CA - A Year in The Life with The Coastal Commission: A Tale of Community Advocacy in 3 Parts
Westside Current Editors Note: This is part 1 of a 3 part series that takes an intimate look at the intricate web of politics, environmental concerns, and community activism that swirls around the California Coastal Commission.
VENICE - As a student at Cal Berkely in the early 70’s, I actually signed the petition that put the Coastal Act on the ballot. I shared this personal/political tidbit with the twelve commissioners currently sitting on The California Coastal Commission as part of what would be the first of a number of two-minute Public Comments I would make this past year speaking out against the Pacific Dell Median Project – which engaged locals mostly remember as either The Reese-Davidson Community, or Mike’s Monster, depending on which side of the canal they were paddling.
To facilitate public participation for residents in The Coastal Zone, the Commission holds many of its Monthly Meetings in various coastal outlets, from Del Mar to Pismo Beach to Crescent City, over which it has dual-jurisdiction on land use issues and other environmental concerns.
Moreover, when the Pacific-Dell Median landed on The Commission’s August, 2022 agenda, a bunch of us decided to take the short trek up to The King Gillette Ranch on Mulholland Hwy. to take full advantage of the opportunity to be seen and heard in public – a refreshing commitment to due process that was effectively denied us while Mike and his pals at Venice Community Housing spent the past few years ramming what would be the largest construction project in Venice since Abbott Kinney built the canals, past a disengaged/compliant City Council.
On the day before we were scheduled to speak, the Coastal Commission’s staff unexpectedly released a blistering response to the City’s request for a Coastal Development Permit in a First Notice of Incompletion in which 25 different aspects of the project were challenged, including its plans to deal with sea level rise, ground water resources, preservation of the Canal’s federally protected boat launch, and six different aspects of its highly problematic parking plan.
That these were the exact same questions Becky Dennison, the Executive Director of Venice Community Housing, refused to answer, or acknowledge, in our six-year battle to figure out why the environmentally fraught Venice Median was selected to be one of the first eight properties earmarked for Prop HHH Funding. None of this was lost on any of us as we walked into the empty auditorium in Calabasas.
I started my public remarks saying, “I could not conceive something this massive and ill-conceived surviving the city’s mandatory traffic study and environmental review,” adding that this was “before our political leadership went to Sacramento to concoct something as craven as AB1197 – The CEQA Exemption – that would toss out environmental review in the Coastal Zone in Los Angeles (and only Los Angeles) in order to speed up the approval process of housing for the homeless.”
After citing FEMA’s newly imposed requirement for homeowners in my neighborhood to carry flood insurance, I ended by referring to the city’s Tsunami Evacuation Seminar which confirmed how better off we’d be to keep the area as open space “to allow the next generation to deal with a slew of environmental and technical problems we can barely conceive of today.”
