Councilman Sibert’s complaint (Malibu Times, July 17) that the public largely ignored the recent Legacy Park Project workshops is well taken as far as it goes. However, such criticism cuts both ways, because in the workshops, the preparers failed to address the following issues of which they, and Stephanie Danner, the City Planner overseeing the project, were fully aware.
The DEIR continually refers to the Legacy Park Project as one of habitat “restoration” when no true restoration is involved but rather a freakish juxtaposition of created habitat conditions as though they are shelf items. Having failed to admit this in either of the workshops raises the suspicion that the preparers are primarily intent on selling the LPP as more of a legitimate environmental effort than it actually is.
No data whatsoever are offered in the DEIR as to what must be a very small percentage of nutrients and pathogens that the LPP might prevent from reaching the ocean, compared to those that are known to reach Malibu Creek and hence the ocean daily from the Tapia sewage treatment plant. This issue relates directly to the question of the necessity of the LPP. Until Baykeeper/NRDC v. City of Malibu is decided, planning for something like the LPP appears premature.
Ground-water data upon which the DEIR relies concerning the occasional necessity to discharge a certain volume of runoff, or perhaps treated effluent, to the subsurface must have been based on studies known to be erroneous and therefore calls into question the feasibility of the LPP.
If workshops are to be effective, they should not be fast-tracked as those for the LPP have been. To expect the public to become sufficiently conversant in a week or so with a DEIR as complex as that prepared for the LPP simply is more evidence that the City does not want technical flaws of the LPP, not to mention its recently estimated $15 million price tag, to become common knowledge. In any event, the necessary by-the-book workshops, while well illustrated, so far have been essentially carbon copies of the recent presentation before the joint meeting of the City Council and the Planning Commissioners.
Don Michael