The City Council’s recent vote to accept the Legacy Park Project Final EIR in effect ratifies plans outlined in it to spend $15 million for park construction. Much of that will be for the installation of southern California woodland, coastal prairie, coastal bluff, riparian, vernal pool, and wet meadow habitats, all meant to simulate their natural environmental equivalents. For ten months of the year, approximately 13.5 acres of these habitats are to be irrigated with 17,600 gallons per day of treated effluent from the adjacent Lumber Yard Project so as to dispose of it through evapotranspiration, with the balance during wet periods disposed by percolation in either of the project areas.
The problem is that environmental habitats, which are natural features, are not irrigated. No one has any idea of their consumptive use; that is, the water they require for normal growth. Consequently, no one knows how much of the Lumber Yard Project effluent can be disposed by irrigation. Any water the species don’t use must infiltrate to cause some degree of “mounding” that very well may have a significant environmental impact the EIR ignores.
It would be better to admit that the idea to create, or to use the false EIR terminology, “restore,” these habitats is nothing more than a sales pitch. Why not install, instead, park vegetation for which the consumptive use is well known. For example, the entire 13.5 acres could be planted with Bermuda grass sod for a cost of between $150,000 – 200,000. A park is a good idea. Wasting almost $15 million is a very bad idea.
Don Michael