By Jon Nahhas
Regional Planning Commission approved the Venice Dual Force Main Project and the proposed route underneath Via Marina, 25 February.

Like LA City did in its public meetings on the project, the County purposefully withheld the details of its own lawsuit from its County Commissioners and was absent from their packet of information. Anita Gutierrez, Department of Regional Planning Rep, gave a five-sentence summary of the long litigation process and simply stated that the County didn’t prevail.

The Grassroots Coalition and others presented information to the Commissioners on the dangers of the abandoned gas/oil wells along the proposed route. Beth Holden spoke about the need for more science and the traffic issues associated with the project. Dr. Dan Gottlieb discussed the problems with the Shores project including the leaking abandoned oil wells beneath The Shores and false traffic studies by the County. Kathy Knight of the LAX/Marina Sierra Club spoke on the impacts of other projects and how they are related to the Sewer Project.

The City’s staffers were not only backed by County staffers, but the LA Waterkeeper and Heal the Bay (each organization only attending 1 meeting). They were not concerned so much about the botched environmental review as they were the idea of placing the sewer pipe on the beach close to the water (both discussed sea level rise).

County Counsel quickly tried to spin the Commission after I commented on the huge debacle of the Commission not being informed of why their attorneys spent millions of taxpayer dollars fighting the bad EIR and challenging the City on its deficient traffic studies. I read part of the County’s Opening Brief in court to the Planning Commissioners during my testimony and it obviously created a nervous situation for City and County operatives (each tried to dispute my testimony):

“The EIR considered a number of impacts, including impacts on traffic from the construction of the Project. The EIR that was circulated to the public, however, understated the traffic impacts of both the Via Marina and Pacific Avenue routes. It severely undercounted the traffic impacts of using the Via Marina route because it assumed that only one lane of traffic would need to be closed during construction. However, the City later revealed that two lanes would need to be closed, leaving only one lane open in each direction. The City subsequently commissioned a second traffic study, which revealed that using the Via Marina route would cause significant reductions in the levels of service at several intersections and street segments along Via Marina. In addition, while the original traffic study only considered the cumulative impacts from ten related projects, the second traffic study considered cumulative impacts from 38 related projects.

Despite this significant new information, the City refused to re-circulate the EIR to allow the public to understand the issues relating to the Project, including traffic impacts and cumulative impacts, and to comment on them. The City incorrectly concluded that the traffic impacts from the Project will be less than significant because they will be temporary. In addition, the City incorrectly concluded that the second traffic study merely “corroborated and refined” the information contained in the first traffic study. There is not substantial evidence in the record to support the City’s decision not to re-circulate the EIR.

In addition, the EIR was defective because the Draft EIR considered only fifteen projects in its analysis of cumulative impacts in areas other than the traffic, including but not limited to noise, air quality, visual and aesthetic resources, and geology, soils and seismicity. It later determined that there were a number of additional related projects that were not considered in the Draft EIR, but it never revised the EIR to consider the cumulative impacts from these additional projects, as well as appropriate mitigation measures, and to re-circulated the EIR if the revised EIR includes significant new information.”

County Counsel did say they still believe these assertions are true but that they “lost on the claims.” Technically, they did not lose on the claims – they decided not to pursue. Why not?