Community rejects discovery center at EIR meeting

Last week, community members and supporters of the Whittier Narrows Natural Area sent a clear message to the San Gabriel River Discovery Center Authority:

"Don't build your $30 million, 18,000-square-foot regional watershed visitor center on our open space, our wildlife sanctuary, our center of outdoor education."

On June 24, the Discovery Center Authority held a public meeting at South El Monte High School to discuss the discovery center and its draft environmental impact report.

Of the 12 people who spoke during the oral comment period, not one spoke in favor of the discovery center.

Two people spoke of areas the EIR might have missed and said that public comments should be posted to the discovery center website.

The other 10 speakers offered sometimes sharp criticism of the project, its supposed objectives and many of the assumptions behind it.

People spoke of the importance to them of Whittier Narrows and the Natural Area when they were children.

Other said the Natural Area offered a unique experience to families and to school children, some seeing wildlife in the wild for the first time.

Some speakers said there was no sense in building a nature center on top of the very nature its supposed to teach about.

Another speaker said that the discovery center project threatened to destroy the local legacy of environmental conservation history in America.

And a few people spoke of the outsized costs of the project, the likely introduction of user fees and the failure to look at more economical alternatives for water education.

With so many arguments for protecting the Natural Area and preserving the current nature center, you'd think the discovery center would have no chance of advancing or of winning the approval and support of elected officials and government agencies.

But the project seems to proceed, in apparent contradiction to the will of the people. And thus the basis for the frustration expressed by another speaker becomes clear.

“Are you really listening to the public," she asked, "or is it just what the agencies want to do and not hear what the people say who live here?”

The public comment period for the discovery center EIR closes on Aug. 3.