The parade of dead sea life

Maybe County Supervisor Mike Antonovich would see the big picture if someone plopped a dead and rotting pelican on the table, 10 inches from his nose, at the front of the hearing room. Let its majestic eight-foot wings sadly drape over the county seal, covering up the cross, which on this day symbolized the suffering of millions of marine animals at the hands of two cavemen and one cavewoman on the L.A. County Board of Supervisors.

A carcass of a decaying dolphin, with a plastic bag stuck in its throat, would be perfect for Yvonne Burke. Just hope that the once highly intelligent sea mammal might inspire some analytical skills that appeared in such short supply in the board chair’s conduct for all of the public to see.

A pair of smelly, lifeless seagulls might force Don Knabe, a scavenger of sorts himself, to soar higher than the special interests and business influences that reign in his mind.

For good measure, a mammoth whale, its miles of intestines stopped up by plastic bags, could be chained to a flatbed truck on Temple Street to draw attention to the folly of democracy unfolding inside the Hall of Administration.

The bad guys won – again – at Tuesday’s meeting of the county supervisors, the most powerful three men and two women in Los Angeles. With two good supervisors – Zev Yaroslavsky and Gloria Molina – waging a hopeless battle, the trio finessed their faint, half-hearted, we-aren’t-really-serious, cowed-by-industry measure that will do little to stop the unleashing of plastic grocery bags on the universe until sometime near the end of the next millennium. Such hyperbole captures the spirit of what amounts to the supervisors’ death pact for hundreds of thousands of sea creatures: Grocery stores in unincorporated L.A. will be asked pretty please to cut back on plastic bags by 30 percent by 2010 and by 65 percent by 2013. If they don’t, an ordinance calling for an outright ban will be drafted, only slightly ironically, by April 1, 2010.

The biggest difference between the lousy, industry-inspired deal and the one supported by the pragmatic environmental community: The nearly do-nothing pact allows for an extra year before a get-tough ordinance can be drafted. It also reduces the voluntary goals by 5 percent, from 35 and 70 percent. Yaroslavsky bore in on the grocers’ association representative to find out what part of the weakened measure meant more to them: the extension or the niggling 5 percent. Growing more incredulous by each syllable uttered by the grocer’s mouthpiece, the supervisor said: “I think you’re just trying to buy yourself another year.”

Indeed, another year creates yet another chance for the supervisors to display even less resolve than they did on Tuesday. They would give away the store if the industry didn’t already own it.

What makes this defeat stink to high heaven? For nine months, Heal the Bay led the fight against plastic bags, initially hoping for an outright ban but agreeing to a compromise on Monday, January 14, when the political will could not be coaxed out of a board majority. Said Heal the Bay President Mark Gold: “From the minute we agreed late Monday afternoon, we made it clear that it was with our fingers on our nose, basically saying, ‘Look, this is the best we’re going to get with the Board of Supervisors, with the way things are going.’”

Within 96 hours, that deal ran into trouble, with Antonovich making nice with the industry interests and coming up with his 11th-hour amendment that rendered next to meaningless the past nine months of negotiations.

At a time when the civilized world – San Francisco – and the less civilized world – China – are banning plastic bags, L.A. County’s efforts to appease industry smacks of lawmakers a generation or two ago caving to Detroit instead of demanding seatbelts and airbags in cars. In the end, the selfish interests of some well-connected humans won out – again. News flash: The same supervisors who killed and maimed hundreds of men and women by their reckless oversight of a South L.A. hospital over the last dozen years let down the planet.

The crowd of 100 or more Heal the Bay members and their allies jammed into the hearing room, with their red shirts and buttons, “Bags blow.” During the two-hour public hearing, 12-year-old Lili Boyle, a Heal the Bay member, tried her best to show the supervisors what’s at stake for her generation: “Since kids like me will one day have to be the guardians of this planet, I’m asking you not to make our job any harder. Plastic bags not only harm the ocean and its creatures, it’s also messing up our environment. On my way here I took pictures of plastic bags in trees with my cellphone. These pictures may be small, but the problem’s big.”

Lili, we implore you to get a good education and come back and run for county supervisor someday.

Gold chided the supervisors for thinking a voluntary program would work and urged them to at least do as well as China, which has banned the ultra-thin bags. “We cannot recycle our way to cleaning up our rivers, beaches, and bays. We’ve had bans in Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, and China and soon to be in Australia, San Francisco, Oakland, and Paris. We must stop this 30-year addiction to single-use plastic bags. Fiftteen minutes of convenience is not worth 100 years of environmental devastation.” In L.A. County, we use 6 billion plastic bags a year.

Throughout the ensuing debate, Knabe and Antonovich remained mostly quiet, as they watched the dynamics of the board and the industry deal unfold with near-perfect precision. Never was Burke’s support for the bad deal in doubt.

In the end, it came down to Burke’s clinging to her faulty memory of the environmentalists signing off on the flawed and worthless deal. She said she convened a meeting last Thursday, January 17, after she heard talk about the industry deal in the works. Three staff members from Heal the Bay attended.

With a straight face, she claimed that Heal the Bay, the chief force behind bringing L.A. County into the 21st Century on the plastic bag issue, supported the god-awful deal. “I asked them especially if they could accept the numbers that are now being presented in this amendment by Antonovich and Knabe. I was told, and I walked out of that room believing that everyone had arrived at an agreement. It was not until sometime Monday that I received the information that they were no longer willing to go along with that.”

Portraying herself as the master of the political deal, Burke, who will step down this year after serving four terms, said: “We can do nothing or we can try to arrive at a meaningful compromise and move forward.”

As Burke spoke, Gold grew agitated in the audience, walking back and forth in front of the room. Finally, Yaroslavsky asked him to come forward.

Gold, in his second visit to the podium, took on Burke and her characterization of his support for the last-minute compromise. “It’s been very difficult to sit here and have our organization’s integrity disparaged.”

But Burke wouldn’t back down. “When did you change your mind – an hour and a half later?” Within 90 minutes of that meeting last Thursday, Gold contacted each of the five supervisors to tell them he opposed the anemic deal being floated by Antonovich.

Retorted Gold: “My staff did not support the proposal. They did not make any concessions. That is completely untrue.”

Burke: “I believed that you had sent staff there who had the authority to negotiate a deal.”

Gold: “But they did not sign off on what you’re saying they signed off on. You’re disparaging the staff of Heal the Bay.”

We believe Gold. And even if we didn’t, he made it clear for all the world to see and hear in the public meeting Tuesday afternoon that he believes the deal struck by Antonovich and his pals at the California Grocers Association stinks as bad as all those rotting specimens we would like to present the short-sighted trio of county supervisors. Burke was simply looking for an excuse to do what she wanted to do anyways. It became clear that she was engaged in a face-saving move to justify her abandoning the stronger compromise.

Yaroslavsky intervened to bring the exchange to an end. “They worked with us to try to get something that we could all get behind. And they feel burned,” he told Burke. Responded Burke: “And I feel burned too.”

Imagine how the sea creatures feel, Yvonne.

Maybe some in-your-face civil disobedience could shake up the distinguished board majority more prone to caving to well-paid lobbyists than heeding their consciences. A display of dead and smelly creatures, killed when they swallowed or became entangled in a plastic grocery bags, would be silent testimony countering all those sorry-ass tales from the California Grocers Association. It’s too bad that shoppers will be inconvenienced by having to bring in reusable bags. And, wow, condolences to all the store owners trying to duck another demand to be socially responsible.

Try telling Mike’s pelican, Yvonne’s dolphin, or Don’s seagulls how much that plastic bag means to you.

We half-expected the felonious trio of supervisors to find a plastic bag with large bills waiting for them at the end of the meeting.

They deserved it.

Send insults or ammo to BigAl@lasniper.com.