Bob Hattoy

The Sierra Club's Southern California director on Thursday declared the San Diego chapter's environmental report card "completely legitimate" and said that state and national chapters will do no further investigating of charges that the study was manipulated.

The devastating stories of two Southern Californians and their struggles with AIDS took center stage at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night, setting off an emotionally charged response from their audience at the Democratic convention.

Some of the nation's most powerful environmental groups stepped up their efforts Friday to block state legislation that would allow the Walt Disney Co. to build a $2.8-billion resort along the Long Beach shore, arguing that such a bill could endanger 1,100 miles of California coastline.

Opponents of the proposed $25-million Civic Center project in West Hollywood have pledged to push for an initiative on the June ballot to prevent the complex from being built in West Hollywood Park. "We want to put (the City Council) on notice that they are completely out of touch on this issue," said Bob Hattoy, regional director of the Sierra Club.

Apparently trying to further broaden his appeal beyond his conservative base, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich is endorsing Proposition O, the Los Angeles city ballot measure designed to prevent oil drilling in Pacific Palisades. During his eight years as supervisor, Antonovich has never taken a position on the controversial project until now. The Palisades site, where Occidental Petroleum Corp. for years has been seeking approval to drill, is not in Antonovich's district.

A controversial agreement on offshore oil drilling, reached last month by California legislators and the Interior Department, will protect 90% of the California coastline and nearly all of Santa Monica Bay until the year 2000, Rep. Mel Levine told a group of elected officials from local beach cities at Santa Monica City Hall on Thursday. But Levine (D-Santa Monica), one of five California legislators who negotiated with Interior Secretary Donald P.

California coastal congressmen still were far from an agreement with the Interior Department Wednesday as they emerged from talks over limiting oil drilling off the state's shoreline, but the two sides pledged to make one more effort before the congressmen renew their push for a full-scale drilling moratorium. Although negotiators said that they are pledged to secrecy about the closed-door sessions, Rep. Leon E.

The Sierra Club on Wednesday named longtime environmental executive Michael L. Fischer as its new executive director, ending a five-month search for its second director in less than two years. Fischer, 46, a former executive director of the California Coastal Commission, will assume leadership of the Sierra Club at a time when the 410,000-member environmental group, known for its grass-roots activism, is trying to adjust to being what club officials have called a "mini-conglomerate."

If any measure on the Los Angeles city ballot Nov. 8 figures to be as popular as motherhood and apple pie, perhaps it is Proposition M . . . as in muck. Proposition M is a sewer measure, always a winner in the past and again unopposed this time. A majority vote would authorize the city to sell $1.5 billion in tax-free municipal bonds to modernize, refurbish and replace thousands of miles of aging sewer lines, some of which are more than 100 years old.

U.S. Sen. John Seymour and Environmental Protection Administration chief William K. Reilly assured a group of Southern California business leaders Thursday that they will work to ease the economic effect of environmental controls on business and industry. That does not necessarily mean any lessening of environmental standards, Reilly added, when he and Seymour (R-Calif.) briefed reporters after the private breakfast meeting with about 15 business executives.