Local Residents Begin to Rally against SB Offshore Oil Project

• Malibu City Council and Malibu Coastal Lands Conservancy Oppose Plan Before State Lands Panel •

BY ANNE SOBLE

A Deal Goes Before State Agencies that Could Lead to the Resumption of Offshore Oil Drilling in California—Questions Are Being Raised about the PXP Proposal

No sooner has the death knell sounded for a major liquefied natural gas project off the coast of Southern California, than the specter is being raised of the resumption of offshore oil drilling, if a privately brokered deal in the Santa Barbara area receives the approval of the California State Lands Commission and the California Coastal Commission within the next three weeks.
The proposal has major implications for Malibu, as it could open the doors to oil leasing and exploration in state and federal waters now that federal moratorium has been lifted and the Minerals Management Service, an agency within the U.S. Department of Interior responsible for offshore oil and gas leasing, announced the sites of possible new lease sales this month, including some in Southern California.
The deal set to go before the State Lands Commission on Thursday, Jan. 29, the day after the 40th anniversary of the catastrophic Santa Barbara oil spill, cited as one of the catalysts for the development of the modern environmental movement, is said to have the potential to set back that movement, despite some enviro groups backing the proposal in ostensible disregard of its broader implications.
The package was brokered by the Environmental Defense Center for two Santa Barbara civic groups—Get Oil Out! and the Citizens Planning Association—with Texas-based Plains Exploration and Production, or PXP, to allow 17 new wells at Tranquillon Ridge off Santa Barbara, the first from a federal platform into state reserves since the moratorium. It was approved by Santa Barbara County in October, 2008.
PXP maintains that the Tranquillon Ridge Oil and Gas Field Project falls under an exception in the California Sanctuary Act, which otherwise prohibits new oil and gas leasing in state tidelands, because resources from Tranquillon are reportedly being pilfered from a well in federal waters, and the state may be losing royalties because of this.
CSLC staff, which has recommended against the project, says drainage is minimal and the state already receives 50 percent of royalties from the well in question.
Monies from the new drilling would go into the cash-strapped state General Fund. But what also gives the project momentum is that, in exchange for the right to develop the Tranquillon lease, the company would agree to stop its offshore oil drilling operations by 2022 and make major land donations and financial contributions for air quality improvements in the Santa Barbara area.
Ironically, the environmental law firm that brokered the deal for the local groups and is shepherding it though the approval process is the same one hired to help successfully kill the BHP Billiton Cabrillo Port LNG project northwest of Malibu in 2007.
That firm, the Environmental Defense Center, also Santa Barbara based, is lobbying for the PXP package, the specific terms of which, including any payment to EDC and others, critics say have not been fully made public.
Linda Krop, EDC chief counsel, describes the project as “a once in a lifetime opportunity to put an end to [some] oil drilling off the coast of California,”
Krop says the PXP deal could shut down four platforms; if allowed to continue, these platforms could support renewed federal oil drilling; nearly 4000 acres of coastal land could be protected; a gas plant could be decommissioned; and the state might not lose an estimated $5 billion in royalty revenue—$100 million of which is described as possibly becoming available this budget year.
EDC has used its considerable clout in the environmental community to bring 25 enviro organizations, most in the immediate area, on board the project.
Issues of total disclosure and the fact that this is an agreement between private parties have prompted the State Attorney General’s Office to question the enforceability of any provisions in the deal to cease oil production by a set date, or even the enumerated land and grant benefits that might accrue to the greater Santa Barbara area.
In addition, the CSLC staff in its recommendation of denial, cites similar concerns about the unknown terms of the package and the overall unenforceability of a private agreement.
Commission observers report the three-member CSLC may currently be split 2-1 against the deal, as it was on Cabrillo Port, which would kill the proposal. But there is strong political pressure on its members because of the package’s local support base and the state budget crisis. Because the PXP deal is only now beginning to attract major attention, public opposition is in the early stage.
When The News contacted members of the Malibu City Council about the issue, it was brought up at Monday night’s meeting, and the group invoked its 1996 resolution supporting all efforts to prevent oil and gas drilling off the California coast to send a letter to State Lands opposing the PXP proposal. One or more council members might attend the hearing.
In the letter signed by outgoing Mayor Pamela Conley Ulich, she said, “I encourage [the members of the CSLC] to prevent this intrusion on our valuable resources and threat to the safety of our precious marine life by accepting the staff recommendations to deny the applications.”
Conley Ulich told The News, “I am utterly shocked that the Environmental Defense Council and Surfrider Foundation would support new oil drilling just off the coast of California. It is like giving a fix to an addict, then saying I only gave them the fix because the addict promised to get off drugs in the future.”
When asked about the PXP proposal, Ozzie Silna, who with the Malibu Coastal Lands Conservancy, helped to finance EDC’s efforts that helped to defeat the Cabrillo Port LNG project, told The News, “I am very disappointed that this project has gone this far.”
Silna said MCLC opposes the offshore oil drilling package, and he anticipates that the group’s president, Steve Uhring, will testify in opposition to it at the Thursday State Lands hearing.
Although Governor Schwarzenegger has said he opposes oil drilling off California, some Sacramento insiders say the state’s cash crunch may have changed his stance on the issue. The State Lands member expected to vote for the deal is the governor’s director of finance, Michael Genest.
The other two members of the commission, both of whom vigorously opposed Cabrillo Port, are being lobbied aggressively for and against the project.
Malibu Assemblymember Julia Brownley and other state legislators voiced their concerns about the PXP package in a letter to CSLC member Lt. Gov. John Garamendi on Jan. 12. The dozen members of the Assembly Coastal Caucus stressed the uncertainty of the project they say was fostered during what they describe as the “drill here, drill now, pay less” hysteria when gas prices skyrocketed.
The Coastal Caucus letter states, “[The proposal] breaks California’s longstanding statewide ban on new offshore oil leasing in state waters and exposes our coastal resources to irreparable damage from spills. Our coastal resources that provide economic benefit in terms of tourism, recreation, scenic beauty, coastal land real estate value, wildlife, etc., are priceless and should not be sold and certainly not by a group of [private organizations].”
Krop, in a letter this week responding to ACC concerns, said, “EDC and the environmental parties have made all of the substantive components of the agreement public... In addition, the [State Lands Commission] can impose its own conditions on the leases, thereby providing further assurances of public review and enforceability.”
On Jan. 22, Malibu’s State Senator Fran Pavley sent a letter to the third CSLC member, Controller John Chiang, who now chairs the panel, stating, “We caution that premature approval of this lease without a robust discussion and statewide vetting of the long-term consequences it holds for all of California and the nation would be ill advised.”
If the State Lands Commission approves the PXP project, it is expected to be on the agenda of the California Coastal Commission’s meeting in February. The Coastal Commission does not have the broad policy review options of State Lands. The CCC’s authority on the matter is limited to determining whether the project is mitigated to the greatest extent feasible.
Coastal Commissioner and Malibu resident Sara Wan told The News this week that she is concerned the proposal “changes a 40-year opposition to offshore drilling and sets a terrible precedent, opening up the possibility of drilling everywhere along the coast.”
Wan said, "We need to send a clear message that the coast of California is not for sale. There is no amount of money that can make up for the damage to coastal resources and the coastal economy when there is an oil spill." She said it is particularly important that this also be the message that state agencies send to Congress and the Obama Administration as federal oil drilling policy is undergoing review.
Among broader concerns that some critics say are being disregarded by the groups that have jumped on the PXP bandwagon is the project’s continuation of the nation's fossil fuel dependence and that it undermines the overall goals of the environmental movement in general.
The CSLC meeting is scheduled for noon on Thursday, Jan. 29, at the Hotel Mar Monte, El Cabrillo Room, 1111 East Cabrillo Boulevard in Santa Barbara.

Mayor’s Gavel Changes Hands at Council Reorganization Meeting

• Modified Term of Office Now Means that Every Member Is Automatically Rotated into the Post

BY BILL KOENEKER

Outgoing Mayor Pamela Conley Ulich, after serving 9.6 months in office, turned over the gavel this week at a special city council meeting to incoming Mayor Andy Stern.
Stern briefly talked about the changes in the length of term of mayor which formerly was for one year. Without going into details, the new mayor talked about how the length of term last year was modified. “It set the tone of the council. Everybody would not have had a chance to be mayor,” he added.
Stern said Malibu is a small town with a small budget but with grand objectives. “When the state was about to throw the kids off the Bluff, we bought it. When they wanted to build a shopping center on Chili Cook off we bought it,” he said.
Stern recalled he was recently speaking to his colleague, Councilmember Sharon Barovsky, and they were talking about how much was yet to be done and about how soon the two would be termed out of office.
The incoming mayor said there is still a lot to be accomplished. “We are going to sprint,” he said, referring to the race to get objectives met.
Stern ticked off a comprehensive list that he wanted to see accomplished under his watch: Construction of a stormwater facility at Ramirez Canyon, the start of construction on Legacy Park, completion of the signal at Pacific Coast Highway at Corral Canyon Road, start-up on the construction of Trancas Canyon Park, installation of Bluffs Park playground equipment, finishing up the design of the Civic Center wastewater facility, opening of the lumberyard shopping center, work on getting a City Hall, and improvement of the school campus.
“That is a lot of stuff. We are small town of 13,000 people. But we want to accomplish a lot.”
During her outgoing remarks, Conley Ulich announced she had issued a state of the city address that was posted on the city’s website in both written and video form and would touch on the highlights of that address at the council meeting.
Conley Ulich said of all the accomplishments she thought the most outstanding was getting residents to participate in civic life.
She also mentioned that Malibu, quite unlike the state and many other cities and counties, is sound financially, boasting of a $12 million surplus.
The outgoing mayor also mentioned how public safety will always be a component of life in Malibu and praised the city’s role in coordinating and participating in a variety of emergency preparedness events.
As a government official, she stressed that during a major catastrophe, residents can’t rely on government. “You must practice self-reliance. My other message is equally important. Property can be replaced, people cannot,” he said.
Conley Ulich ticked off a laundry list of preparedness measures residents should take into account from food supplies to CERT training to signing up for reverse 911.
Moving on to other topics, she acknowledged her council colleagues’ strong stance in opposition to overnight camping and the latest proposed LNG terminal.
She also spoke on how clean water still remains a top priority for the city and how much money the city has already spent on achieving that goal.
“It is not acceptable for children to get staph infections when they are swimming or surfing in our ocean waters. The beaches are still unsafe. We need funds to clean up the water,” she said.

Controversial MHS Field Lighting Project Requires State Coastal Panel Action

• Commission Amend Follows City OK

BY SUZANNE GULDIMANN

All of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District’s planned Measure BB improvements have to be reviewed by the City of Malibu’s Planning Commission, but plans to install permanent lighting at the school’s football field will also be reviewed by the California Coastal Commission, according to the city’s planning department.
Joseph Smith, the planner assigned to the project, helped to dispel some of the confusion generated by this complicated arrangement.
“It’s a bit complicated,” Smith told the Malibu Surfside News. “I’m aware of the confusion with this issue.”
Smith explained that because the original Coastal Development Permit issued by the Coastal Commission to the school when the athletic field was constructed included a special condition prohibiting temporary or permanent lighting, the school district must work directly with the Coastal Commission to amend the the previous CDP before proceeding with the lighting plan.
“The lighting restriction is under the Coastal Commission’s jurisdiction,” Smith said. “That condition still stands, but regardless if Coastal were to approve the amendment, we would still have to review the lights, [and] look at the property’s zoned uses; environmental, scenic and visual resources.”
Smith told The News that the school district, not the city, is the lead agency on the project’s Environmental Impact Report, and the district has not yet formally submitted its plans to the city.
“We have been in dialogue,” Smith said, describing it as the “pre-application process.”
“The [entire] project will receive full review by the city’s planning division and the planning commission for conformance with the city’s Local Coastal Plan,” Smith said.
In August of 2008, the district contracted with CAA Planning to “support preparation, coordination, filing and presentation of an amendment to CDP-04-99-276 to the California Coastal Commission in support of the field lighting portion of the Malibu High School Measure BB project in an amount not to exceed $7000.”
The field lighting plan, which includes a proposal for 70-to-80-foot lighting poles in a community with a 28-foot maximum building height limit, and the potential that the lights might be in use for up to 203 nights a year, has angered many Malibu Park area residents, who have been generally supportive of other aspects of the planned Measure BB improvements.

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.

Date Mix-Up Results in Postponement of First Sentencing of a Corral Fire Suspect

• Two Other Suspects Slated for Arraignment This Week

BY ANNE SOBLE

A flyer distributed by Operation Recovery, the post-Corral Canyon wildfire self-help group, that had an incorrect date for Monday’s sentencing hearing for one of the five men charged with actions leading to the November 2007 conflagration, resulted in the hearing being delayed until Feb. 19.
Brian David Franks, 28, was due to be sentenced for his role in the fire that was caused by flying embers from an out-of-control bonfire atop Corral, claiming 53 homes and damaging two dozen others.
Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Leslie Dunn said she ordered the delay because the erroneous date, described as a miscommunication, meant that Corral area residents, who have been regularly attending court hearings for the five men, had not been duly noticed.
Dunn said she understands the need for these residents to be a part of the legal process to help them get through their losses.
Franks pleaded no contest last fall to a felony charge of recklessly causing a fire under a condition of high winds and faces five years probation and 300 hours of community service. Some Corral residents are advocating jail time.
The residents have requested and been granted the opportunity to speak at Franks’ sentencing hearing, which is expected to draw major media attention.
Arraignment for Franks’ two co-defendants (the three men are one prosecution case, the other two are charged separately), Brian Alan Anderson, 23, and William Thomas Coppock, 24, is set for Thursday, Jan. 29, at the Van Nuys Courthouse.
The duo in the second case, Eric Matthew Ullman, 19, and Dean Allen Lavorante, 20, are due back in court Feb. 26, when a date is expected to be set for a hearing to determine whether there is enough evidence for the two men to stand trial on the same charges.
Authorities charge that the two groups of men went to a notorious rave cave on state parkland above Corral to drink and party, stoking a bonfire in reckless disregard of the strong winds and low humidity.

Publisher’s Notebook

• Possible Resumption of New Offshore Oil Drilling •

ANNE SOBLE

An article posted on the Malibu Surfside News Blog last Saturday outlined an offshore oil deal brokered in Santa Barbara that could threaten coastal Malibu, as well as the rest of the state’s fragile coastline, by opening the door to new offshore drilling. The project has remained largely under the radar, and the MSN News Alert was the first time many local officials and environmental activists learned about the proposal.
At peril are not only coastal resources—the ocean and all marine life, but the coastal economy itself—from beaches, to visitor-serving businesses, to real state values, if new drilling is allowed in state tidelands at the time when environmentalists are asking the White House to consider reinstating the moratorium on federal oil drilling that has helped to protect the coast. California has to walk the walk, not just talk the talk of coastal resource protection
City, state and national legislators rightly voice concern that the deal brokered by the Environmental Defense Center between two Santa Barbara non-governmental organizations and Texas-based Plains Exploration and Production raises too many questions and sets too dangerous a precedent to be approved at this week’s State Lands Commission hearing.
As reviewed in greater detail in an article beginning on page two of this week’s issue of The News, the PXP precedent could also encourage more new offshore leasing in federal waters now that the federal moratorium has been lifted and the Minerals Management Service of the Interior Department has proposed new lease sale sites off the California coast.
In addition, despite EDC assurances that all “substantive” terms of the agreement have been made public, there are still concerns that the confidentiality agreement between the private parties to this deal may mean that its termsl have not undergone adequate public scrutiny.
Although some environmental support for the deal is ostensibly predicated on an end to PXP drilling by 2022, the State Attorney-General, the SLC staff, and others, question its enforceability.
The approval of the first new lease in state waters in close to 40 years—and the four decades since the catastrophic Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969—is a sea change from the state’s longstanding policy to oppose new offshore oil leasing and drilling in state and federal waters. California public agencies should not be co-conspirators in this policy’s demise.

Record Crowd Attends PTSA Meeting on Substance Abuse Issues at Malibu High

• Topics Ranged from Instituting Parent Patrols to Using ‘Dope Dogs’

BY ANNE SOBLE

An exchange of letters to the editor that originated in the Malibu Surfside News earlier this month, when the parents of a Malibu High School student voiced concern about the need for increased attention to substance abuse problems on the campus, resulted in the January monthly meeting of the Parent-Teacher-Student Association being devoted to the topic.
With a theme of “It Takes a Village,” a sizable crowd of “villagers” showed up—what MHS-PTSA president Sandy Thacker said was “a record number” of attendees for a PTSA meeting—to address what Thacker said is “an important topic for all parents of middle- and high-schoolers.”
Parents voiced emotions from surprise to shock, as they learned of substance abuse at unsupervised student gatherings at private homes in the community, as well as the 10 violations of district substance abuse policy on campus so far this academic year.
Students attend a special assembly at the start of the school year to acquaint them with this policy, with updates on a regular basis.
The most recent violations at Malibu High occurred in December—one involving two male students; the other, a female student—and required response from the Sheriff’s Department.
Among issues that drew attention was consideration of a renewed effort to find a volunteer to head what is called the “Parent Eyes” program, which coordinates parent volunteers who help to patrol the campus.
Also explored was a return to the policy of having narcotics-trained canines, so-called narco or “dope dogs,” regularly make surprise visits to check out the high school campus.
Another concern that was raised was the perceived lack of non-school activities, what one parent referred to as “inadequate safe and fun options for our teens.”
The need for a larger teen center and more music, art, theater, sports and other programs “to keep teens too busy for drugs after school” was echoed by many.
School drug testing and parental means for at-home testing attracted interest, but many parents said they want to avoid impairing their relationships with their children.
Of overriding concern to many is how it is possible to learn about the extent of student drug use on- or off-campus if students are reluctant to violate a “peer code of honor” and “tell” on their classmates.
A change in attitude in this area is regarded as “important to getting a handle on drug use,” and ways to facilitate providing information anonymously, such as the “Tip” hotline at 1-800-47-DRUGS, were outlined.
A consensus agreed that the shift should be away from penalizing students who use drugs or alcohol to viewing them as individuals who want or need help.
Homeowners were reminded that they can be liable if alcohol or drugs are used by minors on their property. In addition, a business that allegedly sells alcohol to minors was outed.
“Parents need to talk to each other,” was a refrain repeated again and again.
A member of the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station’s Juvenile Intervention Team, or J-team, Deputy Scott Rule, said the station can be contacted at 310-456-6652.
When one parent said he saw students engaged in drug activity in a vehicle and “lectured” them, but didn’t report them, Rule asked what if those students had driven away impaired and killed themselves, or others.
The memory of a fatal crash on Pacific Coast Highway last year involving Newbury Park High School students was still fresh in the minds of many at the meeting.
Thacker told The News that the school could do much more than it now does, if more parents from the 1200 students’ families volunteered for programs that depend on their involvement.
The PTSA president emphasized, “There’s no way to gauge how prevalent drugs are on campus...but I’m glad the [first] letter sparked a conversation, and so many came forward last week.”
Thacker said it is gratifying to see that “the parent community has come together to talk about how the school can better help parents do better. Everyone in the community benefits from that.”

Overnight Camping Issue between City and SMMC Resurfaces

BY BILL KOENEKER

The showdown between Malibu city officials and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy before the California Coastal Commission over a park plan that includes overnight camping has been delayed until June, according to a CCC official.
“We were going to have this [hearing] here locally in February. But it just isn't ready. We could have put it on March, but that is not local, it is in Monterey. It is now scheduled for June,” said Patrick Veesart, a CCC coastal program analyst, when the commission meets in a local venue in Southern California
Veesart said having the meeting in the Los Angeles region was important to not only the City of Malibu, but also the Ramirez homeowners group.
At the same time, the city withdrew its application for a Local Coastal Program amendment and resubmitted it to avoid deadline issues for the commission and so both the city’s request and the Conservancy’s can be heard at the same time, he said.
“The commission will hear the city's application first and then the SMMC override,” added Veesart.
The summer hearing follows on the heels of a long complicated procedure that started nearly two years ago when the SMMC wanted to get approval for what they called a park enhancement plan that included overnight camping in Corral Canyon, Escondido Canyon and Ramirez Canyon including additional activities in Ramirez where SMMC headquarters is located. The plan also includes trails linking the publicly owned lands in the coastal canyons.
At first the Conservancy wanted the Coastal Commission to hear the matter under the rubric of a public works plan.
The city objected and during lengthy negotiations a compromise was reached that would forgo camping in Corral and Escondido canyons and be allowed in Charmlee Park instead.
West Malibu residents cried foul and insisted the council not support the tentative deal worked out with the state agency.
At a raucous session in Dec. 2007, an emotional appeal by Malibuites who had just endured two wildfires swayed council members to seek its own plan that would prohibit overnight camping in Malibu.
Council members insisted they were merely approving a scaled back version of the LCPA sought by the SMMC.
SMMC head Joe Edmiston was furious and accused the city and its residents of trying to have it both ways saying everybody wanted the open space paid for by all of the taxpayers, but they won't allow or permit anyone but locals to use the amenities.
Council members readily acknowledged the matter could once again result in a showdown between the city and powerful state agencies, including the Coastal Commission, which would have to approve the city's request for a LCPA.
What the city council nor any of its officials were prepared for was the next move of the Conservancy.
Afterwards, the SMMC head and board using a little-known provision of the Coastal Act sought what is called an override of the LCPA process. Municipal officials were stunned and cried foul, but to no avail.
The Charmlee overnight camping deal was off the table with Edmiston and SMMC officials proceeding with the original plans of the park enhancement, but utilizing an override procedure.
With both the city's plan and the SMMC version set to go before the commission it now is a matter of how the coastal panel will view overnight camping in Malibu.

Outgoing Mayor Announces Clean Water Ballot Referendum

BY BILL KOENEKER

Using the reorganization meeting of the Malibu City Council this week to make several newsworthy announcements, outgoing Mayor Pamela Conley Ulich talked about plans for a clean water ballot referendum, more money for the library fund and gave an update about the landscaping project on the Pacific Coast Highway median.
“In the coming year, I will work with others on our city council to propose a ballot referendum to clean up polluted waters in Malibu and along our coast. We need funds to pay for better stormwater pollution prevention. Legacy Park and the runoff treatment facilities at Paradise Cove and the Civic Center need funds for operation and maintenance. We need funds to pay for a centralized wastewater recycling plant in the Civic Center by 2013,” said Conley Ulich.
She said the proposal would also entail asking commercial facilities that generate more than a thousand gallons per day of wastewater to their onsite wastewater systems to pay “a bit more to give us clean water.”
The more wastewater you produce, according to Conley Ulich, the more you should pay for environmental protection. “That just makes sense,” she added. Those that hook up to the new Civic Center water recycling facility will have a different rate structure.
She went on to say some of Malibu's beaches are still unsafe for surfing and swimming because of fecal bacteria pollution. “Malibu Creek and lagoon are in a state of poor ecological health. These are problems that we can solve, but we all need to do our part,” she explained.
The outgoing mayor said that for "less than [the cost of] a cup of coffee, we can generate enough revenue to greatly upgrade the city's stormwater and wastewater management programs.”
Conley Ulich also reported that the city has been awarded more money based on the memo of understanding it has with Los Angeles County about library operations. “We have $3.6 million plus additional annual funding [that] will be used for the library,” she said. The funding is coming from the existing library taxes of Malibu residents that have now been earmarked only for use at the Malibu Library in lieu of the countywide library system.
Conley Ulich also leaked what she said was the good news almost “miracle” of the efforts to landscape the PCH median.
She allowed Jo Giese, who heads up the Malibu Green Machine, to elaborate.
Giese said MGM recently received the encroachment permit from Caltrans to break ground on the medians.
“We can tentatively start work the week of Feb. 16 on the landscaping project,” said Giese.
However, Giese said Caltrans would be informed the work will start in phases. “Phase one is Cross Creek to Webb Way because we have funding for that,” added Giese.

Judge Overrules Coastal Commission on After-the-Fact Equestrian Center Permits

• Environmental Action Group Says Panel Should Have Followed Original Staff Recommendation

BY ANNE SOBLE

The environmental advocacy and legal action group, Coastal Law Enforcement Action Network, or CLEAN, has reopened a battle that raged for decades over whether a commercial equestrian center’s allegedly illegally-expanded facilities in the Santa Monica Mountains are polluting the area’s groundwater.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Chalfant granted CLEAN’s petition for a writ of mandate in the case of CLEAN v. California Coastal Commission last week, ruling the commission did not base its decision on “substantial evidence” when it approved a controversial after-the-fact development permit to allow Malibu Valley Farms to continue its show and boarding operations.
CLEAN argued that the permit, granted in July 2007, allowed the equestrian center’s horse waste—manure and urine—to “continue polluting” a blue-line stream that drains into Malibu Creek. The equestrian facility, one of the largest in the Santa Monicas, is located on Mulholland Highway off Kanan Road.
The commission’s 7-5 decision overrode the CCC staff’s initial recommendation. The panel’s decision, which was sharply criticized by local environmental groups, was attributed to pressure on commission members by a sizable turnout from the equestrian and livestock community.
Many of the horse owners and others who showed up, especially those with smaller properties, were concerned that a ruling against Brian Boudreau, the owner of MVF, might be a prelude to a major Los Angeles County crackdown on horse and other livestock ownership in Malibu and the rest of the Santa Monica Mountains.
Among the groups that soundly criticized the commission action in addition to CLEAN, were the Sierra Club, Heal the Bay, Save Open Space and Santa Monica Baykeeper. The commission’s action caught many of the groups off guard as an enforcement order had been imposed on MVF by the panel in November 2006 for what were perceived as essentially the same issues. At that time, the center was ordered to remove allegedly illegal structures and contain pollution.
A legal challenge was expected, and CLEAN, a biodiversity project of the International Humanities Center, took it on.
Judge Chalfant ordered the revocation of the CCC permit and said the commission must undertake further studies into the extent of water pollution from horse waste that enters the waterways that travel to the coast.
CLEAN said Chalfant’s 12-page decision focused on the County of Los Angeles Environmental Review Board approval of a different development than the one considered by the CCC, and the commission using that decision to determine that the traditional 100-foot setback from the stream, designated an Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Area, would not be required under the Coastal Act.
Marcia Hanscom, the managing director of CLEAN, said, “The 100-foot setback to streams and other environmentally sensitive habitat areas in the Santa Monica Mountains is critically important ecologically because of the rarity of these habitats in Southern California. We are grateful that Judge Chalfant is sending the permit for this illegal development back to the Coastal Commission for compliance with the Coastal Act.”
Hanscom said, “CLEAN will be requesting that the Coastal Commission return the review of the project back to the County of Los Angeles and its Environmental Review Board, as well as its Regional Planning Department, to insure compliance with the law.”
David Weinsoff, the lead attorney for CLEAN on the lawsuit, added, “We believe the commission staff, in their original report, understood perfectly the requirements of the Coastal Act. Any future permitting action in this matter should reflect the original staff recommendations, which would ensure legal and environmental protection for Stokes Creek and its riparian habitat.”
“We will also request that the Coastal Commission take action to begin enforcement under the existing cease and desist order requiring Malibu Valley Farms to remove illegal development that has polluted the Santa Monica Mountains and its streams for far too long,” Weinsoff added.
However, the attorney on the matter for Malibu Valley Farms, Fred Gaines, said CLEAN is portraying “the judge’s ruling as more than it is.”
Gaines told the Malibu Surfside News that the tentative ruling, which his client will seek to have corrected, is limited to the issue of Coastal Comission over-reliance on the Los Angeles County ERB decision.
On all of the other issues raised by CLEAN, the attorney said that MVF successfully “made its case in court.”
Gaines said Judge Chalfant “ruled for Malibu Valley Farms on whether equestrian uses are appropriate and legal in this location [and] found no evidence of pollution...including that the horse stream crossings are legal.”

Saturday, January 24, 2009
MALIBU ENVIRO WATCH:
Deal Goes Before State Agencies that Could Lead to Resumption of Offshore Oil Drilling in California

• No Longer under the Radar—Questions Are Being Raised about PXP Proposal •

BY ANNE SOBLE

No sooner has the death knell sounded for a major liquefied natural gas project off the coast of Southern California, than the specter is being raised of the resumption of offshore oil drilling if a privately brokered deal in the Santa Barbara area receives the approval of the California State Lands Commission and the California Coastal Commission within the next three weeks.
The proposal has major implications for Malibu as it could open the doors to oil leasing and exploration in state and federal waters now that the federal moratorium has been lifted and the Minerals Management Service, an agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior responsible for offshore oil and gas leasing, announced the sites of possible new lease sales this month, including some in Southern California.
The deal set to go before State Lands Commission on Thursday, Jan. 29, coincidentally the 40th anniversary of the catastrophic Santa Barbara oil spill, cited as one of the catalysts for the development of the contemporary environmental movement, could set back that movement, despite some enviro groups backing the proposal in seeming disregard of its broader implications.
The package was brokered for two Santa Barbara groups—Get Oil Out and the Citizens Planning Association—with Texas-based Plains Exploration and Production, or PXP, to allow 17 new wells at Tranquillon Ridge, the first from a federal platform into state reserves since the moratorium.
PXP maintains that the project falls under an exception in the California Sanctuary Act, which otherwise prohibits new oil and gas leasing in state tidelands, because resources from Tranquillon are reportedly being pilfered from a well in federal waters, and the state is losing money in royalties.
CSLC staff, which has recommended against the project, says drainage is minimal and the state already receives 50 percent of royalties from the well in question.
Monies from the new drilling would go into the cash-strapped state General Fund. But what also gives the project momentum is that, in exchange for the right to develop the Tranquillon lease, the company would agree to stop its offshore oil drilling operations by 2022 and make major land donations and financial contributions for air quality improvements in the Santa Barbara area.
Ironically, the environmental law firm that brokered the deal for the local groups and is shepherding it though the approval process is the same one hired to help successfully kill the BHP Billiton Cabrillo Port LNG project northwest of Malibu in 2007.
That firm, Environmental Defense Center, also Santa Barbara based, is now lobbying for the PXP package, the specific terms of which, including any payment to EDC and others, largely remain closeted.
Equally important, EDC has used its considerable clout in the environmental community to bring other enviro organizations on board.
The Malibu Surfside News is making requests for information about the terms of the deal brokered by EDC, but previous media requests for more information have been denied and honoring such requests is reportedly precluded by the terms of the confidentiality agreement with PXP.
It is this secrecy that prompted the State Attorney General's Office to question the enforceability of any provisions in the deal to cease oil production by a set date, or even the so-called benefits that might accrue to the greater Santa Barbara area.
In addition, the CSLC staff in its recommendation of denial, cites similar concerns about the unknown terms of the package and the overall unenforceability of a private agreement.
Commission observers report the three-member CSLC may be spit 2-1 against the deal, as it was on Cabrillo Port, which would kill the proposal. But there is strong political pressure on its members because of the package's support base and the state budget crisis. Because the PXP deal is only now beginning to attract attention, public opposition is in its early stages.
Although Governor Schwarzenegger has talked the talk of no drilling off California, some Sacramento insiders say the state’s cash crunch may change his walk on the issue. The State Lands member expected to vote for the deal so far is the governor's director of finance, Michael Genest.
The other two members of the commission, both of whom opposed Cabrillo Port, are being lobbied aggressively on behalf of the project.
However, Malibu Assemblymember Julia Brownley and other state legislators have voiced their concerns about the PXP package in a letter to CSLC member Lt. Gov. John Garamendi on Jan. 12. The dozen members of the Assembly Coastal Caucus stressed the uncertainty of the project fostered during what they describe as the “drill here, drill now, pay less” hysteria when gas prices skyrocketed,
The Coastal Caucus letter states, “[The proposal] breaks California’s longstanding statewide ban on new offshore oil leasing in state waters and exposes our coastal resources to irreparable damage from spills. Our coastal resources that provide economic benefit in terms of tourism, recreation, scenic beauty, coastal land real estate value, wildlife, etc are priceless and should not be sold and certainly not by a group of [private organizations].”
Also, on Jan. 22, Malibu’s State Senator Fran Pavley sent a letter to the third CSLC member, Controller John Chiang, who now chairs the panel, stating, “We caution that premature approval of this lease without a robust discussion and statewide vetting of the long-term consequences it holds for all of California and the nation would be ill advised.”
If the State Lands Commission approves the drilling project, it is expected to be on the agenda of the California Coastal Commission's meeting in February. The Coastal Commission does not have the broad policy review options of State Lands. The CCC's authority on the matter is limited to determining whether the project is mitigated to the greatest extent feasible.
Coastal Commissioner and Malibu resident Sara Wan told The News this week that she is concerned the proposal "changes a 40-year opposition to offshore drilling and sets a terrible precedent, opening up the possibility of drilling everywhere along the coast."
Wan said, "We need to send a clear message that the coast of California is not for sale. There is no amount of money that can make up for the damage to coastal resources and the coastal economy when there is an oil spill." She said it is particularly important that this be the message that state agencies send to Congress and the Obama Administration as federal oil drilling policy is undergoing review.
Among broader concerns that some critics say are being disregarded by the groups that have jumped on the PXP bandwagon is the project's continuation of the nation's fossil fuel dependence and that it undermines the overall goals of the environmental movement in general.
The CSLC meeting is scheduled for noon on Thursday, Jan. 29, at the Hotel Mar Monte, 1111 East Cabrillo Boulevard in Santa Barbara.

Enviros Blast Water Board at Workshop

• Sacramento Accused of Crafting ‘Failure’ Regulations

BY BILL KOENEKER

The workshop conducted last week in Malibu by the State Water Resources Control Board to gather public input on proposed changes to state-wide regulation of septic systems may have been one in a series of 11 conducted across the state, but it was apparently like no other, when a sponsor of the legislation mandating the changes spoke.
Mark Gold, the president of Heal the Bay, the environmental group, who is considered by Sacramento as the leading sponsor of the legislation AB 885 authored by then Assemblymember Hannah-Beth Jackson, directing the changes to the water code, denounced the attempts by the water board to implement the measure.
“This is designed to fail and will not improve impaired waters,” said Gold, who blasted Sacramento bureaucrats on the standards about to be imposed on septic users, because he said it failed to target the worst offenders.
The Heal the Bay head claimed some of the regulations that the water board wants to require for septic users, such as when there is a domestic water well on a property, that well would have be monitored every five years and the test results sent to Sacramento, were a “deal breaker.”
“It seems like this was designed to upset everybody,” he said.
Gold explained that he had personally helped write the bill with certain issues in mind.
He said the main concern was how septic systems could be monitored and regulated when they are near impaired bodies of water.
The issue is particularly relevant to Malibu, since Malibu Creek, Malibu Lagoon and north Santa Monica Bay beaches are declared impaired bodies of water.
Gold complained that even the Environmental Impact Report required to assess the proposed regulations bears very little relationship to what the stakeholders agreed upon. “This cannot regulate. It is a failure,” he added.
The board is scheduled to conduct a formal hearing on Feb. 9 in Sacramento.
At the outset of the meeting, Assistant Division Chief James George Giannopoulos, who conducted the workshop, set out the requirements of the law and how they would be enforced.
All septic tank owners would have to have their septic tanks inspected for solids accumulations every five years.
Any septic tank owner operating a system within 600 feet of an impaired water body would have to have the system inspected by a qualified professional to determine whether the septic system is contributing to the impairment of the water body.
There is also a list of new regulations proposed for the construction of new septic systems.
Giannopoulos said a roof-top count estimated 800 homes near Malibu Creek that might qualify for the 600-foot restrictions and 1563 homes that were estimated to be impacted by the proposed 600-foot requirement along north bay beaches.
“It would require certain actions of the septic owners. They would have four years to upgrade their system [if found faulty],” he added.
The division manager said the board staff estimated costs between $35,000 and $45,000 to upgrade or replace a faulty system, or compliance could be achieved by hooking up to a sewer system.
When it came time for the public to testify there was a wide divergence of opinion.
Tom Ford, the director of Santa Monica Baykeeper, stated there were serious problems with the current septic systems that are polluting the waters. He did not enter any evidence, but rather suggested the proof was that Baykeeper was currently suing the City of Malibu in two separate legal actions. “We are not trying to persecute. We are trying to protect folks,” he said.
Norm Haynie, who is a member of the city’s Wastewater Advisory Committee, said the installation of new systems mandated by Malibu “are not septic systems at all.”
They are mini-plants, which include disinfection and tertiary-treated effluent, according to Haynie, who disputed many of the allegations made by critics, saying the city does not allow septics to leach into sand because the municipality requires a sea wall. “The point of sale ordinance takes care of older homes,” he added. “I know of no study that links effluent of septic systems to the lagoon or creek. There is pollution in the lagoon and creek, but we don’t know where it is coming from.”
Former Mayor Walt Keller said, “I resent the order from your board. I think the city is doing a great job.”
“We are learning the city has no regulation of porta-potties. Maybe we should all get one of them,” he quipped.
Malibu Road resident Dan Hillman painted a more ominous picture, suggesting the state agency wanted to squeeze residents to the point where Malibuites would be forced into sewering.
He suggested that the culprits have been overlooked and insisted the state agency investigate how certain areas where there are sewer outfalls have become the pollution hot spots, such as Marie Canyon near where the Malibu Mesa plant is located, and the Tapia plant, which still, at certain times of the year, is allowed to discharge effluent into Malibu Creek.
“For the most part, AB 885 is another attempt to sewer Malibu. Septic tanks are not a health hazard,” Hillman said.
Some experts who testified, including Larry Young, a former city staffer, saw problems in administering the regulations and suggested the estimated prices for Malibu for making repairs or replacing systems “were way too low.”
The city’s current environmental health inspector echoed the same sentiments. “We are talking about up to $200,000 for the beachfront lot improvements,” said Andrew Shelter.
The workshops will continue, and comments on the proposed regulations and EIR will be taken until the formal hearing on Feb. 9.
The timeline calls for implementation of the regulations by sometime in July 2010. The legislation was adopted and passed in 2000.

PTSA Meeting to Address Drug Use Issues at Malibu High School

•10 Students Have Been Suspended for Violations of District Substance Policy Since September

BY ANNE SOBLE

This week’s meeting of the Parent-Teacher-Student Association at Malibu High School will focus on a recent flurry of letters to the editor that originated in the Malibu Surfside News about the extent of student substance abuse on campus and the school’s response to it.
The Thursday meeting at 6:30 p.m. in the school library is slated to address the same concerns and responses to those concerns dominating communications to the school’s informal e-group. Postings to the Web site range from calls to “defend our school” to statements that parents “have no idea how serious the problem is.”
MHS principal Mark Kelly told the Malibu Surfside News on Tuesday that drug use issues will be the main topic at the regularly scheduled PTSA monthly meeting in “acknowledgement” of the letters that have been printed.
Kelly said, “We continue to be very concerned about our children. We need the help of the community. We need to come together as a community. It’s about commitment to young people’s health and safety.”
The principal was asked to provide statistics on the number of drug-related incidents during the current school year. He came back with data that indicates that “10 students have been suspended for possession, or use, of controlled substances [in violation of Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District policy] from September through January.
Kelly said strict privacy constraints on the disclosure of student information “prevents any further comment on specific actions taken against a student.”
Regarding an incident referred to in last week’s issue of The News and discussed in greater detail in one of this week’s letters to the editor, Kelly said the reasons a student was being taken into custody and removed from the campus were “not substance-related, or school-related.”
He reiterated district policy that no further information could be provided on the matter, which was assumed by a number of observers to have been a “drug bust.”
Detective Lt. John Benedict of the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station said the sheriff’s department would have been called in on the matter, if the incident involved an on-campus issue, but they did not receive any calls in January.
Benedict said he will attend Thursday’s PTSA meeting to try “to clear up rumors” that are now circulating in the community.
Kelly said he would never downplay drug use concerns as they affect the community as a whole. Asked how he rates the current average of two incidents a month , he said, “Every incident is a major concern. There are some flags here. One student is a concern, but these [numbers] are not in the realm of past years.”
Because the letters to the editor took the issue of drug use public, Kelly included a four-page “principal’s message,” entitled “Support for Resisting Substance Use Is Available at MHS,” in the school newsletter.
In it, he wrote, “It saddens me that this is the press that we are receiving, yet I hope that we can get together for the safety and well-being of our students.”
Kelly told the parents, “It is unfortunate that our students are forced to negotiate pressures to use drugs and alcohol.” He said, “We unequivocally want our students to know that we do not condone the use of drugs, alcohol, or intoxicants of any kind—in school or outside [of it].”
He said the school has rules that will be enforced, but there is also “help for students who need it.” If the district’s policy is violated, students can face a five-day suspension, 24 hours of counseling (12 with parents), and 40 hours of community service.
Students are not removed from Malibu High, or sent to another campus, as was district policy in previous years, but second violations and distribution of drugs on campus “allow for the possibility of expulsion.”
There is an annual “rules assembly” on district drug policies, and Kelly said there are regular updates during the school year.
Kelly stressed, however, that “to enforce a policy, we must have violations.” He said, in seeming disregard of the epithet of snitch, or “narc,” that can be attached to a student who tells on another, that “one of the best ways for us to combat illegal behaviors is to hear from parents and students when they know, or suspect, inappropriate behaviors.”
Among the organized anti-drug assistance options on campus, Kelly cited the Monday night meetings of a teen and parent support group called Angels at Risk that is funded by the Shark Fund and the Malibu Foundation for Youth and Families.
Kelly concluded, “Navigating into, through, and beyond adolescence is difficult for all young people. Having to fend off the pressure of drugs and alcohol is a community challenge, and we, as adults in our young people’s lives, must give all students what they need to move through this phase of their lives. To place blame on anyone serves no one.”

School Traffic Safety Plans Announced

• School Board Tackles Local Campus Congestion Issues

BY SUZANNE GULDIMANN

A permanent traffic relief measure appears to finally be in the works for gridlocked Morning View Drive in the Malibu Park area.
At its Jan. 15 meeting, the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District Board voted to amend its contract with HMC Architects, the firm overseeing Malibu High School’s Measure BB improvements, “to provide architectural services to add a right turn lane at the entry to Malibu High School,” according to the meeting agenda.
The cost of the contract, not to exceed $68,256 has been budgeted from the project building fund.
“After discussions with the design professionals, the CEQA consultant, City of Malibu representatives, and input from the public meetings held to discuss parking and traffic at Malibu High School, a recommendation was made to increase the width of the street to include a right turn lane into the school site in order reduce the traffic gridlock during drop-off and pick-up on Morning View Drive,” the recommendation stated.
The proposed right turn lane will extend from Merritt Drive to the first driveway next to the school parking lot at the MHS site.
The board was also asked to approve contract amendments with HMC Architects to provide services for safety and security at Cabrillo and Webster elementary schools.
According to the plan, the main entry at Cabrillo will be reconfigured, to “improve supervision, safety and security and allow expanded use of the front yard.”
Safety issues that were identified as “critical needs” at Webster will also be addressed. These include reconfiguring the cafetorium entrance “to effectively control entry.”
The plan also calls for improving the existent parking lot off of Civic Center Way, in an effort to improve parking, drop-off and pick-up conditions, on Winter Canyon Road, which the recommendations refer to as “congested and lacking a pedestrian route to school entry.”
On Dec. 11, 2008, architectural services were approved for safety projects at all district schools receiving Measure BB improvements, except for Cabrillo and Webster.
According to district staff, the district “performed a comprehensive survey in order to identify the most critical safety and security needs districtwide.”

Judge Orders Two of the Five Suspects Charged with Starting the Corral Wildfire to Stand Trial

• Contingent of Locals at Proceedings

BY ANNE SOBLE

Two of the five men charged with causing the 2007 Corral Canyon wildfire that destroyed 53 homes, damaged another two dozen structures and injured six firefighters were ordered to stand trial by Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Leslie Dunn last Thursday.
Dunn determined that there was sufficient evidence to order Brian Alan Anderson, 23, and William Thomas Coppock, 24, to trial on counts of recklessly causing a fire with great bodily injury and endangering inhabited structures.
The two Los Angeles residents, who are currently free on their own recognizance, are due back in court Jan. 29 for arraignment.
The complaint by Deputy District Attorney Ann Ambrose also alleges that the crimes were committed during and within an area declared a state of emergency.
Beverly Taki, the organizer of Operation Recovery, a support group of fire victims and other residents in the Corral Canyon area, told the Malibu Surfside News that the “group’s members are thrilled with this outcome and look forward to continued justice being served.”
Operation Recovery is urging its members to send letters to Judge Dunn, recommending the maximum possible punishment. Seven members of the group sat in the courtroom last week, a silent reminder of the fire’s toll.
Corral residents say that there will be as large a contingent of them as possible at every step of the legal process for all five men.
The group also hopes to obtain restraining orders to prevent any of the men convicted of a part in the wildfire from being able to go into the Corral area or the Santa Monica Mountains.
Since the State of California, which owns the land on which the fire was stated, still has not adequately closed it off to illegal activity, neighbors have organized private patrols to try to prevent partying and other behavior in the so-called rave cave at the top of the canyon that could result in another conflagration.
Anderson, Coppock, and a third Los Angeles man, Brian David Franks, 28, were originally charged together. Franks, who has been deemed less culpable by the evidence, has agreed to testify against the other two men.
Franks pleaded no contest in October and is slated for sentencing on Jan. 26. He faces probation and community service.
The other two of the five men, Eric Matthew Ullman, 19, and Dean Allen Lavorante, 20, both residents of Culver City, are expected to learn whether they also will be ordered to stand trial on the same charges on Feb. 26.
According to testimony to date, Ullman and Lavorante started a campfire in the cave, which was subsequently taken over by the three L.A. men, who increased its size and allowed it to go out of control, then made no effort to report that brush in the area was starting to burn as strong Santa Ana winds battered the area.
OR member Aya Yoshida wrote in an initial summation for the group that she “felt the defense lawyers’ desperation when they rephrased questions multiple times in an attempt to get the answers that they wanted, or asked bizarre questions like, “Wouldn’t you say it was dark at night?”—while the deputy sheriff [who was on the witness stand] opened his eyes in amazement.”
The Nov. 24, 2007, wildfire caused millions of dollars in damage and led to debate over wildfire evacuation policies.

Malibu Park Neighbors Lambaste Proposal for High School Lighting

• Eight-Story-High Units Could Be Used Much of the Year

BY SUZANNE GULDIMANN

An outreach meeting at Malibu High School to discuss the proposed Measure BB funded permanent field lighting received extensive criticism from residents after the revelation that the project calls for 70-to-80-foot tall lighting poles and the lighting could be in use up to 203 nights a year. The plan includes permanent seating for 1300—a 1000-seat concrete grandstand on the home side, and a 300-seat aluminum grandstand on the visitor side—as well as a synthetic turf football field with a soccer overlay.
“We are very fortunate to have a wonderful education program,” MHS principal Mark Kelly told the audience. “The whole Measure BB project is about improving the facilities. It’s about improving the facilities to match the quality of the education program. We currently have an incomplete athletic stadium. It’s serving our needs but it’s incomplete. Our proposal is to really enhance the facilities in order to make sure that we are providing the best opportunities.
Kelly said, “One of the things we experience is we have students who opt for other schools because our facilities aren’t up to par. The quality of the program is there, but the facilities don’t match that.”
The principal also outlined how the school hopes to add soccer and lacrosse night games and practice sessions, in addition to football, and explained the school is negotiating a new shared-use agreement with the city that may add more community uses.
“Right now we have limitations because of lighting,” Kelly said, as he tried to assuage the audience about the 203 nights of lights use. “I know that it sounds like a lot,” Kelly said, “When we put this together we thought about maximum usage. It’s a lot of numbers, but it’s the maximum.”
Two alternative lighting plans were presented by Paul Austad of Musco Lighting, the company overseeing the project. The first has a four-pole lighting scenario, the second design has six poles.
“The higher the pole, the more directly the light shines down,” Austad said, explaining the necessity for eight-story high poles in a city that limits building height to a maximum of 28 feet.
Austad described the Musco plans as “green technology” and explained that the aluminum fixtures have visors that direct the light onto the field and limit the amount of light bleed and glare. “The glare is the pain to the eye, as Musco sees it,” Austin said.
“We understand that the community is very concerned,” said Julian Capata, a spokesperson for the consultant firm of PBS&J.
Austad presented simulations of what he called “light spill” from eye level at six vantage points around the school. Audience members pointed out that the simulations did not include a second story view, or an overview from neighboring ridgelines.
“We have a ridgeline law here,” Malibu Park resident Jay Griffith said. “You’re not supposed to break the ridgeline. They haven’t done daytime studies.
“The lights are there 365 days a year. Right in our view line. You are proposing lights 70-80 feet that will break the horizon line. We’re going to look at those lights all the time. It’s pretty invasive. [Malibu has] a 28-foot building height. I cannot go past 28 feet. They are asking to put in eight-story structures. Yikes.”
“203 nights?” Griffith added. “I see that as a very slippery slide.”
“That’s pretty much all of the work days of the year,” one resident complained.
“I have nothing against Friday night football,” said Steve Scheinkman, who lives across from the school. “But 203 nights compared to eight?”
The consultants displayed a map that diagramed the potential area affected by light pollution from the proposed installation, encompassing much of Malibu Park. A resident of the mobile home park on Point Dume stated that he believes the lights will impact more than just the area shown on the map.
“120 mobile homes look straight across [to Malibu Park]. All those mobile homes, when the temporary lights are turned on [at MHS], it’s like looking at oncoming headlights,” the Point Dume resident said.
“You will be completely changing the character of Malibu Park,” Cathy Cadieaux stated. “You are going to ruin this area. It’s a tragedy. You have created a lack of trust in the community.”
“I came here very strongly to speak in favor of the lights, but I guess I didn’t know. If we’re talking about the possibility of 200 nights a year, 50 nights a year, you lose me,” Paul Speigel said.
Not everyone was opposed to the plan.
“All the extra [light] pollution is here to support something valuable to the community,” argued Dane Skophammer, who told the audience that he was on the football team when he attended MHS and now works as a team coach. He explained that not having a lighted field when he was on the team was “a part of my high school experience that was missing. I don’t want to say robbed. I know it sounds kind of selfish, but its one of the most fundamental American dreams. MHS needs athletes. We have lost countless numbers of athletes to other schools.”
“Our community is benefitted by the lights. Selfishness is not appropriate,” said a young member of the current football team. “I personally wouldn’t be playing football, if I had to play our homecoming game in Santa Monica.”
Colleen Baum, a parent of three children, said Friday night football is “the only event where my husband, myself and our kids [are] all together. There isn’t even a movie we can all agree on. 203 nights is huge, but sometimes it’s just a couple of hours to finish practice.”
Sandy Banducci called the charts showing 203 nights of use “the biggest mistake.” Adding that “anyone who knows anything about sports knows that’s not realistic. Make a realistic proposal and stick with it. If we could redo it and revisit it and make it work with maybe 20 times a year, I think then people wouldn’t [object].
“When I think about the future,” Terry Lucoff responded, “what bothers me is the past. It bothers me that the school was given no rights for lights but they put up lights anyway. You ask me to have faith in you. It’s hard. I’m very skeptical about putting up lights.”
The existing Coastal Development Permit for the campus (CDP-04-99-276) specifically prohibits either temporary or permanent field lighting. At its Aug. 21 meeting, the district contracted with CAA Planning to negotiate an amendment to MHS’s CDP with the Coastal Commission to permit the field lighting plan. According to Malibu Park residents, the commission is aware that the school is currently in violation of its permit.
The City of Malibu’s Local Coastal Program Land Use Plan that was adopted by the Coastal Commission on Sept. 13, 2002, states: “Exterior lighting (except traffic lights, navigational lights, and other similar safety lighting) shall be minimized, restricted to low intensity fixtures, shielded, and concealed to the maximum feasible extent so that no light source is directly visible from public viewing areas. Night lighting for sports courts or other private recreational facilities in scenic areas designated for residential use shall be prohibited.”
As far as The News has been able to determine, there is no precedent in the city for an 80-foot tall installation. Tennis court lighting, popular in the ’70s and ’80s, is no longer permitted in the city. The height of a proposed 50-foot high monopole antenna with a 20-foot whip extension at the new fire station located in the part of Malibu that extends into Ventura County was challenged earlier this year. The fire department was forced to lower the antenna by 20 feet because it allegedly blocked the primary view of residents.
The third and final public meeting on the school’s measure BB improvement plan, which will focus on design and sustainability, will be held on Tuesday, Jan. 27, at 6:30 p.m. in the school auditorium. Information on the plan is available at the district Web site: www.smmusd.org.

Mayor’s Gavel Automatically Changes Hands at Next City Council Meeting

• Largely Ceremonial Post Stirred Controversy Last Year

BY BILL KOENEKER

It may seem strange to some casual Malibu City Hall observers that the rotation of mayoral duties is taking place next week, which is less than a year after the current mayor, Pamela Conley Ulich, was installed.
However, the reasons for the shortened term can be found in the minutes of a meeting that took place in April of last year, when it appeared there would be a mayoral succession crisis if some unusual action wasn’t taken to prevent possible fireworks.
Prior to that April meeting, it seemed that Councilmember Andy Stern, who will be handed the mayoral gavel next week, and Conley Ulich were quietly battling for the top post behind the scenes, and the dispute had the potential to become acrimonious.
The largely ceremonial position had become the focus of controversy because Conley Ulich, who was the top vote-getter in the city council election in April was prepairing to take over mayoral duties because of her high vote count. The position is normally rotated between council members on a yearly basis.
At the same time, Stern who was the mayor pro tem at the time, thought he was assuming the post and that the action was not related to election numbers.
However, a showdown, which ostensibly had been brewing for weeks, was averted when Councilmember Sharon Barovsky threw out an olive branch to both parties and came up with the plan now in place that made both of the council members happy.
A crowd that had gathered in the council chambers to debate for one side or the other was stopped cold.
Barovsky suggested a policy that was unanimously approved by the council—to have each council member serve as mayor for 9.6 months, starting with Conley Ulich, instead of the customary one-year term. Stern would succeed Conley Ulich for 9.6 months, and then Barovsky offered to serve a shortened term of only 4.8 months and that would put the council on track on a continuous 9.6 month term, which was designed to remain in effect for succeeding councils.
In the aftermath, some called it a compromise that was self-sacrificing, while others said it was politically savvy to prevent any sort of crisis. Still others called it a political retreat, but whatever the spin, it took the focus off the conflict and, in its own small way, changed municipal history as will be evident at next week’s city council reorganization meeting.

Publisher’s Notebook

• Another Wake-Up Call •

ANNE SOBLE

The current debate about the extent of controlled substance use, whether illegal, or prescription, drugs, or alcohol, among students at Malibu High School, is another example of the old proverb that no matter how things change, they remain the same. The drug concerns of 2009 existed in the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s, according to parents who had children in local schools during those years, myself included.
One of the most focused of community efforts addressing the complex issue of young people and drug use followed the mid-1970s death of a Malibu Park Junior High School student (Malibu High did not exist then) who walked into the surf off Zuma Beach while high on Quaaludes, the drug of choice for the junior high crowd in the ’70s and ’80s, and drowned. ’Ludes were relatively inexpensive, often sold individually on campus or shared for free, and, along with so-called uppers and downers in a rainbow pharmaecopia, were in line with Malibu’s economic demographics at the time—middle class families that bought their homes in Malibu Park and on Point Dume for about $40,000 to $50,000.
The youth’s death led to the creation of a project that had all the signs of becoming an excellent means to help young people deal with the complexity of adolescent angst, peer pressure, family and school issues, and all the factors that go into making the junior high years so difficult for even the most level-headed student. The parents who volunteered for this ambitious effort were an exceptional group of residents who poured their hearts into the project, and for about two or so years, the community rallied behind it.
Then the memory of the lone youth lost to the waves dimmed, and people started to sound like some of the current parents sound. “We really don’t have a problem.” “It’s just one or two kids, not mine.” “Stop criticizing our school.” The project ultimately fell by the wayside.
The current discussion about drug use has brought some important local concerns out into the open. Although I think the first line of defense against drug use is the family, anyone minimizing the importance of peer pressure doesn’t appreciate the adolescent longing to fit in and have friends, even if those “friends” have only their own interests (and possibly, wallets) at heart.
The current acrimonious exchange should give way to a willingness to listen and learn what is really going on. Parents concerned about drug use are not anti-Malibu High. Those who want to sweep the issue under the rug are the real adversaries of a healthy campus where the emphasis is on learning because students think it’s cooler to get ready for life, than it is to risk it. Parents who want to squelch open discussion of drug issues do a disservice to all children, most especially their own.

Woodside Scraps Plans for OceanWay LNG Project

• Subsidiary of Australia’s Second Largest Energy Producer to Close Local Office on Feb. 28

BY ANNE SOBLE

Woodside Natural Gas, a subsidiary of Woodside, the second largest energy producer in Australia, announced last week that it is terminating work on its proposed liquefied natural gas deepwater port project off the Southern California coast.
Although the company’s announcement said the project, named OceanWay, was suspended, most energy observers view it as dead. A Woodside spokesperson told the Malibu Surfside News that the company’s local offices will be shuttered at the end of February.
The termination statement followed Woodside’s decision at the end of last year to downsize the project, citing community and regulatory concerns, and weaker customer demand.
Woodside Natural Gas president Steve Larson told The News that the current energy market conditions are not right for the proposed development.
Larson said, “We have no complaint with the regulatory process. We embraced it and were committed to insuring our project was fully in the public interest. Indeed, we designed it with California’s environmental values in mind.”
Larson said, “We still believe in California and in the L.A. region in particular. Natural gas is going to be part of the clean air solution, and we expect to play a role in helping to bring forward additional, lower cost supply.”
As soon as Woodside’s plans were announced, project critics, including the small Westside group, No Way on OceanWay, whose Web site is maintained by the Santa Monica Baykeeper, danced on its grave.
But Woodside officials said there was as much as support as opposition at this early stage of the OceanWay permitting process, and the international economy is what sounded the project’s death knell.
Laura Doll, WNG vice president of governmental and public affairs, told The News, “Contrary to what others may claim, our decision to suspend the project for the time being is based solely on dramatic changes in the global market, not anything else. Anyone who is paying attention to events in the world right now understands that severe market changes are forcing many businesses to make difficult but necessary decisions to delay or defer major investment projects.”
Doll added, “We are proud of the level of support our project had already engendered and were confident that the ultimate review would confirm that OceanWay offered a truly safe and clean alternative source of energy for Southern California.”
WNG had steadfastly expressed confidence that OceanWay would have received the necessary approvals. Company officials did not view seismic safety issues raised by the U.S. Geological Services in a report last November as insurmountable concerns.
The OceanWay project design includes an offshore buoy system to receive liquefied natural gas by tanker that had to be submitted to the U.S. Coast Guard for a deepwater port license and to the City of Los Angeles for a pipeline franchise.
LNG is natural gas chilled to liquid form for transportation by tanker to destinations not directly connected by pipeline.
The project was undergoing a comprehensive environmental and safety review process that would have resulted in a number of public hearings.
When first proposed, market conditions were interpreted to warrant a SoCal LNG facility providing as much as 15 percent of California’s annual gas. However, recent conditions indicate a glut of natural gas supplies in this county and zero-to-little need for import into the state.
Estimates on how much the OceanWay effort cost the parent company that has a full plate of development projects in Australia are not yet available, but the firm is reported to have spent large sums on lobbying for the project.
Still, the Australian Woodside, one-third owned by Royal Dutch Shell, said it wouldn’t rule out a possible resurrection of the project if the market changes.
Australia’s largest energy behemoth, BHP Billiton, dropped its Cabrillo Port proposal off the Malibu coast in 2007 after well-organized-and-funded opposition from area residents and environmental groups.

Week of Santa Ana Winds Keeps Malibu on Red Flag Alert

• Extra Fire Department Crews and Equipment Bivouacked in Area for an Immediate Response

BY ANNE SOBLE

What was first announced by weather forecasters as a two-day Santa Ana event stretched into a three-day event, then a four-day event, then a week-long bout of the powerful northeast winds that left the Malibu landscape parched and local residents’ nerves frayed, as a red flag wildfire alert remained in effect throughout.
The skies may have been robin’s egg blue and the warm sunshine deceptively lulling, but extra Los Angeles County firefighting personnel and equipment were on hand as brush-covered hillsides baked in high temperatures and low humidity.
Other than a small grass fire on property near the corner of Trancas Canyon Road and Pacific Coast Highway on Saturday, there were no reports of anything requiring a formal response.
The red flag warning issued by the National Weather Service for Los Angeles and Ventura counties followed the lead of the meteorological reports. What started as a two-day wildfire alert turned into ongoing red flag status.
Temperatures reached the high 80s, which may have been the envy of Midwesterners coping with readings in the low teens, but they did not bode well when coupled with humidity numbers that veered toward single digit.
As for the Santa Ana winds, they either hissed like a giant serpent, or rumbled like a 30-car freight train, through the local canyons. Gusts as high as 72 mph were reported in the Malibu hills.
The winds dropped to the 30-mph-range intermittently, then would ratchet up to double that. Drivers on Pacific Coast Highway had to hold onto their steering wheels on open stretches where the wind blew strongest.
Fire officials announced at the start of the Santa Anas that Malibu has already dried out from the previous weeks’ rainfall, and the fire danger is now as critical as it was before the December storms.
The National Weather Service office in Oxnard kept releasing around-the-clock information about local weather conditions in coordination with Los Angeles County fire officials, who had moved extra strike teams made up of five engine crews and a battalion chief into Malibu and surrounding areas as a precaution.
Many areas of Malibu, especially at the western end, have not burned since 1993 or earlier, and these are viewed by the L.A. County Fire Department as the area’s paramount danger zones.

Latest Trancas Condo Plans Vetoed

• Planning Commissioners Recommend EIR over LCPA

BY BILL KOENEKER

A proposal that would include carving out an open space buffer in an area where condominiums would be built along Trancas Canyon Road was rebuffed by the Malibu Planning Commission last week.
The planning panel, with Commissioner Regan Schaar absent, unanimously recommended the city council deny a request for a Local Coastal Program amendment that would designate currently zoned RR-5 land to public open space and multifamily dwellings for a vacant 35-acre parcel that has been the focus of development schemes even before the city was incorporated.
Instead, the commissioners recommended the city council direct the applicant to return with an Environmental Impact Report spelling out a specific project description, including a clean water element, affordable housing, open space and density limitations.
The applicant unsuccessfully sought the commissioners’ thumbs up for a zone change designating 7.61 acres of the property as multifamily and the remaining 27.58 acres as open space.
In a somewhat unusual approach, the panelists said what they would vote for and how they wanted the matter handled before they heard any public comment. Chair Joan House took the lead:
“I do take this property very seriously. We heard about a wastewater treatment plant, heard about affordable housing, heard about open space. The property is large enough to have an Environmental Impact Report. We have a piecemeal proposal. I would not make a recommendation [for the proposed zoning change]. I would have us deny the application, but move forward for a full EIR, spell out clean water and spell out housing affordability,” said House.
Commissioner Jeff Jennings agreed. “This case has had a long history. So many proposals have been put forward. The mistake with me is with this application. I would rather see a full EIR and what the proposal would look like. There is a lot of merit in what is being proposed here. Instead of large lots, the [dwellings] are clustered. I can’t say I will vote for it. We have heard the same arguments over and over again. We seriously need to look at clustering. This application should not be heard tonight,” Jennings added.
Commissioner Ed Gillespie said he believed the project is viable, but agreed it needed an EIR.
Commissioner John Mazza, at the beginning of the meeting, said he did not believe the request should be heard because he thought that it was illegal to zone private land for open space.
“I do not think we can consider this project. The fatal flaw is asking for a recommendation for open space for private land. We are not allowed to do that,” he said.
Assistant City Attorney Greg Kovacevich said the issue might be one for debate, but was not a reason to not have a public hearing.
Later, when Mazza spoke, he insisted the request was more of a development agreement. “If it is such, it has to go to a vote of the people,” he noted, adding that the portion of property that would be dedicated as open space is unbuildable.
“What benefit does the city have in accepting a donation of land that is not buildable?” he asked.
Mazza said he was also concerned about the developer’s approach to offering a sewer system. “I’ll give you a sewer if you give me more density. The sewer system is not a necessity,” Mazza said.
The latest proposal was an effort to try another approach after a failed attempt several years ago between the city and the developer to craft a development agreement to build the condos in exchange for a donation of open space as ball fields.
The offer this time is for open space rather than sports fields and a sewer system that would service Broad Beach properties.
During public testimony, a consulting engineer to the developer explained in more detail the proposed wastewater system that was not actually on the agenda since the applicants were only seeking a zone change.
The basic conceptual plan is to collect sewage along Broad Beach Road from about 80 homes, eliminating the septic systems. A pipeline would send the wastewater to a plant that would treat water to a tertiary level, leaving the effluent available for discharge to irrigate landscaping on the project and other properties.
He said the system, which would also serve 32 condos, would remove 28 million gallons per year from Broad Beach systems and offer 22 million gallons per year of recycled water.
However, many of the west Malibu and Malibu West residents who testified weren’t swayed by such an offer and insisted the developer should only be allowed to build the seven homes that are zoned for the property.
“Everybody is fine with seven houses,” said neighbor Steve Hotchkiss..
Lucille Keller, who spoke on behalf of the Malibu Township Council, said the rezoning to allow multifamily dwellings only served the purpose of lining the developers’ pockets with profits. She said even seven houses would offer the developer a tidy profit.
But as an indicator of how high the stakes are for the developer, some commissioners indicated they got phone calls from former Gov. Gray Davis, who tried to lobby them on behalf of the applicant’s proposal.

Malibu Park School Traffic Critics Seek Backup from the City

• Among Options under Consideration Is Suggestion Students Park in Zuma Beach Lot

BY SUZANNE GULDIMANN

The recently formed group called the Malibu Park Safety Coalition brought its concerns about traffic and safety at the Malibu Park area’s schools to a joint session of the City of Malibu’s five-member public safety commission and the city council’s public safety subcommittee last week.
Malibu Park resident Marshall Thompson called the Malibu High School Measure BB improvement plan, which includes traffic studies and a number of traffic improvement options, “a unique opportunity” to fix the long-standing traffic and safety issues at the school campus. “Now is the time when we can address safety, parking, and emergency access. I urge you to do the right thing,” he said.
Expecting lengthy testimony, commission chair Carol Randall told the speakers, “I urge you not to repeat.”
Steve Scheinkman, who lives across from the school on Morning View Drive, thanked the commission for endorsing MPSC’s position paper at its previous meeting. The group’s paper included a number of possible short-term solutions, including limiting parking on Morning View, to attempt to reduce what Sheinkman described as the “chronic dangers” of traffic congestion at the campus.
Sheinkman said he was optimistic that the school district’s Measure BB improvement plan for the high school campus has the potential to eventually remedy the situation, but expressed concern that any Measure BB funded improvements may be at least four years away.
“Everyone who has shown up [at the Measure BB improvement plan meetings] confirms that there is a safety problem,” Sheinkman said. “The city passed a program years ago that was never implemented. School officials, law enforcement, residents, parents, I don’t know what we need to do to move this forward. The school and the commission are trying to work together, however, it will be another four years. We need to have action today.”
Sheinkman urged the city council public safety subcommittee members, Councilmember Sharon Barovsky and Mayor Pamela Conley Ulich, to adopt MPSC’s proposal and to take immediate action.
“This is a recap,” Randall told Sheinkman. “The city can’t do anything. This is an information gathering meeting.”
“I know the frustration and have heard it for a long, long time,” Barovsky said. “I want the homeowners to understand what we can actually do.”
“Every high school and many middle schools have this problem,” City Manager Jim Thorsen stated. “Our emphasis is to work with the district and come up with a solution.”
“The 1998 plan, I’m disappointed that this was never implemented,” Conley Ulich told the commission.
“Every time I run by Zuma Beach in the morning, the parking lot is empty,” the mayor told the commission. “Why are we putting in a new parking lot when we have one that’s empty? I think this could be a short-term solution. The biggest complaint is carrying books. Guess what? It makes us all stronger.”
“That was one of the issues that was brought up at the meeting [with the school district’s traffic consultant], Randall said. “My only concern, I get really nervous when kids are crossing PCH.”
“The school has a number of programs where they take kids to walk on the beach,” Sheinkman said, describing how he has seen classes regularly crossing PCH to the beach during school hours.
“It’s already happening,” agreed Conley Ulich.
“They won’t ratify the EIR, unless the plans are safe,” Commissioner Marlene Matlow said.
“The EIR goes to planning. Recommendations will be made,” Thorsen added, explaining that both the environmental impact report and the conditional use permit will to be issued by the city, providing a greater measure of local control.
“I think we are in a really good place to do something,” Commissioner Rick Mullen said. “These citizens have done our work for us. This is the time to get what they need.”
“There’s no one in this room who doesn’t agree it’s a problem,” Randall said.
“We can cajole, we can make their life hell, but we can’t actually dictate to them,” Barovsky cautioned

Possible Ordinance on Parental Liability for Student Drug Usage Explored by City Panel

• Letters Exchange Leads to Open Discusssion of Drugs on Campus

BY SUZANNE GULDIMANN

A letter to the editor published in the Jan.1 edition of the Malibu Surfside News that expressed concerns about student drug use at Malibu Park High School has attracted the attention of the City of Malibu’s public safety commission. At a joint meeting with the city council’s public safety committee, the commission discussed the possibility of enacting an ordinance that would make parents liable for their children’s alcohol or drug use.
The letter, written by parents Sandy and Harriet Helberg, stated that students buy and sell drugs on campus “as if it were an open market,” and that the school lacks an adequate security presence. “Police and volunteer parents, as well as surveillance cameras are needed on campus, not more palm trees,” the Helbergs wrote. “Malibu High receives funding that is being used to add curb appeal, parking lots and new staff offices. How about using the funds and donations to protect our kids and keep them safe?”
The commission asked Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station Sergeant. Philip Brooks, who attended the meeting, if drugs are a problem at the school. Brooks replied yes, adding that “It’s a problem at all schools.”
Brooks said that medical marijuana cards have recently become popular with students. “Anyone can get a card,” he said, describing how a sheriff’s deputy recently applied for and received a card on line, The process, Brooks said, “took about an hour.” .
“Law enforcement can only do so much,” added Malibu/Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station Malibu liaison Lieutenant Debra Glafkides, who was also present at the meeting. She called student drug use “an epidemic throughout county and state. It’s an issue ,and it’s becoming a bigger issue. Law enforcement is only a small part of it,” she said.
“All 10 cities in Ventura recently passed legislation [to make parents accountable],” Mike Matthews, the assistant to the city manager, told the commission.
“If all of Ventura has, then this city should consider an ordinance,” commissioner Marlene Matlow stated.
“I think that’s hysterical,” commission chair Carol Randall said sardonically. “Malibu parents responsible for students?”
A letter refuting the statements made by the Helbergs was written to The News by MHS PTA president Sandy Thacker and printed in the Jan. 8 issue. Thacker outlined the drug and alcohol related programs at the school, which include a program called “Angels at Risk” and drug and alcohol education presented together with the Lost Hill’s Sheriff’s Station, has implemented.
Thacker stated in her letter that MHS “is at the top of the list” in drug prevention outreach.
An informal survey of students, former students, parents and family members conducted by The News revealed that the majority of participants perceive drug abuse as a continuing problem at the campus. Longtime residents and school alumni recounted a long history of drug-related issues at the school, dating back to the ’60s,’70s and ’80s, when the school was a junior high.
“Drugs have always been a problem. This isn’t new,” a school alumnus told The News.
“We need to shed light on this crisis in our “little paradise,” the Helberg’s letter concluded.
“The job of prevention, intervention and responsibility begins at home,” countered Thacker’s letter.
“The symptoms are clear, but you have to pay attention,” Glafkades told the public safety commission.

Council Agrees to Spend on Plans for Civic Center Wastewater Plant

• Members Respond to Strong Criticism about Inaction

BY BILL KOENEKER

The Malibu City Council this week agreed to spend nearly $2.6 million for final designs and documents for a Civic Center centralized wastewater treatment system, but not without complaint from some council members that now was not the time to part with the funds.
The on-again, off-again financing for the treatment system plans has been stalled since last October when council members decided the city’s uncertain shaky financial situation did not warrant spending the money.
“How can we do this without a [having determined a treatment plant] location?” asked Councilmember Sharon Barovsky.
City Manager Jim Thorsen explained that much of the work could be done without a specific location for a treatment facility. Thorsen also said the commitment of money for the task would send a message to environmental groups and state agencies that have been clamoring for the city to take immediate action that would lead to building a centralized wastewater plant for the Civic Center.
“We don’t have 100 percent, but we are putting our money where our mouth is,” the city managere said.
However, Barovsky and others complained those very groups seemed to consistently shift their opinions on a specific location.
“First, we said Legacy Park and they screamed about that. Then, we said La Paz and the Baykeeper is suing us,” said Barovsky.
Councilmember Jefferson Wagner expressed concern whether the city could retrieve those funds once a plant is built and an assessment district is set up to handle the financial aspects of upkeep and maintenance.
“We can bill the costs to the assessment district. We are trying to do the right thing,” Thorsen said.
“There are no guarantees,” said Councilmember John Sibert. “There are no guarantees of an assessment district. There are no guarantees that we can reach an agreement with environmental groups, but I think we can,” Sibert added.
“The environmental studies are independent of a site. I am willing to take the risk, as a lot of it is not site specific,” Sibert said.
“We are assuming we will have the property in the near future. We could get a final design done and an Environmental Impact Report, but no site. But it is not a waste of money. The plans and environmental review are still viable,” said the city manager.
“We want to have clean water. Everybody on the council wants that. We are putting our money where our mouth is,” said Mayor Pamela Conley Ulich, echoing the city manager’s comment. “We are trying to do the wastewater component because it is the right thing to do, so we can stop spending money on lawyers.”
Two years ago, after purchasing the Chili Cook-Off property that is now the site of Legacy Park, the council hired RMC Water and Environment to begin the preliminary studies for what was, and still is, called the Malibu Civic Center Integrated Water Quality Management Plan.
By December 2007, the council had upped the ante to over $2.5 million for the consultants to continue final designs and environmental studies for the work on stormwater improvements, which continued to move forward.
The current amendment to the contract would bring the total fees for RMC to over $5.1 million.

Accident Closes PCH Monday Evening

• Fatality at Puerco Canyon Is Still under Investigation

BY ANNE SOBLE

The Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station issued a statement this week with the official specifics on a fatal traffic accident that closed westbound Pacific Coast Highway for over two hours on Monday night.
A Maryland man reportedly died at the scene when his rented 2009 Chevrolet SUV collided with a 1983 Mercedes-Benz driven by a 17-year-old Malibu High School student, whose name is not published because she is a minor.
The female driver, who resides in Malibu, was described as having made “a right turn in front of” Terry King, 50, on westbound PCH at Puerco Canyon Road at about 7:50 p.m.
Sheriff’s Sgt. Philip Brooks, the traffic liaison at Lost Hills, said the MHS student was driving in the number one lane and King was in the number two lane, when the girl turned onto Puerco, and the man’s vehicle collided with her car, causing the solo driver’s SUV to flip upside down and strike concrete-filled steel poles protecting a fire hydrant.
The impact resulted in major blunt force trauma to King, who was killed instantly.
The Lost Hills statement indicates that the teen was not cited or arrested at the scene. An investigation is underway to determine whether any charges will be filed.
A 17-year-old girl, also a Malibu High student, was a passenger in the Mercedes. The pair were reportedly on their way to what was described as a “party/movie” at a home belonging to entertainer and longtime local resident Cher that is located across Pacific Coast Highway from the crash site.
Brooks said neither of the girls appeared to have been injured.

Publisher’s Notebook

• A Bad Case of Santa Anas •

ANNE SOBLE

It’s now Day Six of one of the longest Santa Ana wind events in recent memory, and people are showing the signs of its adverse effects. Red eyes, parched skin, scratchy throats, nosebleeds and general irritability and malaise are just a few of the signs of membership in the society of Santa Ana sufferers. One and two-day bouts of the “devil winds” are bad enough, but a week (or longer) of them may be more than mere mortals can handle.
That the fire danger is as high as it now is means that many of us startle every time we hear a vehicle siren. Some sort of perverse socio-psychological response is involved when one is relieved to learn that the sound was an ambulance checking out a possible cardiac arrest, as opposed to a fire crew heading to the breakout of flames.
The same kind of reflex may be at work when one is rankled by homogenized news readers waxing poetic about the blue skies and record high temperatures we are experiencing. Do these people really not appreciate the reason additional firefighting personnel and equipment have been stationed in and around Malibu? Every time one of the 60-to-70 mile an hour gusts whooshes down a canyon to the sea, the realization of what would happen if it was pushing flying embers ahead of it is sobering.
Malibuites have to live with the paradox that they need the rains to reduce the wildfire danger, but that same rain adds to the potential fuel supply. The good done by the recent rainstorms has already been undone by the winds. Whatever good the storms did for the groundwater supply is irrelevant, if flames break out anywhere in the community.
All we can do until the winds subside is keep our brush cut back, make certain our ornamental landscaping is not fire conducive, use copious amounts of eye drops, and gargle often enough to help protect shredded throat linings from more damage.
The simplest response would be to follow the lead of most cats and dogs and find cool, dark places, indoors or out, to lie low while the winds are at their loudest and strongest. But since most of us have lives that take us outdoors, if only to go from here to there and back, we have to grit our teeth and brave the elements.
Perhaps local boutiques should start featuring the long robes and head scarves of Bedouin nomads as the hot new look for Malibu fashionistas.

Pelican Watch in Effect: Dead and Sick Birds Cause Alarm

• Avians Rehabbers Await Test Results — Need Funds to Help Ill Birds that Can Be Saved

BY ANNE SOBLE

A larger than normal die-off of adult brown pelicans is being recorded in Southern California. Avian experts and rehabbers also note increased instances of ill and disoriented pelicans, including birds landing inland, being found in residential areas, colliding with vehicles on roads, and wandering onto airport runways.
They say this disorientation indicates that something is seriously wrong with these birds, possibly of a neurological nature.
The reports of increased numbers of pelicans becoming disoriented and falling ill come from as far north as Humboldt and as far south as Baja. A few local birds also have now been reported, according to the California Wildlife Center.
Sick birds from along the Southland coast that are able to be transported are being taken to the International Bird Rescue Research Center in San Pedro, which specializes in their care.
“As wildlife rehabilitators, we’re often the first people to see a trend developing. We’re the first to notice unusual behavior or illnesses in a population because we’re on the front lines, receiving calls from the public. So, with these pelicans, we know something is going on, we’re just not sure what it is,” said Jay Holcomb, the executive director of the IBRRC.
“This type of disorientation in adult pelicans is something we’d see during a domoic acid outbreak, but we have yet to see them exhibiting the other common symptoms,” Holcomb added.
Last Thursday, IBRRC received results from initial tests that indicate some levels of domoic acid in the pelicans. Although three out of the six birds tested positive for DA, experts cannot definitively conclude that the neurotoxin is the primary cause of the widespread illness.
Samples of phytoplankton collected recently from the waters off Santa Barbara to Newport Beach were also tested, with five out of the 14 samples indicating low concentrations of domoic acid.
These are the first of many test results expected, according to the group. Additional blood and tissue samples are being tested, and IBRRC anticipates more information within the next two weeks.
“We are very appreciative of the rapid test results from the Dave Caron Lab at USC. We believe these results are significant, but do not explain all the signs we are seeing in the pelicans. We are seeing a number of conditions that are not typical of domoic acid toxicity, or a domoic acid event. Therefore, we are continuing to collect and test samples, keeping an open mind and considering all possibilities,” said Heather Nevill, IBRRC’s veterinarian.
Adding to the concern of the nonprofit group is the expense of caring for the large birds. Holcomb said, “Last year’s figure is staggering. It cost the San Pedro center over $30,000 to feed the pelicans it saw through rehabilitation in 2008.”
Starting 2009 off with 40 pelicans under treatment, and more being admitted daily, the organization worries about its ability to treat them all.
“We will not be able to care for all of these birds unless we receive the financial support to do so,” Holcomb said. “We’re relying on contributions from the public to help see these birds through recovery.”
Becoming a Pelican Partner is one way a group or individual can assist financially, as well as become personally involved in a pelican’s care and release.
IBRRC also hopes to encourage schools to take part in the effort with its new Classroom Partners adoption program. For $300, a class of students can facilitate a specific bird’s release back into the wild.
Those interested in contributing to the cost of caring for the pelicans during the health crisis can send checks to IBRRC, P. O. Box 2816, San Pedro, CA 90731. Donations also can be made online.
For information about volunteering, contact the center at 310-514-2573.
Report sickly pelicans to the California Wildlife Center at 310-458-WILD, or 818-591-9453. In Ventura County, contact Karen Hughes at 805-479-8965. South of Malibu, report to Marine Animal Rescue at 800-39-WHALE.
To report dead pelicans, use the toll-free California Wildlife Hotline 866-WILD-911, option 2.
More information is available at www.ibrrc.org

Existing Pot Pharmacy Applies for Permit

BY BILL KOENEKER

The Malibu Planning Commission is being asked at its meeting next week to approve a permit for a medical marijuana dispensary.
Last summer, the city council adopted an ordinance to allow the pot pharmacies as a conditionally permitted use in all commercial zones.
Previous to that, the municipality had enacted a moratorium, after it discovered there were two facilities in the city, but Malibu had no zoning regulations to deal with the stores.
The owners of PCH Collective are seeking a Conditional Use Permit to permit the operations of the pot pharmacy, which has been doing business in Malibu for several years.
PCH Collective has been operating within the vicinity of its existing location for over two years.
Planners say no complaints from the public have been reported or observed by the city code enforcement at the current or previous location.
The issue caused some debate when both the planning commission and the city council previously heard whether to establish a law allowing such facilities and how many in the city could be allowed. No more than three in the city would be allowed, council members decided, and the procedure would include getting a CUP from the city.
When the issue was heard by planning panelists and the council, many clients and medical marijuana advocates came to council chambers to sing the praises of the drug and also of PCH Collective with some patients begging city officials to not prohibit pot pharmacies in Malibu.
Planners indicate PCH Collective has met all the requirements and conditions imposed by municipal officials.
“According to PCH Collective’s patient records, over 1000 patients are within the 90265 zip code. The proposed use is most similar to that of a medical office and, as conditioned, is a neighborhood-serving enterprise consistent with the goals, objectives and policies of the General Plan,” wrote Associate Planner Ha Ly, in a staff report to commissioners.
All patients are required to show an original, licensed, physician-issued recommendation or Los Angeles Department of Public Health issued medical marijuana identification card before access is granted to the dispensary. No consumption of marijuana, alcohol or tobacco is allowed on site. No onsite consumption of food is permitted with the exception of staff employees eating lunch.
In the memo to commissioners, the planner explained the dispensary has 16 security cameras and a full-time onsite security guard.
The applicant does not store more than $200 in cash reserves overnight on the premises, which is a condition of approval by the city. That no minors are allowed on the premises and no sales to minors can be made are some of the conditions imposed upon the business, according to municipal documents.

MSN Goes to the Movies: Dogs Have Their Day at the Golden Globes

BY JEREMY WALKER

BURNING GOLDEN GLOBE QUESTIONS – Did the show’s producers purposefully seat a freaked-out Sally “Happy-Go-Lucky” Hawkins in Alaska so as to siphon her approach to the podium through a gauntlet of Hollywood royalty? When she finally arrived, she arrived, her Best Actress/Comedy or Musical win seeming more like a coronation …Whose idea was it to ask Tom Brokaw to introduce the clip for Best Picture nominee “Frost/Nixon”? Was David Frost unavailable?...How much will ultra-cool Bruce Springsteen’s win for “The Wrestler” contribute to the overall narrative driving Mickey Rourke’s now very real Best Actor campaign?...Do Globes for screenplay, score, director, picture mean a “Slumdog” sweep at the Oscars? I don’t think it was by accident that we kept hearing about what the victories would mean back in Mumbai, which could use some good old fashioned Hollywood love. The Oscars are, after all, a global event.

SUNDANCUS INTERRUPTUS – The latest edition of the film festival Robert Redford founded 25 years ago begins this week, a Darwinian orgy of the newest independent cinema that asks the industry and the journalists that cover it to press “pause” on obsessing over the best of 2008 and to focus for 10 days on the newest of 2009. Enterprising distributors will try to root out the handful of titles able to demonstrate commercial potential against the bulk of the program that, frankly, won’t. Oscar-winner (for Redford’s 1980 masterpiece “Ordinary People”) and Malibu native Timothy Hutton appears in three Sundance ’09 films, while another localneighbor, Pierce Brosnan, will be in Park City to support “The Greatest,” which he stars in and also produced.

Based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis, “The Informers” is a new film fortunate to enjoy a world premiere at Sundance with a domestic distribution deal already in place. Senator Films, whose new president of distribution, Mark Urman, is a festival veteran, will open the movie in New York and LA theatres on April 10. As he did in 2000 with the intrinsically controversial “American Psycho,” Urman is essentially treating the Sundance premiere of “The Informers” as the movie’s first press screening. The stakes are high: as it is easy for any film to fail very publicly in Park City.

If you consider the three big-screen adaptations of novels by Ellis, “Less Than Zero” (more a grab-bag of missed opportunities than a movie), “American Psycho” (essential contemporary American independent cinema) and “The Rules of Attraction” (great soundtrack, weirdly sexy, low-profile cast, troubled, Oscar-winning director), and then look at “The Informers,” you’ll notice the opening credit sequence of the most recent film is the only one that actually bears Ellis’ name as a screenwriter, a credit he shares with Nicholas Jarecki. As with many great Hollywood stories, “The Informers” is set partially in Malibu, so we’ll keep a particularly close eye on it. Could “The Informers” prove to be the important period film that has so far eluded West Coast Generation X? We’ll all know a lot more next week.

In the meantime, if you haven’t seen “American Psycho,” you must, in this order, hit the Netflix, send the kids to grandma’s, power up the plasma, pour yourself a “fine Chardonnay” and watch Christian Bale let ’er rip.

PET PROJECT – Ellen Kuras is the only person to have won the Best Cinematographer prize at Sundance three times. For the last 23 years, between working on other directors’ films, she made her own, which premiered to great acclaim at Sundance last year and is just opening now at Laemmle’s Music Hall in order to capitalize on a likely Oscar nomination for Best Documentary. Lovingly, heartbreakingly made with subject and co-director Thavisouk Phrasavath, “The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) is an unforgettable look at one Laotian family’s survival of personal and political abandonment as they move from their war-torn native country to Brooklyn. Like Golden Globe winner “Waltz With Bashir,” “The Betrayal” is a bright, hard reminder of how war can utterly erase individual identity unless its victims are willing to engage in a wholly new fight to preserve it. It’s also a reminder that besides hosting a great festival, the Sundance Institute also nurtures important films and filmmakers like “The Betrayal” and Kuras, support that is today more vital than ever.

Trancas Riders & Ropers to Hold Annual Election

Trancas Riders and Ropers, one of the oldest community organizations in Malibu, will hold its annual general election meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 14.
Bonnie Decker, whose family name is synonymous with TR&R’s decades-long history, is challenging the current president of the group, Rod Bergen.
Decker’s grandfather, Perc Meek, helped start the equestrian group and served as president several times. Decker’s grandmother, Rose Meek, served on the board of directors, and Decker’s mother, Millie Decker, was TR&R’s first woman president.
Emphasizing her own long association with the club, Bonnie Decker said, “Over the past 30 years, I have helped organize the horse fair, dressage shows, English shows, jumper shows, overnight rides, the Cup Ride and our annual breakfast trail ride.”
Decker expressed concern that a number of these events have not put on for several years, and she said she wants “to bring some of these family-involved events back to our community and club.”
Bergen has been the head of the organization for the last five years, and says he has been a member for at least 25 years.
He noted that he steered the club into its current association with the City of Malibu in the late 1990s. TR&R partners with the city on the use and upkeep of the municipal equestrian center located in Malibu Park.
Bergen said he understands Decker’s concerns about the direction of the club, but counters that TR&R has changed. “It is not so much western [now]. It is more about English riding,” he said.
“I agree with [Decker], but we have had problems trying to get folks to come to some of those events, only the organizers showed up. We have gotten away from the ropers and have more of the riders,” he said.
“I can remember when there were four riding clubs in Malibu, There are fewer horses now. It used to be all western riders,” Bergen added.
The election meeting is set for 7:30 p.m. in the Landon Center at Malibu Bluffs Park.
—Bill Koeneker

Legacy Park Plans Are Ready for Their Municipal Close-Up

• Lack of Wastewater Plant Criticized

BY BILL KOENEKER

It will be the big moment for Malibu municipal officials when plans and permits sought for its Legacy Park are aired before the city’s planning commission at a special meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 21, at 4 p.m.
At that time, the planning panel will consider an application for the construction of a public park and various other improvements, such as components for a stormwater treatment system, including a holding pond.
The commission is being asked to certify the Final Environmental Impact Report and grant a coastal permit, conditional use permit and variance for the 15-acre site within the Civic Center area.
The plans for the park, including a bridge, trails, accessory structures and habitat restoration, have generated little controversy within the Malibu community, but have been met with fierce resistance from outside environmental groups and some government agencies.
One of the most vociferous critics is Mark Gold, the head of Heal the Bay, who was on the city’s Legacy Park Technical Advisory Committee. Gold only recently publicly parted ways with the city on the park when it became clear that municipal officials were moving forward with utilizing the park for stormwater treatment and wastewater disposal for its lumberyard shopping center, but was putting Civic Center wastewater treatment on the back burner.
“I sit on the city’s committee and we had numerous meetings over the last two years that focused on a new sewage treatment/water recycling plant for the city. Unfortunately, despite opposition from the environmental community, the final EIR for Legacy Park did not include an analysis for the proposed central water recycling plant. I’ve been at half a dozen meetings where City Manager Jim Thorsen made it clear that the city was planning to build the Civic Center water recycling plant by 2011. But Malibu’s omission of that facility in the Legacy Park EIR and subsequent failure to release any sort of action plan to build the facility does not bode well for a comprehensive solution to Malibu’s many water quality problems,” Gold wrote in a blog he calls Spouting Off.
The plans for the Legacy Park were originally conceived as an integrated wastewater and stormwater management system, until the city moved in another direction. The plan today is still called the Malibu Civic Center Integrated Water Quality Management Plan.
Municipal officials have argued they have the means and the money to proceed with the stormwater portion of the plans, but would have to wait for years to complete and construct an integrated plan, including a wastewater treatment plant. The city council is expected next week to allocate over $2.5 million for design plans for a treatment plant.
It wasn’t until the final EIR for Legacy Park was released that Gold and others went public with their complaints. “At this point, the environmental and surfing communities have lost all patience on the issue. The Surfrider Foundation, Malibu Surfing Association, Santa Monica Baykeeper and Heal the Bay have met numerous times in the last few months to initiate a ‘Save the Bu’ campaign. We all agree that there should be a wastewater system moratorium in the Civic Center area until Malibu comes up with a legally binding plan for the centralized water recycling facility,” Gold added. He later addressed those same comments to the planning commission, the city council and later to the Regional Water Quality Control Board.
While Gold and Heal the Bay have tried persuasion, their colleagues at the Baykeeper have been somewhat more forceful and initiated legal action against the city on several fronts—litigation alleging the city has violated the Clean Water Act and a lawsuit asking a judge to set aside the city’s approvals of the La Paz shopping center because of concerns for the potential pollution of groundwater in the Civic Center.
Gold has written that he thinks the city’s priorities may have taken a turn after the plans for the city-owned lumberyard shopping center required a certain-sized wastewater treatment plant.
“What was Malibu’s big motivation to approve the permit for the lumberyard’s on-site sewage treatment system? Malibu is the landlord for the property and the city gets revenue from the businesses at the lumberyard, which helps pay for the Legacy Park project. In other words, without completion of the development, Malibu can’t pay for plans to build and operate Legacy Park,” he noted.
Some observers have commented that it is ironic that a city that incorporated to rein in development is now dependent on it.

‘Funds’ Being Spent for Water Studies

• What If Future Revenues from New Center Fall Short?

BY BILL KOENEKER

In a move that highlights how municipal finances might have already become dependent on the projected revenue stream from the city’s lumberyard shopping center, the Malibu City Council next week is poised to spend over $2.6 million for final designs and documents for a Civic Center centralized wastewater treatment system based on the boutique facility getting one of its final permits.
The on again-off again financing for the treatment system plans had been stalled last October when council members decided the uncertain shaky financial situation did not warrant spending the money.
“The city council expressed concerns for funding of large projects and studies during these uncertain economic times, especially in light of the fact that the lumberyard had not obtained its waste discharge permit for their site,” wrote Special Projects Manager Bow Bowman, in a staff report to council members.
The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board approved the permit for the lumberyard project on Dec. 11.
“With that approval, the city is assured that the lumberyard project can open as anticipated in February and the city’s financial future is substantially improved,” added Bowman.
Early last year, the opening of the high-end shopping center was anticipated to be taking place in October. That is apparently when the council’s worries began to take shape.
Later, there was another announcement that the center would be open by mid-December. City officials at that time indicated they would issue the final permit. That is when the power struggle between the city and the RWQCB began setting off a chain of events.
Two years ago, after purchasing the former Chili Cook-Off site now know as Legacy Park, the council hired RMC Water and Environment to begin the preliminary studies for the Malibu Civic Center Integrated Water Quality Management Plan.
By December 2007, the council had upped the ante to over $2.5 million for the consultants to continue final designs and environmental studies for the work on stormwater improvements, which continued to move forward.
The current amendment to the contract would bring the total fees for RMC to over $5.1 million.
“The final centralized wastewater treatment system design is now being scheduled to move forward,” said Bowman, who noted the project has trailed the stormwater project due to several reasons, including that there is no site for a treatment plant.
“However, in light of recent developments with the La Paz project and direction from the council to conclude the procurement of a suitable site, staff determined the project could move forward,” Bowman said.

MHS Meetings Tackle Contentions

• Field Lighting and Traffic Concerns Take Center Stage

BY SUZANNE GULDIMANN

The Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District has scheduled two meetings this month that will address aspects of Malibu High School’s planned measure BB improvements.
On Wednesday, Jan. 14, a meeting will present the school’s plans for athletic facility improvements, which include permanent concrete bleachers and a highly controversial plan to install permanent field lighting that has many Malibu Park residents crying foul.
Proponents of the plan have stated that for the school to remain competitive, there will be an increased need for night games, not only for the football program, but for sports like lacrosse and soccer, as well as Title IX requirements that mandate equal time for female students’ sport activities.
Critics of the project contend that the California Coastal Commission permit, issued when the school expanded the playing fields in the 1990s, expressly prohibits permanent or temporary field lighting, and that the temporary lighting that has been used in recent years for a limited number of football games has been in violation of the school’s permit.
Residents have raised concerns over a number of potential negative impacts to the environment that permanent lights could generate. They have also expressed corncern over the potential for a negative impact on the quality of life, not only in Malibu Park but in areas as far away as Point Dume.
The school district, at its Aug. 21 meeting, voted to approve hiring CAA Planning to facilitate negotiating a new coastal development permit with the coastal commission to allow for permanent field lighting at the MHS athletic field. The firm of Glenn Lukos Associates was also engaged by the district to conduct the biological field study for the field lighting project.
A second meeting, scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 27, will address design and sustainability objectives for the improvement project, which will include traffic and safety improvements, a new parking lot, and a new library and administrative building, in addition to the proposed athletic facility improvements.
Both meetings will be held at the school auditorium, starting at 6:30 p.m. The public is invited to attend and provide input.
Information on the Measure BB improvements and meetings is available on the district’s Web site: www.smmusd.org

MSN Goes to the Movies: Some Contrary Views Make for Great Conversation

BY JEREMY WALKER

I’m off to double “Waltz With Bashir” and “Rachel Getting Married” with $7 matinees at Encino Town Center, a clean, well-programmed house with good presentation that favorably compares to the skanky Regent Fairfax on Beverly, the only L.A. theatre at which I could be utterly, uncomfortably perplexed by “Synecdoche, New York” and then emotionally scarred by “Wendy & Lucy” and its sublime performance by Michelle Williams that I fear not enough voters will see.
I’ve heard a lot about the performance that may be Williams’ main competition for an American independent Best Actress slot: Anne Hathaway getting all raccoon-eyed and jangly in “Rachel” as she struggles with the idea that a weekend furlough from rehab to attend her sister’s wedding does not make the day all about her. I’ve been a fan since Hathaway played Jake Gyllenhaal’s wife in “Brokeback Mountain,” sharing psychic space—but no scenes—with Williams, who was nominated for her work in that film.
As I drive over Kanan I hear a report that the 101 is backed up to Tampa. I’m anxious about missing the beginning of “Bashir” because I know little about the movie’s subject, Israel’s 1982 war with Lebanon, but thanks to light volume on Ventura I make it into the theatre just as the feature begins. The screen floods with a cartoon image of nude men bearing AK-47s and bathing in the flickering yellow light of flares.
“Bashir” is easily among the five best pictures I’ve seen this season and deserves to be nominated in that category, space Disney is also asking voters to consider for their groundbreaking animated film “Wall-E.” For me, “best” in animation involves filmmakers stretching the medium beyond entertainment into a catalyst for cultural reflection. The producers of “Wall-E” and “Bashir” both achieve this, and I suspect both have distinct but equally persuasive, deep-pocketed camps behind them.
But while “Wall-E” is meaningful, its pragmatic destiny is to pacify minivan cargo, an audience I admit will be called upon to one day save the planet. But I ultimately buy into the more urgent argument “Bashir” director Ari Folman makes at the controversial conclusion of his picture, even if I don’t fully agree with what the choice does for the film’s overall aesthetic: his movie is “best” because it really happened. Just as war has changed, so have war-and anti-war-movies.
Later, exiting the Encino Town Center parking lot, the radio reports ground forces crossing into Gaza; I imagine those campaigning for “Bashir” may hone its Best Picture edge against the whetstone of current events. As I approach Malibu Canyon I hear more reports of bloodshed and wonder if “Bashir” and even Spielberg’s “Munich” (which I loathed) have bolstered Israel’s image, perhaps helping convince the diplomatic community that Israel has learned from past wartime mistakes as it defends itself once again. But maybe I am expecting too much from the movies. Once home I see news that “Bashir” has just been named Best Picture by the National Society of Film Critics, with “Happy-Go-Lucky” and “Wall-E” coming in second and third in their voting.
Oh, and Ann Hathaway is unnervingly good as a 90-day-sober-yet-still-raging narcissist in “Rachel Getting Married,” but after meeting her parents (Bill Irwin and Debra Winger) I didn’t blame her.
I also don’t blame Declan Quinn for his jittery camera or the production’s one-stop-shop solution to score, design, location, casting and choreography demands: it all works, and the last, poignant “Special Thanks” credit on the roll is for the late Robert Altman, who did something similar with his 1978 class farce “A Wedding.” But when compared to the vibrant accomplishments of “Slumdog Millionaire” or the epic challenges met by the makers of, say, “Benjamin Button” or “Che,” I can’t see how “Rachel” has a chance in the craft categories. But I can see Hathaway running into her “Devil Wears Prada” co-star Meryl Streep at a certain luncheon in Beverly Hills next month.
As far as recommending the film: if you found this edition of Awards Watch inappropriately, maddeningly self-referential you’d probably walk out of “Rachel” even if it were showing on an airplane. If, however, you are sort of amused that I managed to make the column, well, all about me, you may find deeper rewards in screenwriter Jenny Lumet’s considerably less self-consciously fashioned take on family and recovery.

Local LNG Foes Go Green

• Brosnans Criticize Irish Project •

BY ANNE SOBLE

Going “green” has a special meaning for Malibuites Pierce and Keely Brosnan who, along with a broad coalition that ranged from environmental activists to school children, helped defeat the proposed Cabrillo Port liquefied natural gas project off the local coast two years ago.
The pair are taking some of the lessons learned in that fight and applying them in the fight against Ireland’s first LNG terminal proposal, slated to be built at the Shannon Estuary.
The Brosnans’ Malibu spokesperson confirmed that the couple have joined the opposition to the project earmarked for County Kerry in Pierce Brosnan’s native country—he was born in Navan in County Meath.
The $700 million proposal by Shannon LNG, a subsidiary of the U.S. Hess corporation, received its permit last March. A hearing on a pipeline link to preexisting facilities was held in December.
The Brosnans are coordinating their efforts with the Irish “Safety Before LNG” group’s campaign against the Shannon terminal.
On the SBLNG Web site, the Brosnans address many of the same issues that were raised with BHP Billiton’s Cabrillo Port project, noting the lack of assessment of the “serious and significant risks to public health and safety.”
In a letter to the Kerry County Council, the local couple wrote: “We strongly support Safety Before LNG’s request that the planning department find that this project and its associated pipeline must be thoroughly reviewed for the serious cumulative risks it poses for the local population and the environment.”
Although Cabrillo Port tried the same ploy unsuccessfully, the Irish project received fast-track planning approval, despite its Irish neighbors saying, much like the residents of Oxnard, that the dangers to them were ignored during the approval process.
A key environmental concern is that up to 100 million gallons of chlorinated seawater would be pumped into the Shannon Estuary daily, with potential major damage to marine life and water quality.
As is the case for building a facility on the U.S. West Coast, there is no general acceptance of the need for an Irish LNG terminal, if no suitable site is available. Critics contend that any Irish need for LNG can be met by the construction of terminals in the United Kingdom that can provide LNG to Ireland via existing gas pipelines in the UK.
The Shannon challenge is a double whammy for Hess LNG, as the company’s LNG proposal in Massachusetts has been blocked on environmental and safety grounds for over half a decade.
Another group mounting a legal challenge to the Shannon project is “Friends of the Irish Environment,” which was formed to address concerns that European environmentalists were lagging behind activists in the United States, demonstrating the efficacy of at least one American export.

Pepperdine Campus Again in Prop. 8 Controversy Spotlight

• University Reiterates Its Neutrality on Gay Marriage

BY ANNE SOBLE

There haven’t been any open demonstrations on campus, but some Pepperdine University alumni are criticizing their alma mater for appearing to be in the forefront of the defense of Proposition 8 and the attempt to abrogate the same sex marriages that preceded passage of the measure outlawing these unions.
Jerry Derloshon, the university’s director of public relations, said the school has heard from some individuals who lambasted faculty members involved in the anti-gay marriage effort, but emphasized that he “doesn’t know of any significant backlash.”
Derloshon said Pepperdine is neutral on both the highly controversial proposition and the issue of the validity of existing same sex unions.
He said the school’s response is “similar to what it was in the brouhaha over Professor Richard Peterson” during the Proposition 8 political campaign.
Peterson, a Pepperdine faculty member who was the broadcast face and voice for the measure—with his school affiliation texted at the bottom of the screen or included in the voiceover—is credited with giving the measure gravitas among undecided voters.
Derloshon said the school has also heard from other people who laud the visibility of members of the Pepperdine faculty in the contentious debate, but he stressed that the school’s neutrality is a free speech and academic rights issue.
Kenneth Starr, the dean of the Pepperdine Law School has recently been brought on board by the Proposition 8 forces as the lead attorney to take the three legal challenges to the measure and the efforts to void previous same sex unions, to the California Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court, if required.
Legal briefing on these cases is now in progress. A hearing on the first case could be held as soon as late February or early March.
Starr is operating under the aegis of ProtectMarraige.com—the Proposition 8 campaign committee— and the Proposition 8 Legal Defense Fund, which both repeatedly state the proponents’ position “that the will of the voters and Proposition 8 will be upheld.”
Andrew Pugno, Protect-Marriage and P8LDF general counsel, said on the groups’ Web site that “the addition of Dean Starr to this legal conversation will provide useful guidance for the Court in resolving these important issues.”
Derloshon emphasized that no one questions that Starr is “a leading Constitutional scholar” who has argued several dozen cases before U.S. Supreme Court.
The school spokesperson noted that Starr is not doing media interviews on the cases at this time and will not formally participate until the first round of oral arguments in the high profile cases.
Derloshon stressed that Starr is acting in an “individual capacity, exercising his free speech rights,” and added that the university “is an advocate of a free exchange of ideas” and “honors Starr’s free speech rights.”
However, some legal scholars and free speech advocates question Starr’s tolerance of the free speech rights of others because of his role in the so-called “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” Alaskan school banner case when he successfully argued for allowing limits on students’ free speech rights—the first meaningful court restriction of student rights in decades.
Starr also stirred up local controversy when he was named the ostensible head of a Pepperdine effort to address legal ways to curb paparazzi activity in Malibu. Starr ultimately never participated in the project, and, after the project was soundly criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union, journalist organizations and local media, it fell by the wayside.
An unsubstantiated number of critics are sending out emails that urge a “Pepperdine protest” and state, “If you’re currently donating to Pepperdine, stop until they stop this madness [and] don’t let your kids go to Pepperdine.”
An accompanying flyer states, “Pepperdine used to be a school we could be proud of. Now they’re leading the fight for hate, not acceptance and diversity.”
The Malibu Surfside News sent an email requesting more information to the protest organizer, but no response was received before the newspaper went to press.
Derloshon acknowledges that some alumni have contacted the school to say they would not be donating to Pepperdine, but he indicated that many of them had not been donors before.
Derloshon said Pepperdine has gay students and encourages open discussion of gay issues, noting that groups such as Soulforce have been to the campus and met with students, faculty and staff. He said, “We welcome discussion in an open environment, but it has to include all points of view.”

Council Considers Hosting Water Quality Symposium

BY BILL KOENEKER

If a majority of the Malibu City Council can agree next week, Malibu will host a water quality symposium featuring government officials and technical experts in a one-day event to provide the public with the most recent advances and findings in the water quality field.
In an apparent nod to the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, the symposium is the brainchild of the council's stormwater/wastewater ad hoc committee comprised of Councilmembers Sharon Barovsky and John Sibert. The ad hoc committee is expected to ask the council to approve the idea and allocate $10,000 from the general fund to cover the costs of advertising and hosting the event.
“In light of the recent developments with the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, the stormwater/wastewater ad hoc committee is requesting council approval for the city to host a water quality symposium,” wrote City Manager Jim Thorsen, in a memo to other council members.
Municipal officials are prepared to ask experts from the U.S. Geological Survey, Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, the Southern California Coastal Water research Project and others to provide presentations on their finding of recent studies and projects.
Plans call for the afternoon session to include a roundtable discussion involving presenters. lawmakers, scientists and attendees.
Both Barovksy and Sibert have indicated they would take the lead in organizing the symposium using the help of the city’s grants consultant Barbara Cameron and the municipality's capital campaign coordinator Susan Shaw Noble.