Malibu braces for LCP aftermath
The California Coastal Commission passes plan with a 10 to 1 vote, but critics rail.
By Arnold G. York/Publisher
After almost two years of often contentious negotiation and a final two-day California Coastal Commission hearing, which was often vitriolic and mean-spirited, Malibu finally has a Coastal Commission-approved Local Coastal Program, Land Use Plan.
The final version of the plan was released late Tuesday afternoon on the Coastal Commission’s Web site at www.coastal.ca.gov. Local politicians, planners and lawyers are poring over the final document trying to decide what to do. Although it may be too early to judge the potential impact of the new plan, there were several decisions were clear.
Bluffs Park and the ball fields
The message from California Resources Secretary Mary Nichols to the coastal commissioners was clear-“Leave them alone.” Nichols said the state was not about to throw Little Leaguers off their fields without an alternative, and the coastal commissioners reluctantly backed off. It’s now in the hands of the California Department of State Parks. A crisis was avoided in the short-term, although some believe it’s just on hiatus for now.
ESHAs (environmentally sensitive habitat areas)
This was the critical issue in dispute with the Malibu Local Coastal Program (LCP). Namely, how much of the yet undeveloped land and, in many places, the already built-on land was going to be mapped as environmentally sensitive habitat areas. The original Coastal Act definition of an ESHA was rather narrow and generally confined to a limited number of areas, but the new definition in the Malibu LCP is much more expansive and captures a much larger portion of Malibu under its ambit.
The label of ESHA, once applied to a parcel of land, impacts what can be done with the land, including construction, renovation, landscaping, lighting, coloring, brush clearance and housing of animals.
The City of Malibu and the County of Los Angeles rejected the Coastal Commission plan as heavy-hande. Both wanted a more flexible, tiered approach. The L.A. County Fire Department was apprehensive about brush clearance limitations, and all entities questioned the science on which the ESHA designations were based, the fairness of the ESHA mapping designations and the legality of the entire process.
First, Resources Secretary Mary Nichols, a nonvoting member of the Coastal Commission, tried to fashion some compromise language, but it was rejected by a majority of the commission. The commission then took an informal straw vote to see where things stood. The pro-staff plan group, led by Chair Sara Wan, had six commissioners on its side, but needed a seventh vote to pass the LCP. At first it was uncertain if the five commissioners, who appeared to lean toward the more flexible approach, would refuse to go along unless the stricter ESHA rules were relaxed. But, clearly, the coastal commissioners’ top priority was to pass a plan, and the minority five quickly proposed a weak compromise, which took parts, or most of Point Dume, out of the ESHA designation. But most of the rest of Malibu was left as an ESHA-designated area.
The commissioners quickly passed the plan by a vote of 10 to 1, which meant about 50 percent of Malibu was now branded as an ESHA.
The uncertainty this creates, as pointed out by several commissioners during discussions, is there are now many parcels mapped as ESHAs, which are not actually ESHAs, but the burden and cost of proving that is now put upon homeowners. Several commissioners were skeptical that ESHA-branded land could ever get out from under that cloud, and feared this would just lead to litigation.
On the fire safety issues, the Coastal Commission backed down and accepted most of the changes suggested by the L.A. County Fire Department, although several local resident fire captains testified they felt the compromises were inadequate, and fire safety issues remained.
The commission also reduced the county- and city-permitted eight horses per acre to a maximum of four horses per acre, and whittled away at permitted facilities, like barns and corrals.
Civic Center
A number of the commissioners wanted to put a two-year moratorium on any development in the Malibu Civic Center. But the commission decided not to impose a moratorium because much of the Civic Center land, which includes the site of the Chili Cook-Off, is already far along in the planning process. In fact, the extensive Malibu Bay Company Environmental Impact Report (EIR) has recently been completed and released, and is about to go into the workshop and public hearing process, and the commissioners appeared not to want to place any impediments in the path of the planning process already underway.
Environmental Review Board
In the future, many decisions about ESHAs will be referred to the City of Malibu’s Environmental Review Board, and, perhaps mindful of this, the Coastal Commission attempted to designate in the LCP who gets to serve on the board and what their functions are to be. The city resisted, perhaps fearful the board, even though a city board, would really answer to Coastal Commission staff and serve as a super commission, overseeing the city’s environmental decisions, with some sort of veto powers. Restrictions were placed on the board, but it’s not yet clear how that will play out.
Fees and studies
The new plan is going to increase the cost of doing any sort of development in Malibu.
There will be several new fees and environmental studies required, and a new generation of environmentalists kept employed watching, measuring and monitoring ever move in Malibu. The fees were opposed by the city, which was fearful that, without a locally-specific study to justify the fees, the city might face legal challenges.
Scenic roads and viewsheds
Initially commission staff had proposed that any land visible from any scenic road, like Malibu Canyon, or any state waterway, like the ocean, could be limited to a development size of the lesser of 10,000 square feet or 25 percent of the parcel. But protestors charged this covered all of Malibu. In the final version, views from the ocean were eliminated. But critics also complained the plan still includes views from public roads like Pacific Coast Highway and Malibu Canyon Road, and, coupled with restrictions, related to all the streams that run through Malibu. Critics say this means that even non-ESHA portions of Malibu will probably be restricted, with ESHA or ESHA buffer-type restrictions, although this is yet far from clear.
After the Coastal Commission meeting, there were many additional meetings of individuals and groups who were trying to determine what the next step might be. There was talk of creating an initiative or a referendum to overturn the Malibu Local Coastal Program. Others indicated they were considering litigation, both individual lawsuits and perhaps a class action for those who had been downzoned.
Officials were considering litigation or, alternatively, how they could or might not have to enforce the new plan. Others discussed the political battle and suggested that nothing would change until Sara Wan was replaced as the chair, several coastal commissioners were replaced, or Peter Douglas was fired. One thing was abundantly clear-although most seemed to believe this battle had been lost, none appeared ready to give up the fight.