Sometimes money is not enough...

the Annenberg Foundation Will Not "AccessBallona"

12/4/2014...

the big news in the L.A. papers yesterday for us Ballona lovers is that the ranks of supporters of bulldozing the Ballona Wetlands keeps shrinking:

HOW THE PRESS REPORTED IT:

Annenberg pulls $45 million for controversial Ballona Wetlands redevelopment

the Daily Breeze

http://www.laweekly.com/informer/2014/12/03/heiress-wallis-annenberg-abruptly-drops-her-plan-for-building-on-ballona-wetlands

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-annenberg-wetlands-20141203-story.html

and then have a look at the empty pro-bulldozing website which is sponsored by the former president of the Friends of Ballona Wetlands, the ex-head of the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission who has pushed the mega-bulldozing scheme since 2008, the Playa Vista rep on the Westchester Neighborhood Council, and a board member of of PV JOBS, Playa Vista's charity: https://accessballona.wordpress.com/

(click on image to enlarge)

HOW WE SEE IT:

Yesterday, the billionaire heiress to the TV Guide fortune pulled back the $50 million lifeline she had offered to the project 2 years ago, which she had negotiated in secret with the very secretive State managers of the land. The cash was offered to help "restore" the land in exchange for the TV-Guidester's private foundation (ie., tax dodge) getting to build a supermarket-sized nature center and office complex for her group. The State managers took over the land in 2004, after the taxpayers bought 600 acres from the greedy developers who planned to pave it for 35 years. The State folks invited involvement of the public, yes, You and Me, but in practically no time they started meeting in secret and far away places and hatched a plan in 2008 to use the wetlands to solve problems of local polluters (calling it "natural filtration"), and to serve the non-natural needs of at least two real estate developers and later, the TV Guide charity. They and their hired propagandists went to great lengths to convince the public that their project was a legally allowable "restoration". The problem here is that you cannot restore something to what it never was. My guess is that the billionairess figured this out and did not want to wait through years of litigation which I and others promised them.

Two owners ago, the Ballona Wetlands' landlord laughed at us when we told them they needed to save at least 70% of the land as natural open space, as other big developers in Southern California had agreed to do, if they wanted to convert some of this area's last natural land into condos, shopping and offices. Soon after that, we and others sued them numerous times for violations of the law. By paying their lawyer bills instead of the mortgage for land purchased at the top of the market, their lender Chase Manhattan bank was forced to seize the land and write off half the value. A new owner walked in and salvaged the project, and also agreed to sell 2/3rds of the land to the State of California for the huge price of $140 million. They then proceeded to continue the condoization of the land they kept. When they sought more condos we sued them again and kept them stopped for 8 years until 2012. The outcome of this all is that 13,000 condos has been cut to 6000. Numerous ten to sixty story highrises have been cut to mostly 4 stories. Traffic generation was cut to 40% of the original proposal. Finally: We saved 70% of the land, a fact used as a selling point now by the developers themselves. And finally, the company CEO told the local press that over the last 20 years, his company and 2 predecessors had lost $600 million trying to get their way. 

http://ballona-news.blogspot.com/2008/03/playa-vista-financial-quagmire-july-13.html

The moral of this story, which likely has been figured out by the TV Guidesters, is: rich people can buy off politicians and some fake friends of the public, but when the average folks stand up to the greedy, the greedy may win a few battles and get some of what they want, but they'll also likely walk away with empty wallets.

Rex Frankel

comments on L.A. City and County urban runoff cleanup plans (ie., wetland pollution plans)

Get Your Comments in Today by 5 pm (September 29th) on Plan to Clean up L.A.'s Beaches: hint, the devil is in the details, which so far do not exist

Comments are due today to gbegell@dpw.lacounty.gov


sorry for the lateness, but I'm "swamped".


Just copy and paste if you agree.


the project planners' websites are here:

http://dpw.lacounty.gov/landing/waterResources.cfm#

http://dpw.lacounty.gov/lacfcd/ewmppeir/

...Rex


-------------------------------------------------------


COMMENTS ON NOTICE OF PREPARATION FOR DRAFT PROGRAM EIR FOR ENHANCED WATERSHED MANAGEMENT PROGRAMS FOR L.A. COUNTY


September 29, 2014, 1:30 pm


From Rex Frankel, director, Ballona Ecosystem Education Project,


I understand why no one but myself attended the NOP hearing on September 9th in Marina Del Rey. You have no specific projects to analyze for environmental impacts. You are attempting to analyze the environmental impact of words, not specific actions. It is impossible to analyze the impacts of no stated physical projects, just as it is impossible to analyze those unstated projects’ impacts on the environmental setting, ie., the proper baseline, because you have no specific locations for these unspecified projects. Thus all you can say is to analyze the entire county. The two most essential parts of an environmental analysis are missing here: specific projects and specific sites. You have the process all backwards here, and thus, commenting on this NOP in any specific manner is impossible.


Some background: In 2002, local governments settled lawsuits and agreed to consent decrees and promised to stop violations of bacterial health codes at our beaches by 2021. This agreement gave the public agencies an extension beyond the original deadline of 2013 but only if the projects created new parkland and river corridors that could catch and clean water before it fouled the beaches.


In 2006, L.A. City proposed its first big plan under this agreement, an Implementation Plan for the Santa Monica Bay Beaches watersheds. This plan was sent back for redrafting by the RWQCB as it only reached 2% of its target and thus, would not accomplish the goal in the consent decree.


Also in 2006, L.A. city proposed the Integrated Resource Plan which mainly focused on building 25 Hyperion-style urban runoff treatment plants which would have cost the average homeowner ratepayer $400 a month. This plan went nowhere.


In 2012, the County Supervisors tried to quietly approve a $300 million per year property tax hike to build a non-existent list of runoff cleansing and capturing projects. Howls of opposition arose and that plan went nowhere. The public wanted to know what they were paying for.


Now, you are finally starting to design the cleanup plan. But how can you ask the public to weigh in on the scope of the environmental analysis of that plan, when your description of that plan contains no specifics? Your stated plan to defer the environmental analysis of specific project impacts to when each one is up for approval thus ignores the cumulative impacts and therefore is “piecemealing”, by starting major momentum of a project that is composed of many necessary parts, yet deferring analysis and the controversy to a multitude of separate EIRs and CEQA documents and public hearings, all the while public input is diffused. We never get to weigh in on whether we like the complete plan because the Program EIR has no specifics to arouse concern and the real project discussion is delayed until much later in a way that requires massive efforts by the public to keep track of the success of the big plan.


The people who will pay for this plan want to see the specifics before you raise our taxes to pay for it. We want expanded and unpaved river corridor parks. We do not want the plan to include converting existing wetlands and wildlife habitat into pollution dumps and sumps. We want what we were promised, not a lame compromise that puts the cleanup burden on existing public lands, parks and house front yards. We want a complete plan for us to judge whether it will accomplish its promises and goals before you produce an EIR, not the other way around.


Please put me on the notification list for all actions relating to this project. Thank you.

is going back 4000 years ago a restoration?

What is the Correct Definition of a Wetland Restoration?

This website might help:

the federal EPA's website features this definition of "restoration" as stated by the National Research Council (NRC). In its 1992 report, Restoration of Aquatic Ecosystems, NRC defined restoration as the "return of an ecosystem to a close approximation of its condition prior to disturbance."
http://water.epa.gov/type/wetlands/restore/defs.cfm
Definitions & Distinctions | Restoration | US EPA

The question is what year do you return to? 200 years ago or 4000 years ago?

I agree in part with Ruth Lansford (founder of the Friends of Ballona Wetlands) that some things cannot be changed, such as there will always be roads cutting through the area; there will most likely always be polluted water in Ballona Creek; there are older low-lying neighborhoods in Playa del Rey that we need to avoid flooding, just as there are new condos at Playa Vista that are served by roads that could be flooded by future sea level rise. So in the state's plan for flooding the wetlands full-time comes secondary impacts that may affect all of us in the pocketbook.

That is part of the controversy in the proposals for restoring the Ballona Wetlands. The basic engineering in the State's "preferred" plan mimics not the conditions of "prior to disturbance", which logically is about 200 years ago when the wetlands were a low lying river delta region which had only a limited connection to the ocean except in winter, when floods would break through the sand bar. Instead it mimics a full time always-connected to the ocean bay-like area which last occurred here 4000 years ago. To do this is estimated to cost $100 million.

To see maps of the difference between 200 and 4000 years ago, see this link:

https://goo.gl/photos/t1danx8n7jZNvanb7

 

These differences are described in the State's existing conditions report, which is posted here:

http://docs.ballonarestoration.org/Existing%20Conditions%20FINAL.pdf

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5SGRAMv8RXub2hjTzFjN0FEMVk/view?usp=sharing

The difference between these two is that 200 years ago, we had three natural habitat types: saltwater, freshwater and upland wildflower areas, and that 4000 years ago, the area was mostly ocean water, like is proposed to be the dominant feature in the State's proposal. As the site will now be mostly wet, most of the long-used walking paths will be eliminated except for a trail around the perimeter.

Some have said that the state's plan seeks to replace the lagoons at Ballona which were open to the ocean all year-round that were lost to development. 

For a map showing this:
https://goo.gl/photos/CYhEZFg6T4KwNY8S6

I would agree that some of the western lagoon areas that are still present in the Ballona region (Ballona Lagoon, the Grand Canal, Del Rey Lagoon) were usually open to the sea year round, at least based on the historical USGS maps. These are owned by the City of Los Angeles. Additional lagoons shown on this map are now part of the Marina Del Rey harbor, which, contrary to popular belief, actually has fish and seals and other creatures. So it also functions as a wetland habitat. However, most of the state-owned lands at the Ballona Wetlands were not lagoons 200 years ago as mother nature had filled them in. Thus the state's proposal to turn them into lagoons is not historically accurate.

As page 17 of the 8/18/2006 Ballona Existing conditions report says:

"2,000 to 200 years ago - Fluvial sediments continued to fill the lagoon. Deposited sediments resulted in coastal plain accretion in a southwesterly direction and saltmarsh expansion west towards the inlet. Altschul et al. (2005) inferred that a double barrier at the inlet formed about 1,000 years ago as a result of the sediment-rich environment and that extensive mudflats also formed within the lagoon. By 200 years ago, sediment accumulation almost entirely eliminated the lagoon and formed a complex of salt and freshwater marshes, ephemeral freshwater pools and sandy islands behind the barrier. At this stage the marshes extended south to El Segundo Sand Dunes and Del Rey Bluffs, north beyond Ballona Lagoon and Venice Canals and east as far as the confluence of the Ballona and Centinela Creeks."

In order to create the state proposal, 20 feet or more of dirt must be scooped out of 100's of acres of the marsh, and it would be dumped on the south side along Jefferson and Culver Blvds. rising 10 to 15 feet above these roads. These might be very conveniently beneficial to Playa Vista's condos as Jefferson and Culver are in a tsunami zone and tall (and un-natural) earthen walls would prevent flooding there. But should our state-owned wetlands be filled in so as to prevent flooding their condos which they built in a flood plain when they must have known that climate change, or whatever you call it, was causing the threat of sea level rise?

The dirt would also be dumped in the location preferred by the Annenberg Foundation for their supermarket-sized nature center complex near the 90 freeway, giving them an unnatural hill that will undoubtedly give them an ocean-view site where there is not one now.

The state plan also features removal of the levees along Ballona Creek, which while they are not-natural, this would allow the heavily polluted water in the creek to pour into the protected wetlands, leading to a different and worse non-natural result. The cost of cleaning up the water in Ballona Creek is estimated at $3 billion, and that is not mentioned in the $100 million cost estimates of a restoration plan that removes the Ballona Creek levees. This is a good reason to not remove the levees.

So ultimately, the state's plan features an unnatural deep ocean bay filled with urban polluted street drainage and two areas of unnatural hills. I am sure that engineering firms would love this plan but it is not historically accurate. So it's hard to call it a restoration. This is why I support keeping the levees, and restoring the wetlands to a marshy delta concept that is first, more like what the area looked like "prior to disturbance" when development of this area began and second, it requires less land alteration and habitat destruction with bulldozers and will thus cost much less. Finally, it preserves more of our trails and existing wildlife biodiversity.

To see an artist's rendering of a marshy delta restoration:
https://goo.gl/photos/edDobu8JsmFzAe5p9

...Rex Frankel

Destroy our Ballona Wetlands in order to save them?

Do the Ballona Wetlands Need a Big Fix?

Frequently we read letters in the local press from the new directors of the Friends of Ballona Wetlands who say the wetlands need major bulldozing by the owners, the State department of fish and wildlife, to fix them, or they'll "die". Source: http://www.ballonafriends.org/blog/2013/12/restore-ballona-wetlands-now/   

12/12/2013: "Continuing to drag out the environmental review process only allows the Wetlands to further degrade (threatening species) and makes it more expensive to restore. Second, we are fighting “Tea Party” type groups that don’t want the government to do anything and consequently would effectively let the Wetlands die."

Really? 

In 1981: "We, (and this includes the biologists who run our monthly walks) pointed out how rich and varied the wetlands are in their present state, that they are NOT severely degraded....and that even if not one cent were spent on them, they would continue to serve as an irreplaceable resource, both for wildlife and for people." Ruth Lansford, chair of the Friends of Ballona Wetlands, June 1981, Letter to the L.A Times

source:  https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5SGRAMv8RXuQUFYZXRFX1JnYUE/edit

It certainly sounds like the Friends didn't buy the claims of advocates of restoration by bulldozing. In the 1980's, the Friends were the sole environmental group standing up to protect the wetlands. In 1989, the Friends made a deal with the landowner, Playa Vista, to save more of the land. Unfortunately, the deal required them to repudiate others who disagreed with the deal. 

"In 1994, MTP demanded more. Friends of Ballona Wetlands were asked to sign a supplement to their 1990 settlement agreement. Under the new terms, MTP can require the Friends to appear before a public agency and disavow any statement (made by a group that has at least one current or former member of the Friends) that "criticizes the Wetlands Restoration Plan or states that the Revised Playa Vista Plan will have an adverse impact on the restoration of the Ballona Wetlands." After the Friends denounce the criticism, the supplement requires the group to say that its position is unequivocally to the contrary."from the L.A. Weekly 11/24/1995

Source: http://ballona-news.blogspot.com/2007/12/first-major-news-article-covering.html

In 2003, our state's taxpayers handed over $140 million to Playa Vista to double the size of the preserve saved by the Friends in 1989. Did the Friends retire, happy to save the wetlands that did not really need to be restored? No.

Fast forward to 2014: the organization's board of directors and managers are almost entirely new, with several being current or former top employees of Playa Vista. Others work for wetland restoration engineering firms. http://www.ballonafriends.org/about_directors.html

So now, it is intriguing to compare the Friends' revised views on the health of the wetlands:

"we know, based on detailed surveys and the professional judgments of many of our members, that the Wetlands have been severely degraded"

source: http://www.ballonafriends.org/blog/2013/02/the-l-a-times-sensible-editorial/

The Friends are very proud of their partnership with the project managers at the State bureaucracy. The State's restoration newsletters feature a prominent plug for the Friends. And on the Ballona Wetlands restoration website created by the State's project managers are several large photos of trash and homeless camps, which creates an impression that the wetlands are a mess in need of this major bulldozing job. Source: http://ballonarestoration.org/need/

This website is jointly run by the State and the Annenberg Foundation, according to the State's newsletter titled Baywire (April 2014 edition)

And while the Friends support the Annenberg Foundation's proposed supermarket-sized nature center and pet adoption facility on top of the reworked Ballona Wetlands, they have said this previously: "Feral cats, or free-roaming pets, hunt and kill birds such as the endangered Belding’s Savannah Sparrow, and the South Coast Marsh Vole. Allowing access of these animals and pets into a protected Ecological Reserve is both harmful and illegal."

source: http://www.ballonafriends.org/blog/2012/09/dumping-your-pets-at-ballona-is-illegal-irresponsible-and-cruel/

It is our opinion that the definition of "restoration" used by the advocates of major bulldozing is so flexible that it is junk science, all attempting to justify a project that is the most expensive for the taxpayers, and the most profitable for engineering firms. Given that we have shown already that the State's proposal is not historically accurate (http://ballona-news.blogspot.com/2012/08/first-big-public-hearing-on-ballona.html), and unnecessary, and ecologically unsound, we hope that those who claim the wetlands are "dead" give it a rest.

Why is Playa Vista drying up the Public-owned wetlands at Ballona?

4/11/2014--California Coastal Commission Rejects Claims of No Wrongdoing by Playa Capital LLC, California Department of Fish & Wildlife

For years we have battled the public statements of the Playa Vista developers that the wetlands were too dry and degraded to be worth saving. Thus development of thousands of condominiums would be allowed under state wetland protection law. Later, after the State of California bought the land, we have had to combat the plans of the State's bulldozer-loving bureaucracy which believes that the only way to fix these degraded wetlands is to massively remove virtually the entire site, and drown most of it under deep water, instead of taking a gentler approach and restoring the historic shallow creeks on the land, thereby protecting a mix of water and dry land and a balanced ecosystem of wetness for fish and birds and dry land for mammals and reptiles and butterflies.

So we have viewed with suspicion the revelation that Playa Vista actually installed a drainage system with no permits over 10 years ago that dries out a large area of their former land now owned by the state, seeing it as part of larger scheme to make the land either safe for development or so dry that a really drastic and destructive restoration plan is required.

See the Press release from the Grassroots Coalition:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140429007307/en/Grassroots-Coalition-Announces----California-Coastal-Commission#.U2FE0XaRJiY


For Coastal Commission 's 4/11/2014 letter: 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5SGRAMv8RXuaGxobDljTnFoUmM/edit?usp=sharing

More information:

http://www.saveballona.org/playa-vista-ballona-wetlands-drainage-device-press-coverage.html