County Supervisors Unanimously Approve LCP for Santa Monica Mountains

• Malibu Repesentative on Board Gets OK for Two Dozen Changes to Planning Document

BY BILL KOENEKER

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved the Local Coastal Program for unincorporated areas of Malibu and the rest of the Santa Monica Mountains at its meeting this week.

The board had met last week and continued the matter until this Tuesday when, on a 4-0 vote with Supervisor Gloria Molina absent, it approved the document.

Planners had recommended 30 policy changes to the document and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who represents this area, offered 24 more revisions.

“The LCP will dramatically reduce zoning densities, ban new residential and commercial development in Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Areas, prohibit new development within 50 feet of significant ridgelines, require thorough biological review prior to the issuance of any coastal development permit, reduce grading and site disturbance, dramatically limit the footprint of new development and preserve the free movement of wildlife throughout the Santa Monica Mountains Coastal Zone,” Yaroslavsky said of his revisions.

Those changes include prohibiting camp fires in the mountains, facilitating the rebuilding of homes destroyed in a disaster, and banning new development on slopes of 50 percent or greater.

That livestock containment facilities would be grandfathered with respect to mandated setbacks; the maximum size of a building site in watersheds would be limited to 10,000 square feet; and Arizona crossings would be phased out are some of the approved changes.

Yaroslavsky’s motion was approved by the board and incorporated with staff recommendations.

A county planner indicated the department would incorporate these revisions into the document and then it will be brought back as a consent item for final approval.

At that point, the LCP will be submitted to the California Coastal Commission for certification. That meeting is not expected to take place until the middle or end of 2008.

When the last of the public speakers had testified, the focus was on what is called backyard horse boarding. Additionally, speakers were critical of what they called the “commercialization of the mountains” as the LCP allows bed and breakfast inns in certain zones. Some heated discussion focused on issues related to the land use designation of Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Area.

Equestrians showed up in full force at the meeting, some to counter what they perceived as an anti-horse stance by a group that got involved late in the planning process and warned that some of the provisions of the LCP represented a loosening of restrictions.

Jacky de Haviland, the president of Citizens for a Better LCP, insisted her group and the equestrians are not that far apart. “I think the equestrians don’t realize how close we are. They decided we are the enemy. We never said anything about keeping horses out of the mountains,” she said.

Horse owners, from the onset, had urged county planners to highlight equestrian uses because of the historical significance of horses in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Planners acknowledged in keeping with the spirit of coastal access, equestrian uses would play a role in the LCP process, but insisted the regulations about horse boarding were not loosened in the planning document.

De Haviland indicated they now want to see restrictions tightened up. She and others praised Yaroslavsky’s contributions to the document, but said that other issues would need to be addressed before the California Coastal Commission when it takes up the matter of certifying the plan.

Another issue that surfaced on the day of the hearing was a published report that the coastal agency would take issue with the county’s stance on ESHAs.

County planners had early on acknowledged that they were treating ESHAs differently than what the Coastal Commission had compelled the City of Malibu to implement, but encountered no discouragement from the state agency until this week. “We disagree with the Coastal Commission,” said a county planner.

Yaroslavsky insists that because of the Santa Monica Mountains’ “environmental sensitivity, susceptibility to wildfires and geological hazards, the proposed LCP unequivocally establishes the principle that resource protection and public safety have priority over development.”