being suggested in the first place shows a certain failure to anticipate neighbors' justified complaints. The RBOC could do better.

And speaking of poles that are too high, netting recently installed on some Brookside fairways to keep hooked drives from hitting pedestrians and vehicles is the talk of both East Arroyo and Linda Vista neighbors. On the east side particularly, the poles are higher than the arroyo lip, cutting into sight lines. All of the netting is higher than prudence would require, and some of it is simply in the wrong place to catch errant balls.

Trees, as golfers know too well, stop balls quite nicely. Were they considered instead of the very ugly nets and the uglier poles that now tower above the Arroyo Seco?