Alcohol Ban at Gas Pumps Asked

Your article on residents’ opposition to the sale of alcoholic beverages at an Arco self-serve station in Industry (Sept. 15) provided a cogent review of some of the basic issues in still another community’s grass-roots efforts to protect itself from further alcoholization. Missing from the article, however, was any reference to the following: Two years ago the franchisee-applicant withdrew his application when faced with similar large-scale community protests; a liquor store is located next door to the Arco self-serve; two doors south is the cocktail lounge where Margarita Guardado’s brother was killed in a drunken brawl; finally, a McDonald’s restaurant across the street to the east is already an attraction for youths “cruising” in the Bassett area near Workman Mill Road.

What has plagued this community’s concerned residents is the lack of a City of Industry conditional-use permit ordinance calling for notification and public hearings for alcohol outlet applications so that Industry’s 700 or so residents will not gain the nefarious distinction of having almost as many outlets as La Puente, a city more than 45 times larger.

It is high time citizens in county pockets lobbied both their county supervisors and their state legislators to get a county ordinance and a state law, such as one proposed by Assemblywoman Jean M. Duffy (D-Citrus Heights), to ban the sale of alcoholic beverages wherever motor fuels are sold.

RAY CHAVIRA

Commissioner

County Commission on Alcoholism

Lynwood