A Superior Court judge ruled last week that the Coastal Commission overstepped its authority by approving a plan that included overnight camping in Malibu proposed by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.
By Knowles Adkisson / The Malibu Times
In a rare rebuke of powerful state agencies, a Superior Court judge last week voided an agreement between the California Coastal Commission and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to allow overnight camping in Malibu.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John A. Torribio ruled the Coastal Commission overstepped its authority when it amended the City of Malibu’s Local Coastal Program, over objections from the city and local residents, to approve a plan by the conservancy that would allow overnight camping on its Malibu properties.
In his decision, which arose from lawsuits filed by the city and Ramirez Canyon homeowners, Torribio wrote, “The court finds that the Commission exceeded its authority” when it approved the application by SMMC against the city’s wishes. Torribio also ruled that any subsequent application by SMMC to the Coastal Commission would have to include specific proposals, rather than general ones as in the current plan, and that the commission must allow 30 days for public review of any proposals.
City officials characterized the decision as a victory for local land control, while the state agencies called it a procedural setback.
“Courts tend to be deferential to state agencies, but in this instance [the Coastal Commission and SMMC] very clearly overstepped their bounds,” Malibu City Attorney Christi Hogin said on Monday.
But Laurie Collins, chief legal counsel for the conservancy, focused on the procedural aspect of the ruling.
“[The judge] just ruled it wasn’t specific enough,” Collins said.
Collins said the decision did not prevent them from reapplying to the Coastal Commission with a more detailed proposal and giving the 30 days required notice for public review. Collins said she hoped the noticing requirement would be overturned in a companion lawsuit later this month.
The camping issue dates back to 2006, when the conservancy first pitched what it called the Malibu Parks Public Access Enhancement Plan Overlay, which includes overnight camping at three Malibu canyon parks owned by the conservancy, as well as permission to have a certain number of events at one of the parks, located at what is known as the Streisand property in Ramirez Canyon. After running into resistance to the plan from area residents (and because the camping regulations were not allowed in the city’s LCP), the conservancy agreed to negotiate with the city to amend its LCP to allow camping.
However, the destructive Malibu Canyon and Corral Canyon fires in late 2007 raised public sentiment against camping due to fire concerns. When the Malibu City Council backtracked from a tentative agreement with the conservancy that would have allowed camping, the conservancy bypassed the city and proposed its own plan to the Coastal Commission by way of a seldom-used procedure called an “LCP amendment override procedure.”
The Coastal Commission in 2009 approved the SMMC plan, to which camping at Bluffs Park was added at the hearing after public comment, and denied a competing LCP amendment proposed by the City of Malibu. The city then sued, alleging the Coastal Commission had overstepped its bounds and usurped a local city’s power, and that the commission did not provide sufficient public notice of its plans under the California Environmental Quality Act.
The LCP override is a rare procedure intended for use when a public works project or energy facility development is being requested that meets “public needs of an area greater than” the local jurisdiction, and if the request was not anticipated by the applicant making it when the LCP was certified by the Coastal Commission.
Torribio wrote in his ruling that the application “expressly acknowledges that the Conservancy was not proposing a public works project or energy facility development.”
“It is well settled that the Commission’s statutory duty is to ‘supervise’ and ‘oversee’ development in the coastal zone,” Torribio continued. “Unless some narrow exception applies, the Commission does not have the power to dictate the content of an LCP.”
Hogin, who in the past has exchanged barbs with Coastal Commission Executive Director Peter Douglas regarding the camping plan, said she was surprised the commission had gone along with the SMMC’s plan.
“I don’t know why the Coastal Commission got goaded into this action,” Hogin said.
Coastal Commission legal counsel Christopher Pederson said the Commission was not drawn into anything it did not believe in.
“The Commission [approved] an LCP amendment that would authorize a plan for a series of related recreational projects,” Pederson said, “and we think that’s clearly under the authority of the Coastal Commission to approve.”
The SMMC plan would 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 (donated by Barbara Streisand); 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 have expressed doubt in the past over the extent to which that rule would be enforced.