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THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 2011
Volume 10 Issue 173
Santa Monica Daily Press
SHAQ, THE BIG RETIREE SEE PAGE 12
We have you covered
THE NOW WHAT? ISSUE
City Hall will not appeal SMO jet ban ruling BY ASHLEY ARCHIBALD Daily Press Staff Writer
SMO A decade and $1.5 million in outside attorney fees later, City Hall will not challenge a federal appeals court decision to uphold a Federal Aviation Administration
ruling barring City Hall from enforcing a ban passed in 2008 prohibiting class C and D jets from landing at Santa Monica Airport. Perhaps more surprising is that the news surfaced at the annual meeting of Friends of Sunset Park, a neighborhood group, four months after that decision was reached in
closed session by the City Council. “I was taken back a little bit, a little surprised,” said Martin Rubin, member of Concerned Residents Against Airport Pollution, an advocacy group. “I thought it was bigger news than to come out that way.” City Manager Rod Gould confirmed the
group’s report. “The council considered it, and chose to not go on,” Gould said. The decision came down from a threejudge panel of the federal appeals court in SEE SMO PAGE 9
Dealer pleads guilty to selling whale meat BY DAILY PRESS STAFF LOS ANGELES A seafood dealer who illegally sold whale meat to Santa Monica sushi restaurant The Hump has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge. City News Service says 50-year-old Ginichi Ohira of Gardena entered the plea Tuesday in Los Angeles to a count of knowingly selling a marine mammal product for an unauthorized purpose. He faces up to a year in federal prison and a $100,000 fine. He is expected to be sentenced on Sept. 27. Under a plea agreement, Ohira acknowledged that he began importing whale meat from Tokyo about 10 years ago. Ohira sold protected sei whale meat to The Hump at Santa Monica Airport, which closed its doors last year after federal prosecutors charged the owner and a chef with sales of the federally-protected mammal. Ohira began importing whale meat from Japan about 10 years ago. Among his customers was a sushi chef at The Hump. The meat was discovered in visits to the restaurant by undercover agents working with environmental advocates behind the Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove,” who conducted their own surveillance operation in which they used video cameras and tiny microphones to document the illegal activity. Charges against the restaurant and chef were dismissed in 2010 after the eatery admitted serving up sei, and pledged to make a substantial contribution to whale preservation or endangered species groups and shut down entirely. news@smdp.com The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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THE WAY IT WAS: A gardening crew is caught in the act of using a leafblower on 23rd Street last year. City officials say leafblower usage is down.
OSE report reveals decline in leafblower use BY ASHLEY ARCHIBALD Daily Press Staff Writer
CITYWIDE Six months after the revised ordinance banning the use of leafblowers within city limits went into effect, the Office of Sustainability and the Environment has noted a major decrease in the number of
reported violations, staff said. According to a report released last week, leafblowing activity has stopped at more than 500 properties in Santa Monica, with over 600 other violators identified. Calls to the Office of Sustainability and the Environment have dropped since OSE began its enforcement in October 2010, and
monthly violations have dropped by 60 percent since December. The noted successes have come as a result of better education, said Neal Shapiro, the watershed program coordinator at City Hall. “We appear to be getting more compliSEE LEAFBLOWER PAGE 8
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