LONG BEACH - Huell Howser, the host of KCET's California's Gold devoted the day at Long Beach Naval Station in a 1996 episode of that program.
The Navy's facility had been threatened with demolition due an Order by president Bill Clinton to close the Naval base.
Many people were alarmed when they learned in these columns in 1996 that the Clinton administration had intervened on behalf of communist China's COSCO container company to assure them they would obtain the use of Long Beach Naval facility.
Howser, filed a delaying action in court, ostensibly to preserve the unique historical human history of the Southern California harbor site. On Monday, Howser's case was thrown out of the Los Angeles Superior Court. It was his final legal move to halt the Long Beach Naval Station redux.
Judge Peter J. Lichtman dismissed Howser's lawsuit against the state Lands Commission, which the TV personality claimed was wasting public assets by allowing Long Beach to destroy historic structures on the historic Naval base.
Howser has also requested the Department of Interior examine the
possibility of obtaining a designating for the Naval base as a historic site devoted to history of the Cold War.
However, the City and Port of Long Beach are quickly moving to complete their lease with COSCO to build container terminals and a ship repair facility on 400 acres of the most strategic piece of U.S. Naval base on the West Coast.
