CITY MUST FIND SOLUTION TO KEEP SOCCER FIELDS OPEN.

Byline: Kevin Kilroy Local View

I have been a resident of Granada Hills for 34 years. I'm a member of the American Youth Soccer Organization, and for 11 years I have coached soccer and baseball at the North Valley soccer and baseball facility that the Metropolitan Water District now wants to turn into - of all things - a toxic sludge field.

The AYSO board asked me to speak on its behalf before the Los Angeles City Council last week, but I was not given the opportunity. Had I been, here's what I would have said:

The battle to retain access to the soccer and baseball facility on Metropolitan Water District land in Granada Hills has been going on for at least three years, but the root of the problem goes back half a century.

The root of the problem is that over the past 50 years, the city has allowed tens of thousands of homes to be developed north of Rinaldi Street, but has not required that one bit of land be set aside for a facility where kids can play soccer and baseball. With the help of the MWD, we filled this need for many years, saving the city hundreds of thousands of dollars that it should have spent maintaining a park in our neighborhoods.

Today, some 2,000 kids and their families from Northridge, Granada Hills, Sylmar and San Fernando depend on that facility, and they risk losing it due to a failure in city planning.

The North Valley community is getting the short end of the stick, yet again. We pay some of the highest property taxes in the city, and what do we get for it? Sunshine Canyon Landfill.

The dump marks one more way that the city saves big - some $100 million a year - at the local community's expense. When will something be given back to our neighborhood?

We have been told there are no alternatives to the MWD's plan. That is ridiculous.

Adjacent to the MWD land is a major plot of land that belongs to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which is city-owned. The city should trade some DWP land for the MWD site, then give us permanent access to our fields.

If that's not feasible, the Los Angeles zoning commission should stop all development in the North Valley - including development at the MWD - until developers agree to set aside land to replace our soccer and baseball facilities.

It's only right. What we offer is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to the city. What we offer the community is worth millions.

We provide all the money to maintain our fields. We provide all the insurance so the city has no liability. We provide all the volunteers to run our programs. We provide a place for kids to go to keep them off the streets and out of gangs. We provide a place where kids learn community values. We provide health benefits that may save our ailing health care system thousands of dollars.

How can anyone consider taking this away from us? It is up to the city to find a solution.