Father of Soldier in Whose Honor Trancas Field Was Dedicated Offers an Alternative Proposal for the West Malibu Park Site

• Says Location Should Be Used for a Revenue-Producing Solar Energy Farm

BY ANNE SOBLE

The property now at the center of the controversy over what is generally referred to as Trancas Park was originally dedicated as a memorial on June 17, 1967, for the first soldier from Malibu West to be killed in action in the Vietnam War.
When Sgt. Alfred Kaspaul was killed in Quang Tri on Oct. 11, 1966, his family was devastated by the loss. Their sorrow was only partially eased by the compassion of the Marine Corps family and the subsequent honoring of the young fallen solder with the “Sgt. Alfred A. Kaspaul Memorial Field in Malibu West.”
Kaspaul’s father, Alfred, better known in Malibu as Fred, has a Ph.D. in physics and chemistry from his native Germany. The senior Kaspaul has had an illustrious career in scientific research, including time spent at Hughes Laboratories. He is the author of numerous monographs on an array of topics in his disciplines, and has turned to science to craft a proposal for a way to use the land that formerly bore his son’s name.
Rather than a park that he sees as “bringing too much traffic, noisy, creating dog urine discharge, and being a terrible bother on all of its neighbors,” Kaspaul has proposed that the site become LASSIE Park. LASSIE stands for Large Area Solar System Installation Electric, in short, a solar energy farm.
Kaspaul outlines the proposal in a six-page color pamphlet being distributed among his neighbors. He says that in light of the current economic state of the nation, any proposal for the city-owned site should generate an income.
The 35-year Malibu West resident says he and his wife, Erika, who is a physicist specializing in methodology and a partner in their ongoing consulting business, experienced the 1930 Great Depression. They think the proposal for a solar energy project is a feasible approach for “surviving the coming depression gracefully,” a “time when we should reduce spending and use what we have more efficiently...and a time for fiscal responsibility by individuals and government.”
Kaspaul says the current park proposal before the Malibu City Council will cost the city and offers no return, noting that the “only beneficiaries may be the attorneys who come to deal with the lawsuits that are bound to follow.”
With a solar project, he says the city would “see a return in a few years...as well as be the focus of national public attention.”
Kaspaul says he is taking his lead from the Obama Administration, which he thinks would not only consider funding such a project, but also hail it as a example of a community using alternative energy to effect cost savings and self-sufficiency.
He says the site is perfect for low-lying aluminum solar panels that could connect to existing power lines in the west Malibu grid and have the potential provide standby power for the city in an emergency and even service a future charging station for electric cars, possibly in the Trancas Country Market area.
Kaspaul says “nothing [at the site] would be preferable” to plans that “will mean waste disposal [issues], as well more traffic, more people, more problems for the limited access road and an increase in fire danger.”
Listing the “highlights” for his plan, he says it means “no brushfires, no noise, no pollution, no urine discharge, limited water use, and [it is] safe for everyone, including those he calls the SAD (sex-alcohol-drug) people at nearby rehabilitation facilities.
Kaspaul says LASSIE Park is “a solution for the usage of the total area of the former Sgt. Alfred A. Kaspaul field in light of the pending rough times ahead for all of us and our nation.”