> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Is Santa Monica really green? - URL: https://www.smdp.com/is-santa-monica-really-green/ - Published: 2007-11-10T16:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-24T03:54:27.000Z - Author: Guest Author - Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica Airport, #archive-import This past week, Q-line asked: Do you think Santa Monica is truly green or is it all just a bunch of propaganda? Here are your responses: “THE CITY TALKS A BETTER GAME than they play. Examples abound. Examples both large and small. Waste management under performs green goals for recycling and reduction. The Pico greenscape was a green failure. Which trees have survived are neglected. Traffic impacts of development are ignored. Grandstanding ordinances like banning Styrofoam have no teeth. Water and electrical uses are up, not down. Santa Monica’s City Hall’s inflated ego gets in the way every time.” “THE ONLY THINGS GREEN ABOUT Santa Monica are the lovely natural things the City Council hasn’t gotten around to destroying yet. We are well on the way to a dense concrete jungle. Just give them time.” “IN MOST RESIDENTIAL AREAS OF SANTA Monica — especially North of Montana — that has a population of folks who have pockets full of U.S. green back legal tender also have some of the most magnificent shrubbery, gardens, lawns and hedges that are very pleasing to one’s eyes. Pacific Ocean pollution is not the fault of Santa Monica. The die was cast many years ago when the common area sewage system was designed to empty into the ocean, compounded by the Los Angeles River and Ballona Creek. Keep in mind folks, all of the oil that drips upon the highway from motorized vehicles eventually ends up in the ocean when rains wash it into the storm drains. I personally do a great deal of bike riding alone and have always been respected by motorists. A large crowd of riders usurping that automotive roadway seemingly upsets motorists. My personal peeve is the filthy sidewalks that are covered with little black, quarter sized pieces of stepped on, spilled on chewing gum that have to be scraped up, a good minimum wage job for school kids … A good motto is a green city is a clean city.“ “NO SANTA MONICA IS NOT TRULY green. If they were, they would simply not allow the horrendous jet pollution emanating from the airport they own and operate. The City Council members are a joke, including Kevin McKeown who publicly vows how green he is but does not take any responsibility as a councilman for the noxious odors from the idling jets, instead continually announcing that it is in the hands of the FAA. To sit back and allow this pollution to happen, which is making people and their animals sick, and then publicly proclaim how green they area, is reprehensible. Santa Monica is being protected by politicians like Sen. Kuehl on down. There is plenty of propaganda being spewed around by the city staff as well. The main reason is, if the truth comes out about how harmful the jet fuel is to the neighboring communities, the city will be subject to mass lawsuits.” “WHEN ANSWERING THIS Q-LINE question, one needs to understand that there’s the environmental green and then there’s the greenback dollar. Both should be part of the equation to determine the final answer. Over the past 15 to 20 years the green has gone over to the dollar and away from the environment. The growth of the jet setter traffic at the Santa Monica Airport that brought with it not only extreme noise and air pollution, but also the growth of business that equates to a lot of tax revenue to the city, and, oh yes, the street traffic. The planned removal of the well-established healthy trees points out how far away from the environmental green this city has strayed. It is now difficult to make out the green with all the murky colors that are overpowering it. To me, Santa Monica as an environmentally green city is only a memory.” “CALLING SANTA MONICA GREEN WHEN it comes to Santa Monica Airport is a bunch of baloney. Santa Monica Airport is a major health threat to the citizens who live around it. The jet fumes that are coming off these huge jets that are landing there now, and also the risks that the jets pose to the surrounding neighborhoods from crashes and other issues, is totally unacceptable and inconsistent with Santa Monaco’s quote, unquote green view point. We’d appreciate it if the paper would help us, particularly this group called Concerned Residents Against Airport Pollution, to convince the city of Santa Monica that they need to live up to their rhetoric and let’s get the jets moved out of Santa Monica Airport so we can start enjoying our neighborhoods again.” “THOSE OF US WHO LIVE ON TH E L.A. side of the Santa Monica Airport certainly don’t think that Santa Monica is as green as it claims to be. There’s a lot of jet pollution, a lot of noise over here and it doesn’t seem like Santa Monica will do a thing about it. There are smaller things like the Clover Park festival that happens every year where cheap Chinese-made plastic items are handed out, which certainly isn’t green nor is the production and shipping of them. I think Santa Monica needs to pay a little more attention to what it means to be green.” “SANTA MONICA’S GREEN IS LIKE A show business publicity campaign, rich in production values while lacking in substance. Genuinely green municipalities do not pander to high rollers who fly anti-green jets in and out of Santa Monica Airport, fouling the air, raising ambient noise levels and risking the safety of surrounding neighborhoods in Santa Monica and L.A. Until the Santa Monica City Council shows enough courage to reject the national priority of wealth first, environment last, claims of green are a sham and shame. Now the only green that flies in Santa Monica is the kind you take to the bank.” “YES I THINK THAT SANTA MONICA IS working very hard at being a green city, however, their policies sometimes are a bit weird to say the least. My husband wanted to build a beautiful condominium complex on Ocean Park Boulevard and it was denied because a bunch of activists went in against it. Now I see all kinds of edifices here in the city of San Malicious. Santa Monica is trying but we are dealing with a bunch of politicos.” “I LIVE NEXT TO THE AIRPORT AND live in Los Angeles and the fumes are just unbearable. That’s certainly not green. I also noticed that on the beaches there are no recycling bins as there are in Ventura. I don’t think a lot of businesses in Santa Monica are recycling. I think businesses should be required to recycle or receive some incentives. If it was such a green city then it would have those programs in place where businesses would be recycling more. The main problem is the bad pollution from the airport.” *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 10, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/111007.pdf?ref=smdp.com)