Featured Articles from the Huntington Beach Independent

Huntington Beach Mayor Connie Boardman wants to send a letter asking the California Coastal Commission to deny Poseidon Resource's permit application. She will be asking council members Monday to allow her to write the commission addressing "substantial issues" found in the desalination plant producer's application. Boardman initially wrote a lengthy letter that included the Coastal Commission's opinions in its 2010 appeal. That letter was mentioned in the City Council agenda for its May 1 meeting but it has since been shortened to simply ask commissioners to deny Poseidon's request, she said.

Huntington Beach High and Edison are moving on in the CIF Southern Section boys' volleyball playoffs. Both the Oilers and Chargers started postseason play Tuesday, and both swept their opponents in first-round Division 1 matches. The Oilers won, 25-9, 25-23, 25-11, at home over Alemany (Mission League No. 4). The Chargers went on the road to face Aliso Niguel and knocked off the South Coast League champs, 25-17, 27-25, 25-15. In Huntington' win, Brenden Sander had 13 kills, TJ DeFalco 11 kills and nine digs, and Matt Butler had 22 assists.

I crashed a Jewish wedding. OK, I was invited. But as a visitor from another religion, I had the same giddy sense of discovery that I might have had if I'd slipped in undetected. The experience was new for me on two levels. I had neither been to a Jewish or Persian ceremony - two things I've always wanted to experience. Culturally, Persian and Egyptian weddings are not too different, but I've always wanted to go to one. Islam doesn't dictate how a wedding is celebrated, so it usually depends on the culture and the family.

Richard Robitaille feels gratified when the twins race to him, waving greetings. They're not his children; they're not even related. They are 5-year-old boys who he has nurtured for more than a year with his wife Patricia. Although this responsibility befell the Huntington Beach residents as part of their work with Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), they doled out the same care that they would have given to their own grandchildren, who are about the same age. "Watching their personalities change, although it's nothing drastic, gives me a warm teddy bear feeling," said Richard, 73. The siblings were 2 years old when they were taken away from their mother and placed in a group home.

Politicians and residents gathered Sunday to cook hot dogs and roast marshmallows at Huntington State Beach in a message to air-quality regulators that they wouldn't give up the city's fire rings without a fight. Hundreds, including politicians like organizer Assemblyman Travis Allen (R-Huntington Beach), showed up to oppose the South Coast Air Quality Management District's proposed ban on fire rings in Orange and Los Angeles counties. "The community is completely united in keeping our fire rings," Allen said.

"The hardest things are questions about the time - about what she endured in the last eight, 12 hours. He has admitted to nothing. And that is hard because the imagination is worse than any reality - and then there is the place where she was found. " Erin Runnion and I were having a cup of tea in Huntington Beach last week and she was describing, in part, what inspired a journey she had made several days before to an outpost along the Ortega Highway - to the spot where her daughter Samantha's body was discovered 10 years ago, brutally murdered after being abducted the day before at her home in Stanton by a man named Alejandro Avila (who is now deservedly on death row)

A woman struck by two vehicles in Huntington Beach on Tuesday morning is in critical condition, according to police. The 34-year-old woman, whose name has not been released, was found unconscious on Beach Boulevard, north of Edinger Avenue about 2:40 a.m. Authorities said she was walking east across Beach underneath the 405 Freeway overpass when she was hit by a 36-year-old man from Garden Grove in a white 2013 Honda Accord traveling north....

Right after I spoke at the Air Quality Management District board meeting Friday, several people asked me if I'd noticed what happened during my discussion with Chairman William Burke. I had not. Evidently, the sergeant at arms at the meeting had appeared just behind me. A gentleman in the crowd, Randy Brown (who also spoke against the proposed beach bonfire ban) explained to me that the "enforcer" was there to potentially deal with me, I suppose, because I was speaking somewhat forcefully to the chairman, and they were nervous about that.

HUNTINGTON BEACH - It's too bad the Sunset League baseball season series between Fountain Valley and Huntington Beach has come to an end. Two days removed from a thriller at Fountain Valley, the Barons and Oilers staged another barnburner Friday and the encore proved as scintillating as Wednesday's finish. As was the case in their previous encounter, the Barons jumped out to a huge lead, then had to fend of an outstanding comeback by the host Oilers, to hold on for a 9-8 victory.

An application to build a desalination plant in Huntington Beach is incomplete, according to a state agency. The California Coastal Commission's staff sent Poseidon Resources Corp. an April 22 notice saying its application to build a facility that converts seawater into freshwater fails to answer questions about how it would impact the nearby wetlands, among other issues. Stamford, Conn.-based Poseidon, however, says it has answered all previous inquires related to the proposed project on Pacific Coast Highway near Newland Street and has completed the application.

Ashley MacDonald was a talented teenager who liked heavy metal music, favored black clothes, and had a lot of friends and a great sense of humor, family and friends said Wednesday at a funeral service for the 18-year-old Huntington Beach woman. MacDonald's mother Lisa Marie Guy bent down to kiss her one last time before taking her seat. It was half-way through the service while listening to Coldplay's song "Yellow" that Guy broke down, shaking her head several times. About 75 people attended the somber ceremony for Ashley Anne MacDonald at Dilday Brothers Funeral Directors on Beach Boulevard.

SANTA ANA - Before he began to work closely with Anne Shih in the mid-1990s, Bowers Museum President Peter C. Keller had traveled to the Far East on business many times. Still, the 64-year-old veteran Los Angeles-area museum executive, by his own admission, lacked some of the cross-cultural seasoning and nuance that are ingredients for success at chopstick diplomacy. "Being a typical American who doesn't understand Chinese culture, I would go, we would talk, have toasts at a dinner, and then nothing would happen," Keller reminisced about his past mindset during trips to China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Friends and family members of a recently deceased, drug-addicted teen who attended Huntington Beach High School urged the City Council on Monday to work with schools in combating drug use among youths. "You guys have to do something about it," said an emotional Savannah Clark. "I know that education in the schools can make a difference. They need to know what they're putting in their bodies. " Clark is the cousin of Tyler Macleod, an 18-year-old who was using heroin around the time of his Sept.