The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy speaks on Malibu Coastal Plan
It’s all OK with them, provided the agency is exempt.The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy (SMMC) Board of Directors was at a decision point Monday night. The directors had to decide if they liked the California Coastal Commission’s proposed Local Coastal Plan (LCP) for Malibu, or not.
From the Publisher/Arnold York
The opinion of the conservancy is important to Malibu because the SMMC owns and controls a great deal of land in the Santa Monica Mountains. Also, the SMMC and its executive director, Joe Edmiston, are a powerful voice in the local environmental community.
At the SMMC’s meeting at Franklin Canyon Park, tucked deep in a forest above Beverly Hills off Mulholland Drive, the directors considered and debated the proposed Malibu LCP, and ultimately decided that, generally speaking, they liked what the Coastal Commission planned for the Malibu area with one large caveat-they just want to be left out of it.
In the letter the SMMC Board of Directors is sending to the Coastal Commission outlining its position, the directors essentially said-regulate anyway you want but please exempt us because, much as we like it, we don’t want to be part of this regulatory scheme.
In discussions of the issues, it was clear that many on the conservancy board felt they served a greater God, called the general public, who I take it meant anyone who wasn’t in the room, and certainly wasn’t a trivial lesser entity like minor municipalities such as Malibu. Still, Malibu could have done worse.
Edmiston, being the eminence gris of the Santa Monicas, and now branching out into urban Los Angles, is one very smart political operator, and he made sure that everyone left the meeting with a little bit.
Malibu’s mayor, Jeff Jennings, made the pitch for Malibu and tried to say there were problems with the LCP and the city wanted the conservancy’s support to make some changes that Malibu could see as causing nothing but trouble in the future.
Edmiston had a better answer. The letter the conservancy is going to send to the Coastal Commission just says the SMMC wants the conservancy out of the commission’s little scheme. What’s unsaid is the real threat, that if the commission doesn’t want a battle with the conservancy, it better leave the SMMC out of it because it doesn’t want to be running around having to get coastal permits from the commission.
That didn’t do much good for Malibu because it essentially threw the city back to the coastal wolves. However, we didn’t leave entirely empty handed.
In the issue that is the greatest concern to Malibu, which is the Coastal Commission wants to declare practically all of Malibu an environmentally sensitive habitat (ESHA), the conservancy was of some help.
What it recommended to the Coastal Commission was that some independent experts do the mapping, use the best available science and the state should allocate some major dollars for the job. It was also pretty much what our legislators said to the governor’s resource secretary, Mary Nichols, in a recent letter.
I suspect Edmiston and our legislators, Sen. Sheila Kuehl and Assemblymember Pavley, can see a litigation nightmare on the horizon if the Coastal Commission decides to vote in a plan that says all of Malibu is an ESHA based upon some very iffy science from its own staff biologist, who is certainly open to challenge as being someone less than objective.
Unfortunately, on most of the other issues, the conservancy board pretty much went along with the Coastal Commission.
On the issues of prescriptive easements, typically meaning historic trails, the conservancy endorsed keeping the burden on Malibu property owners to prove there isn’t an easement. The city will make that call, which it desperately does not want to do because city officials think that whomever loses will sue since their are no standards.
On the Malibu Bluffs Parks, initially the SMMC was going to say it didn’t like the Crummer Trust deal either, but decided to back off and merely recommend that the ball fields come off state park land and let the parties work out any deal they can. So, from Malibu’s perspective, that was a push, as they say in Vegas.
The SMMC board of directors didn’t seem to have any problems with the in lieu fees. Those are the fees the Coastal Commission wants us to pay for almost everything. Clear brush, there is a fee. Cut a tree, there is a fee. Build, add, renovate anything, there is a fee. The rationale is these fees help to mitigate environmental damage. That concept seemed OK with the conservancy, since it’s probably going to be the conservancy that will get to administer those fees if the plan passes as is.
Lastly, the conservancy endorses the Coastal Commission’s view of an Environmental Review Board for Malibu, with a majority of the members being enviros who would get to have the final say over anything Malibu approves-sort of a local Environmental Supreme Court for Malibu, filled with environmental experts who virtually have the power to overrule the City Council.
P.S. I have a small suggestion for the conservancy. I know there are some in the enviro movement who see outside lights as an abomination, but I’d suggest they get some for Franklin Canyon Park, because, after sunset, it gets so dark you can’t see your hand in front of your face. It’s only a matter of time before someone goes over a cliff while looking for his or her parked car.