City attorney says Coastal Commission is not “following the rules.”
By Olivia Damavandi / Assistant Editor
Rubbing salt into an open wound, the California Coastal Commission this week on Thursday will consider whether to add the 94-acre Bluffs Park to a list of 29 proposed overnight camping sites in Malibu. Coastal staff recommends that the commission add the park to the list.
The proposed sites are part of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy’s Malibu Parks Public Access Enhancement Plan, long opposed by numerous Malibu residents who say it increases the risk of fires. Enhancement plan advocates, however, accuse city residents of NIMBYism.
The commission approved the enhancement plan in a June hearing, at which it unanimously rejected the City of Malibu’s request to amend its Local Coastal Program, which included a proposed ban on overnight camping within city limits. The plan will create a total of 29 overnight camping sites at Ramirez, Escondido and Corral canyon parks; allow 32 special events (parties of up to 200 people) per year at the conservancy’s Ramirez Canyon property; and develop a 32-space parking lot at the top of Winding Way and improvements to local trails to create the Coastal Slope Trail that will connect the east and west ends of Malibu. Though the proposed plan would prohibit campfires, city officials and residents doubt the extent to which that rule would be enforced.
“They’re not going to have 24-hour rangers on those sites,” Mayor Pro Tem Sharon Barovsky said Friday in a telephone interview. “Nothing says they have to have a ranger at any of those sites.”
Paul Edelman, SMMC’s deputy director of natural resources and planning, on Tuesday said preliminary plans for developing the Bluffs Park camp site include the development of two new driveways from Pacific Coast Highway to the park-one just west of John Tyler Drive and the other west of Malibu Canyon Road, into which drivers could only turn right-and the addition of “a couple” of parking spots and a single stall restroom on Malibu Road. (The SMMC owns all but 10 acres of the park, which belong to the City of Malibu.)
Bluffs Park was not originally included in the enhancement plan until the end of the hearing in June when Steven Amerikaner, lawyer for the Ramirez Canyon Preservation Fund, a group of Malibu residents against overnight camping, suggested it as an alternative camping location to Ramirez Canyon. But instead, Joe Edmiston, executive director of the SMMC, added Bluffs Park to the plan with the commission’s approval.
The city in July filed a lawsuit against the commission claiming it violated the California Coastal Act, an agreement between the state and local governments that outlines standards for development within the coastal zone, as well as the California Environmental Quality Act, by usurping the city’s local land use authority.
“There are enormous problems when a public agency doesn’t follow the rules,” City Attorney Christi Hogin said Friday in a telephone interview. “There’s a whole process that involves a public notice, having a hearing with city council, and they [the Coastal Commission] skipped all that with respect to Bluffs Park. There’s no explanation for it, none.
“We have no idea what impacts on the environment are caused by the proposal and it’s my understanding that all property owned by the conservancy on Bluffs Park is ESHA [environmentally sensitive habitat area],” Hogin continued. “They’re talking about putting new entrances from PCH, it’s a pretty comprehensive plan that hasn’t been studied and hasn’t been discussed. They’re trying to slip it in like tofu in a salad hoping no one will notice. We’re surprised as anyone to see this enormous problem could grow even bigger without any public hearings.”
Hogin also said the commission is “dragging on the lawsuit” by having yet to prepare an administrative record. “That’s why it’s taking so long, the ball is in their court,” she said.
Calls to Sara Christie, Coastal Commission legislative liaison, were not returned.
Dash Stolarz, the Mountain Recreation and Conservation Authority’s public affairs director, said an environmental impact report for the project would be complete in “a few months,” and that it would then require approval from the SMMC board and the Coastal Commission.
Yet, Mayor Andy Stern and Mayor Pro Tem Sharon Barovsky last week said they are not opposed to overnight camping, but to the increased risk of fire it poses for Malibu residents.
Barovsky said, “I think Bluffs Park is an inappropriate place for overnight camping because there are children there and I don’t think it’s appropriate for strangers to have access to children’s areas. I’m not opposed to overnight camping, I just think that putting overnight camping next to a children’s park is inappropriate.”