Narrow City Planning Commission Vote Moves Legacy Park Forward

• Enviro Groups Continue Objections on Wastewater Issue

BY BILL KOENEKER

Despite the objections of environmental groups and other agencies, the Malibu Planning Commission on a 2-1 vote with Commissioner John Mazza dissenting, Commissioner Regan Schaar absent, and Chair Joan House recusing herself from the proceedings, approved certification of the Environmental Impact Report, coastal permit and entitlements for Legacy Park.
The city is seeking the final permits before it starts construction on the 15-acre site, which includes a basin or holding pond for its stormwater facility, habitat restoration and park facilities for the property formerly known as the Chili Cook-Off site.
The specter of litigation, which hung over the proceedings, was apparently strong enough for Commissioner John Mazza to want to delay approval for a year.
“I would like to have this built tomorrow,” he said, adding when he heard it could take only one year to come up with designs and plans and environmental review for a wastewater treatment plant that enviro groups are clamoring for he was willing to wait.
“We are looking at a lot of money for lawsuits and probably won’t get started. I’m willing to give up a year to try to solve these problems. In the meantime, I don’t think we can have the project along any faster,” Mazza said.
Though Commissioner Jeff Jennings earlier on had remarked that the “boat had already left,” when it came to the potential for litigation, he took the opposite view of Mazza.
“I think your view of litigation isn’t really there. The EIR analysis has no negative impacts. This project has no negative impacts. There may be some CEQA lawyer who will pursue this. Nobody knows how long it will take for a wastewater plant,” he added
After quizzing a representative of Santa Monica Baykeeper, Jennings laid out what he thought the problem was and why they missed the mark.
“We have a project that is not perfect. But the organizations prefer this project should go on the shelf until a [Civic Center] wastewater plant is ready,” he said.
Jennings said if the city delays the project stormwater runoff won’t improve. “Everybody admits this is a good project. Why delay a good project? I understand the need for a wastewater treatment plant, no one in the city denies that. The single virtue of this project is flexibility. We can take a bulldozer and change it,” he added.
The Regional Water Quality Control Board, Heal the Bay, Surfrider Foundation, the Santa Monica Baykeeper and the Malibu Township Council have repeatedly insisted to city officials that both wastewater and stormwater facilities should move forward at the same time instead of the city’s plan to move stormwater facilities forward and leave the wastewater problems to later.
In its latest correspondence with the city a RWQCB spokesperson explained the rationale.
“Regional Board staff accepts the revisions in the EIR for Legacy Park, as a stormwater treatment facility, however, we wish to comment that future hydrology study is not a sufficient mitigation for cumulative and critical groundwater effects, without quantifying the Civic Center’s hydrologic capacity before approving this project. The city may be acting to prevent future treatment of wastewater by precluding the installation of a centralized wastewater treatment facility, or other long-term mitigation project, by allocating land and subsurface disposal capacity to Malibu Lumber and stormwater, alone,” wrote RWQCB engineer Elizabeth Erickson.
Mark Abramson, the director of watershed programs at the Baykeeper, told the commission his group believed the EIR fails to meet CEQA and should not be certified.
The Baykeeper has played a big role in Malibu water politics. It has filed two different lawsuits against the city. One on allegations of Clean Water Act violations and another on approval by the city of La Paz, a planned shopping and office enter in the Civic Center.
The Baykeeper spokesperson said, that while they were supportive of the project, it would not take care of phosphorus problems which are part of the new EPA regulations that, he thought, would soon be imposed on the city.
Nancy Hastings, speaking on behalf of the Surfrider Foundation, told commissioners her organization considered the final EIR inadequate and urged the planning panel to delay the project until there is a formal plan for wastewater.
Hastings said there should be the inclusion of wetlands habitat, plans should encompass both wastewater and stormwater, the wastewater plant should be built by 2011 and a building moratorium should be enacted in the Civic Center until the plant is online.
Sally Benjamin, of the MTC, said there were differences between the written and online versions of the EIR. She said it was not clear if there would be stormwater irrigation and asked how would the discharges from the lumberyard project impact the groundwater.
House was told she must recuse herself and could not vote because she had not watched the previous commission hearing on Legacy Park when she was absent.