Following a heated and contentious meeting two weeks ago, the city council on Monday will consider whether to deny or approve two appeals filed against the Trancas Canyon Park environmental impact report.
City staff recommends denying the appeals filed by residents Teresa Campeau and Clara Thie, whose homes are located to the west and southeast of the proposed park entrance, and by Malibu West residents John Norvet, Mark Davis and Robert Belvin. The staff recommends that the council adopt a resolution certifying the park’s EIR, adopting the Mitigation Monitoring Reporting Program and approving a coastal development permit for the park’s construction.
Residents have been railing against proposed grading that the seven-acre park, located on Trancas Canyon Road approximately a half mile north of Pacific Coast Highway, would require, saying that an “entire mountaintop” will be removed to accommodate park plans, as Gisela Guttman wrote in a letter to the editor this week.
In addition to the grading, residents question whether the park’s environmental impact report adequately assesses other project impacts, including noise, traffic, cultural resource protection, possible fire hazards, analysis of slopes and grading, lighting, grading in an environmentally sensitive habitat area, hillside protection and impacts to views, wildlife and natural resources.
Also, they oppose the cost to build the park, which is estimated at $3.4 million.
At the city’s Feb. 23 meeting, Frank Angel, attorney for the Trancas Park appellants, said, “The objectives of the park could be met with significantly less cost to the environment and to taxpayers.”
Angel requested that the city not approve the final EIR because, he said, it was developed without information from grading studies and it excludes disclosure about a number of things such as the park’s daily water use, among others.
In its latest report, the city states that the appellants did not provide any substantial evidence that supported their claim that Trancas Canyon Park’s EIR is inadequate, illegal or environmentally destructive.
One of the heavily debated components in the appeals was the coastal sage scrub habitat on the eastern part of the park property, which is mapped in the Malibu Local Coastal Program as an environmentally sensitive habitat area, or ESHA. The mapped ESHA also extends partially onto the portion of the site proposed for a dog park and picnic area.
City Biologist Dave Crawford has determined that the park site and adjacent areas are not subject to the ESHA policies in the Local Coastal Program because the site has been previously graded under an approved coastal development permit issued by the California Coastal Commission.
The city says grading will only take place during the dry season, from April 1 through Oct. 31. If approved as proposed, the park plan would allow grading to exceed the maximum quantity of 1,000 cubic yards per acre, and a request to allow construction on slopes steeper than what is allowed by the current code.
Park plans also include a multiuse (practice-only) sports field, a basketball half-court, picnic area, tot-lot, dog park, a restroom/maintenance building, storage building, shade structures, onsite wastewater treatment system, parking area and a storm water detention basin.
Many pro-park residents at the Feb. 23 meeting expressed support for the third alternative stated in the EIR, a reduced dog park and picnic/playground area, to minimize impact on the Malibu West neighborhood, but the EIR states the third alternative would not fulfill the objectives of the park.