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| Casa Beach in La Jolla, California (a neighborhood of the city of San Diego), is the home to a rookery of harbor seals that is beloved by local children, adults, and thousands of visiting tourists. Hundreds of local businesses have stated that the presence of the seals is beneficial to the La Jolla economy, and La Jolla's own tourist brochures endorse a visit to watch the seals and their pups on the beach as a popular tourist activity. But a tiny group of people, motivated by greed and ignorance, has decided to endorse a destructive dredging of the beach, under the spurious notion that the seals "pollute" the area with their presence. This dredging would to drive the seals away permanently and would make it exclusively for human use, despite the fact that San Diego is full of other beaches for humans and Casa Beach is the only harbor seal rookery in Southern California. The Save-our-Seals Coalition, composed of animal protection and environmental groups and concerned citizens, has been fighting these efforts every step of the way. The City of San Diego tried to protect the colony by placing a rope guideline informing the public about the safe distance from the seals. Unfortunately, a swimmer, Valerie O’Sullivan, sued the City of San Diego (of which La Jolla is a part) and won a ruling in 2005 from a now retired state court judge ordering the city to dredge the sand on which the seals rest to return it to its 1931 condition as a "bathing pool." The judge ordered the City to remove the rope and awarded O’Sullivan’s lawyer, Paul Kennerson, a shocking sum of 1.3 milliondollars in attorney’s fees. The City appealed the ruling all the way up to the California Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case. Now under the direction of Superior Court Judge Yuri Hoffman, the city is being forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to carry out the dredging project. The only seal rookery in Southern California south of Ventura county is at risk of being destroyed! Tuesday, October 21,Judge Hofmann took under submission a motion brought by anti-seal lawyer Paul Kennerson to require the city to immediately disperse the colony of harbor seals living at Casa Beach in La Jolla. City attorney, Mike Aguirre, showed up in person to defend the seals against proposed harassment.The city has already installed police cameras at the beach to record any disturbances caused by a ruling against the popular seals. Kennerson represents ex-La Jolla resident Valerie O’Sullivan, a New Zealand resident who moved back to that country two years ago with no intention of returning. Yet, the court continues to require the city to pay Mr. Kennerson’s bill for attorney’s fees in the case, which have totaled over $1.25 million dollars so far. A previous ruling Kennerson won required the city to dredge the beach to return it to its 1941 configuration as an artificial “bathing pool.” Because it will take years to obtain the state and federal permits to do that, which may never happen, Kennerson is now arguing that what the order really means is that the city must disperse the seals. However, declarations filed by marine biologists and NOAA in support of the city argue that dispersing the seals would require 24/7 harassment and would not improve water quality. |
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| Also since this was a topic of Carly's tweets & she specifically asked for our support, I say this thread is in the right place. No need to move it. This Mod has spoken. |