Critics of $22M Discovery Center water museum now include members of parent agency board

It's late fall and change is in the air, including for everyone's least favorite water museum project.

You may be familiar with the way support for the $22 million San Gabriel River Discovery Center project, planned for the Whittier Narrows wildlife sanctuary, has been crumbling in recent years.

For example, the state's rejection of the Discovery Center Authority's application for $7 million in bond money for nature education; the opposition of the Gabrieleno Indians, based on the location and the threat it poses to traditional native lands; and even the recent opposition to the project by a project board member.

Now, his voice has been joined by some on the board of the parent agency, the Rivers and Mountains Conservancy.

The RMC board met Nov. 23, and members Margaret Clarke, a Rosemead City Councilmember, and Dennis Bertone, a San Dimas City Councilmember, led the board's criticisms of the project.

Clarke said she'd never seen a project with so much opposition and was critical of the authority's approach to the matter, which she characterized as something like  "Ignore the public, build the project."

Bertone pointed out that the people closest to the project are objecting--and asked about the project's cost. Not the construction bill--the cost to run and maintain the facililty.

And that is a crucial question.

Along with opposition to the destruction of habitat and recreation land, and the cost to the public to build the project, the matters "How much will it cost to run?" and "Who will pay for it?" are big.

We should all learn from the experiences of Santa Barbara's troubled Watershed Resource Center, a similar but far smaller facility.

A nonprofit director close to the project said, "Everyone was excited to build it and there was a lot of enthusiasm at first," but the officials at the various agencies grew reluctant to devote the funds needed to keep it going.  (From the LA Weekly.)

Today, the WRC is open to the public one day a week for five hours.