City says Playa Vista will flood city streets
CITY HALL — Since filing a lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles nine months ago, attorneys here have been busy preparing to go to trial in August to halt a massive development known as Playa Vista.
The city of Santa Monica has joined three other entities in suing LA City Hall, which they claim failed to adequately address environmental and traffic issues when it approved the development, located between Marina del Rey and Westchester.
Among local officials’ concerns is the impact the development will have on traffic within Santa Monica, particularly on Lincoln Boulevard and area side streets. The city of Santa Monica claims that the Los Angeles City Council approved the project illegally — without properly addressing those concerns.
City officials claim that LA City Hall has violated state environmental planning laws, claiming the project will be built without adequate environmental review pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the government code will be violated.
Therefore, the city of Santa Monica seeks to have the second phase of the project stopped before it even begins. Local officials also would like to see phase one, which is 30 percent complete, stopped as well.
“The city of Los Angeles didn’t properly review the project and consider the impacts,” said Santa Monica Assistant City Attorney Joe Lawrence, adding the documents relating to the approved project are estimated to be more than 38,000 pages.
Lawrence said opening briefs in the case are due to the court by the end of this month, with an initial hearing scheduled for Aug. 1 in Los Angeles Superior Court in downtown LA.
Although LA City Hall officials declined to specifically comment on the lawsuit, at least until the opening briefs are filed, they did say the approval process was well within city, state and environmental laws.
“We strongly believe the (Environmental Impact Report) was proper and up to CEQA requirements,” said LA City Hall spokesman Frank Mateljan. “It’s our position that the EIR was proper.”
Bob Crockett, the attorney representing the developer — Playa Capital Company LLC., which also is named in the suit — was unavailable for comment.
The Playa Vista development was proposed in two phases: Phase one was approved by the LA City Council in 1993 and is currently being developed. Phase two will include, among other things, the construction and operation of 2,600 housing units, 175,000 square feet of office space, 150,000 square feet of retail space and 40,000 square feet of community serving uses.
The entire project will result in an increase of 24,220 daily vehicle trips, with 2,203 of them in the morning peak hours and 2,302 in the evening peak hours, according to a petition for writ of mandate, which was filed in November of 2004. The petition asks that the approval of the project be set aside.
SANTA MONICA CHIMES IN Local officials in January of 2003 expressed concern regarding the project’s environmental impacts on Santa Monica. In a letter dated Jan. 14, 2003, city staff requested that the EIR include a realistic distribution of traffic along transportation corridors, which should include the diversion of traffic from Lincoln Boulevard to Neilson Way; Main Street; Fourth Street and Walgrove and 23rd Street. It also asked that the EIR analyze specific intersections, including the Interstate 10 on-ramp and off ramp at Fourth Street, as well as Main Street and Olympic Drive.
In addition, the EIR should have analyzed the impacts on Santa Monica’s side streets in the event that the other transportation corridors get so congested that motorists use neighborhood streets.
In December of 2003, the Santa Monica City Council voted to oppose the project based on the unmitigated environmental impacts the project would have locally. City officials claim that the final EIR failed to adequately address their concerns, which by law it must.
As a mecca for jobs — particularly in entertainment, technology and other burgeoning industries — many people who live in phase one of Playa Vista commute to Santa Monica. City officials argue the second phase of the project will attract a significant portion of residents who commute to Santa Monica. In fact, the development is specifically marketed to those types of commuters, according to the petition.
“The decision to certify the EIR was improper and illegal...,” the petition reads. “The EIR failed to study impacts on neighborhood street segments in Santa Monica. The EIR recognized that the 405 Freeway, Lincoln Boulevard and Centinela Boulevard were the primary access routes between Playa Vista and Santa Monica and further recognized that those access ways would be heavily congested after the project was constructed. Given this congestion, the EIR also recognized that there would be significant cut through traffic in certain Los Angeles neighborhoods.
“However, the EIR inexplicably ignored those same traffic conditions in failing to consider the impacts of cut through traffic on Santa Monica’s neighborhood streets.”
Despite concerns raised about traffic impacts from a host of agencies including Los Angeles County and CalTrans that said the EIR undercounted existing traffic numbers and its assumptions were faulty, the document didn’t respond adequately, the city of Santa Monica argues in its petition.
A JOINT EFFORT The Surfrider Foundation, the Ballona Wetlands Land Trust and Anthony Morales also have joined the lawsuit, arguing that the EIR has failed to address numerous environmental impacts. They argue that the EIR failed to respond to public comments about archaeological issues, the risks of methane gas, health risks from toxic gas and wastewater disposal, as well as the elimination of some of the only wetlands left in the area.
Attorneys representing those three entities feel emboldened now that they have the backing of the city of Santa Monica.
“It shows that an entire municipality has the same concerns we do,” said Doug Carsten, an attorney with the Santa Monica law firm of Chatten-Brown & Associates, who is representing Morales, Surfrider Foundation and the Ballona Wetlands Trust. “There is widespread objection.”
Other lawyers representing the three entities are Santa Monica attorney Sabrina Venskus and Robert Myers, a former Santa Monica city attorney who now works for the Sherman Oaks law firm Newman.Aaronson.Vanaman.
WETLANDS IN JEOPARDY? The Ballona Wetlands Land Trust, a California nonprofit corporation with more than 5,000 members that was founded in 1994, signed onto the petition because it fears the ecosystem where the development is being built will be destroyed. “(The trust) is a person aggrieved because it is a public interest, tax-exempt organization whose purpose is to ensure the preservation and restoration of the Ballona Wetlands ecosystem,” the petition reads.
BUILDING ON SACRED GROUND Morales, the chief of the Gabriel-eno/Tongva Tribal Council of San Gabriel, testified that the development is being built on sacred ground.
During phase one of the project, and after the draft EIR for phase two had been released for public comments, a large Native American burial ground was discovered in which more than 300 graves were found, according to the petition.
“The discovery of the Native American sacred burial site is a significant archaeological, cultural and historical discovery that was not anticipated in the phase one or phase two EIR,” the petition reads. “The discovery of such a major site is strong evidence that a similar discovery will be made on the adjoining property during phase two construction activity.”
WAITING FOR A BLOW-OUT? The state of California’s Toxic Substance Control has expressed a concern as to whether “the development would be safe for occupancy in view of the evidence of significant methane concentrations in the subsurface and the location of a subsurface natural gas storage area in the vicinity of the site,” according to the petition.
Apparently, there are concentrations of methane greater than 150,000 parts per million measured by volume, which exceed upper explosive limits, according to the petition. However, the EIR fails to respond to the state’s concerns, the plaintiffs argue. The EIR only states that small portions of the proposed project contain methane concentrations above explosive limits, according to the petition.
WASTED COMMENTS ON WASTEWATER IMPACTS? Despite comments made by nonprofit environmental groups — the Surfrider Foundation and the Santa Monica Baykeeper — that wastewater flows created by the development would exceed capacity of the Hyperion Treatment Plant, and were not included in the final EIR, according to the petition.
“It is clear from the record that the development cannot go forward without expansion of wastewater treatment capacity,” the petition reads. “Expansion of wastewater treatment capacity potentially affects numerous environmental conditions, including air quality, odor, nearshore water quality and land use.”
The plaintiffs argue that even though the EIR acknowledges more capacity will be built if the existing treatment plant is not sufficient for wastewater disposal, it’s self-contradictory because the project will aggravate the lack of future capacity but it doesn’t acknowledge the growth-inducing effect contributing to the expansion of a treatment plant or exacerbating potential capacity shortages, according to the petition.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 18, 2005. Read the original PDF.