City attorney is baffled by the organization’s attempt to stop construction on the park at such a late date.
By Jonathan Friedman / The Malibu Times
A three-judge appellate court panel last week rejected a request by the Santa Monica Baykeeper to halt construction of Legacy Park while the environmental group awaits a court hearing for its lawsuit challenging the project’s environmental impact report. City Attorney Christi Hogin said she found the latest legal action to be “odd” and a “complete waste of money.” Liz Crosson, the Baykeeper’s executive director, said it was necessary and that this is a matter of protecting the public’s health.
City officials say Legacy Park, which is expected to be finished in October, will serve a dual purpose as a passive park and as a storm water treatment system. Baykeeper, which has a history of legal battles with the city, says the project will not do enough. The environmental organization last year filed a lawsuit challenging the project’s EIR. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled in favor of the city. Baykeeper then filed an appeal. The appeal will probably not be heard until at least six months from now, after Legacy Park is finished.
Hogin said she found the timing of the latest action to be strange because the project is almost finished. When the group challenged Legacy Park’s EIR at the Superior Court level, it did not try to stop construction. She did not understand why the group chose to do this now.
“It just seems so late and so odd to spend money preparing this order/motion and running into the Court of Appeal claiming ‘quick the court must act because we’re on the verge of some environmental disaster’ when by the time they get around to doing that the grading is done, the detention basins are in. We’re out planting the native plants in the final stages of the project.”
Crosson, who in May replaced Tom Ford as executive director of Baykeeper, said there was good reason to attempt to stop construction.
“At this point, we’re very concerned about the project and that Malibu is very active in their construction right now,” she said. “So that was definitely motivation in trying to stop it while the court considers our appeal.”
Crosson said she did not know why Baykeeper did not try to stop construction while the case was pending at the Superior Court level because she was not with the group at that time.
Legacy Park consists of several features, including the most significant element, a detention pond that will capture storm water from drains. It will store water for up to three days before travelling to the nearby storm water treatment plant. Some of the treated water will be reused for irrigation or sent to an “underground piping network.” And additional water will be discharged into the Malibu watershed at levels acceptable to the Regional Water Quality Control Board.
Crosson said Legacy Park will not be able to handle enough storm water, and the people of Malibu should be concerned because it will not reduce the health risks of a polluted watershed. She said Baykeeper wants a project that addresses the serious issues rather than what she called “more of a passive park project.”
“We want a facility that is able to handle the storm water flows of that region,” Crosson said. “As everybody knows, Malibu Creek, Malibu Lagoon and the adjoining Surfrider Beach is an area that has known extremely high bacteria levels for decades. Legacy Park will not do enough to change that.”
Although support for Legacy Park is not unanimous, it has received lots of praise among environmentalists. At the groundbreaking for the project, many environmentalists and political leaders attended in support. Crosson said the supporters are not “looking at the numbers of the capacity of Legacy Park and what it can hold in terms of a storm event.”
She added, “They’re also missing the fact that there are cumulative effects in that region that have not been properly considered. A park that infiltrates storm water as a concept is a fabulous idea. But on the ground in this place, it’s a bad idea unless it can be shown it’s actually going to address the bacteria issues that are so prevalent in the region.”