The city attorney says the California Coastal Commission violated the state’s Coastal Act and environmental quality act, overriding city authority over local land use.
By Olivia Damavandi / Staff Writer
The City of Malibu on Friday filed a lawsuit against the California Coastal Commission, challenging its rejection last month of the city’s Local Coastal Program amendment to ban overnight camping, and its approval of an LCP amendment by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy that would allow camping at three city canyon parks.
The lawsuit claims the commission has violated the California Coastal Act, an agreement between state and local government 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.
The commission’s approval green lights the conservancy’s Malibu Parks Public Access Enhancement Plan. Long opposed by numerous Malibu residents who say it increases the risk of fires, 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, residents doubt the extent to which that rule would be enforced.
“We feel unsupervised camping in the hills of Malibu is a danger to everyone in our town,” Mayor Andy Stern said Tuesday in a telephone interview.
“The Coastal Commission ignored advice from the state fire marshal and the Los Angeles County fire chief, both of whom testified against the parks enhancement plan at the hearing,” he added.
The commission-rejected amendment proposed by Malibu sought to change its Local Coastal Program-the state-drafted document that sets zoning and building standards for Malibu development-to ban overnight camping in parks and recreation areas within city limits. The city’s proposed LCP amendment also requested a requirement for the construction of a new access road into Ramirez Canyon from Kanan Dume Road prior to the implementation of additional park uses at Ramirez Canyon Park.
Coastal Commissioners last month said Malibu’s proposed amendment would decrease potential public access and recreation uses within the city and that it is inconsistent with policies of the Coastal Act. Calls to the commission made Friday and Tuesday have not been returned.
The city, however, says the commission in this circumstance is not authorized to process an amendment to Malibu’s LCP.
“The California Coastal Commission has dusted off this obscure provision in the Coastal Act and is using it to unilaterally change the city’s land use policies,” City Attorney Christi Hogin said Monday in a telephone interview. “The override provision was misused. It was supposed to be very narrow and they [the Coastal Commission] used it extraordinarily loosely.”
Under the provision that Hogin spoke of the LCP override procedure may only be utilized by those undertaking a public works project (one that meets the needs of an area outside the City of Malibu), such as the development of an energy facility or the widening of Pacific Coast Highway. Additionally, a development project does not qualify for an LCP override unless the development was unanticipated at the time the LCP was certified.
The city says the conservancy’s parks enhancement plan does not qualify as a public works project because Malibu has long offered overnight public camping, and that the plan was anticipated by the conservancy at the time the city’s LCP was being adopted and certified by the Coastal Commission in 2002.
“Under the Coastal Act, the LCP can only be amended by the city,” Hogin said. “The Coastal Act doesn’t give the Coastal Commission any land use authority.”
Furthermore, the lawsuit claims that the commission violated the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, by failing to circulate its staff environmental impact report for public review and comment for the required 30-day time period before the hearing.
The commission released its staff EIR two weeks before the public hearing, which took place last month in Marina del Rey, and its supplemental report the day before the hearing, the suit states.
The commission also added Bluffs Park to the list of alternative camping sites toward the end of the public hearing, which the city says required recirculation of the staff report for environmental analysis.
“This transcends Malibu issues,” Hogin said, adding that the case will upset other coastal jurisdictions “because it’s such an usurpation of local land use authority.”