First Sizeable Storm Sets Malibu on the Path to Greening

• Low Pressure System Could Break Light Rain/Santa Ana Pattern Creating High Fire Danger

BY ANNE SOBLE

Even though a lot of people’s Saturday plans may have taken a drubbing, a slow-moving upper level low pressure system that brought anywhere from one-half to two inches of rain to parts of Malibu on Saturday was cheered by Los Angeles County fire officials and anyone else who was concerned during the last two months of non-stop red flag warnings.

Although it’s still too soon to take down the high fire danger warning signs from throughout the mountains, this weekend’s rainfall came without the one-two punch of strong Santa Ana winds that became the norm. It was a first step toward the kind of soil saturation that’s required to allow wildfire watchers to breathe a little more easily.

Addition rainfall on Tuesday (the nearby thunder was an added flourish) came at sufficiently spaced intervals to minimize erosion and mud and landslides in local burn areas and along the always more vulnerable canyon roadways.

Bands of moisture wrapped around the low, accounting for breaks in the intermittent rainfall, which is always ideal when the ground has been dry for so many months. The southwesterly onshore wind provided icing on the meteorological cake.

There was some inconvenience, but on the whole, the rain’s impact was as beneficial as it was long overdue. Rain stats for the Malibu coast and hills had hovered at 80 percent below normal.

Local road cleanup crews were on the scene around the clock with their usual adeptness and speed. County trucks in the hills pushed rocks and debris with some of the same plows that handled the fluke snowfall in the Kanan area two weeks ago.

The snow was delightful, but this week’s rain is the big story.

Photo credit, MSN/Frank Lamonea
READINESS—Many of the wildfire burn areas of Malibu Road were double-and-triple-sandbagged to protect against erosion and mud and debris slides. The preparedness also prevented further exacerbation of the inevitable flooding at the side of the roadway.

City Council to Take Closer Look at Fire Response Procedures

• May Consider Forming a Blue Ribbon Panel or Some Other Forum for Public Review

BY BILL KOENEKER

Although it was not on the agenda, the Malibu City council discussed last week at a special meeting how the Malibu Road fire might have been handled better.

The council had been urged on by local resident Anthony Shafer to form a blue ribbon committee, or other kind of panel, to study the procedures and response times for the Los Angeles County Fire Department during the Jan. 8 conflagration.

“I would like to see a change in protocol. Twenty minutes after the fire, there was still no fire truck on Malibu Road,” said Councilmember Sharon Barovsky, who lives on Malibu Road.

At a previous council meeting, the members were told by Assistant Fire Chief for Division 7 Reginald Lee that protocol requires that the first response to the fire is to send a unit to the origin of the fire, which was at Pacific Coast Highway near Malibu Canyon Road. The council also was told that the first word of the fire came from someone who went to the Malibu Road fire station to report it.

Fire department officials affirmed that everything was done correctly and by the book.

“Somebody should have known which way the wind was blowing,” said Mayor Ken Kearsley, referring to the Santa Ana winds that were blowing at the time and pushing the fire down the bluff and toward Malibu Road and the structures which caught on fire.

“Where was the fire truck?” asked Barovsky, echoing complaints that, because of protocol, engine companies got to the burning structures too late. “We shouldn’t have lost a home,” said Barovsky, making some of the most critical comments yet by public officials about how the fire was fought by the department.

Councilmember Jeff Jennings talked about creating some kind of accessway at the westernmost end of Malibu Road to get emergency vehicles onto Malibu Road from that direction.

Since the fire discussion was not on the agenda, the council could not take any action but agreed to schedule the issue for a future meeting.

Members also asked Shafer to help coordinate efforts, especially by bringing as many fire department personnel and other officials to the table.

CROSS CREEK ROAD

In other action, the council reviewed the design plans for the so-called Cross Creek Road improvements. A $2 million project that will realign the main street of Malibu, create diagonal parking, increase pedestrian access and add additional traffic calming measures to the street.

Plans call for the removal of the existing street and discontinuous sidewalks. The existing roadway will be replaced with what is described as a “gently winding, serpentine, street.” New pedestrian walkways and appropriate street furniture will be installed, according to planning officials. The new street will eliminate the existing center turn lane, thereby reducing the paved width and increasing the parkway area. Parking will be diagonal.

Project manager Bow Bowman said the money from several different sources has already been allocated and the planned start day has been delayed from April until after Labor Day.

Council members, who did not appear to be pleased with the plans, which were previously approved and submitted to various municipal commissions and panels, expressed concerns about the loading and unloading of delivery trucks, and the placement of cross walks, among other issues.

Jennings may have nevertheless summed up the dilemma in tampering with the project at this point. “This project is way down the road and ready to go. I’m not willing to revise the project,” he said.

Councilmember Pamela Conley Ulich suggested Cross Creek Road could be shut off at different times and utilized as a pedestrian zone. Existing driveways could be used to get traffic in and out of the shopping centers, she said. “We could do it on a pilot basis.”

The staff, including Bowman and City Manager Jim Thorsen, indicated the council’s concerns could be addressed easily especially about the placement of cross walks and other issues. “I think we have a clear understanding from the council,” the city manager concluded.

BLUFFS BEAUTIFICATION

Additionally, the council earmarked $10,000 for funding what the council called Malibu Bluffs beautification. The idea came about when Conley Ulich asked the council to consider allocating funds with the possibility of creating murals at the Park. She wanted the council to consider commissioning an artist to paint a mural at the park.

Members stopped short of commissioning any work, but did express the desire to spend money to spruce up the park.

In another park related matter, the council agreed to consider setting aside more money for the proposed Trancas Canyon Park.

Barovsky asked that the matter be referred to the council’s administration and finance subcommittee for consideration.

The city still needs $2.5 million to complete the design, plans and construction of the park.

It was supposed to be a directive to the planning staff for how to proceed with various zoning laws that are assigned to the department for the upcoming year.

By the time the majority of the council deleted several items on the priority list, most of the items not already initiated were proposed zoning changes sought by Conley Ulich, including green building standards, a public arts program and a formula retail ban.

Cabrillo Port Hopes to Skirt Smog Rules Because It’s at Sea

• Federal Law Requires EPA Enforcement of State Air Pollution Rules to 200 Miles Offshore

BY HANS LAETZ

The company seeking to build a liquefied natural gas terminal on Malibu’s coastal horizon now says it should be exempted from tough federal smog requirements because current standards apply only to land-based LNG ovens, and theirs would be on a ship.

And, in a related matter, the Los Angeles area’s regional smog agency has sued the state panel that gave a green light to hot-burning natural gas imports that might pass through Malibu, increasing air pollution levels all across California.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District filed a lawsuit last week, alleging that liquefied natural gas from foreign nations is often “hot gas,” which it describes as “liquefied natural gas with an inherently different chemical composition and higher heating content than natural gas currently used in Southern California.”

“Preliminary tests have shown that certain equipment burning ‘hot gas’ can nearly double emissions of nitrogen oxides, a key cause of ozone and fine particulate pollution,” an AQMD statement read. “Consumer groups and equipment manufacturers also have raised concerns about potential fire, safety and equipment durability concerns when hot gas is used.”

Last week, AQMD’s executive officer said the suit against the California Public Utilities Commission was only aimed at LNG coming from a new terminal near Ensenada, and that all proposed offshore U.S.-based terminals had pledged not to use “hot gas.”

But after being asked to double-check that by a reporter, AQMD spokesman Sam Atwood reviewed the Cabrillo Port issue. On Monday he e-mailed that “it looks like they (BHP Billiton) have not made a firm commitment to deliver gas that meets AQMD’s recommended (standard),” and that Cabrillo Port’s owners have not in fact committed to avoid the heavier-polluting fuel.

But Atwood said BHP Billiton officials told the AQMD it could be feasible to meet the old, cleaner standard if the state PUC were to reinstate it.

Meanwhile, an attorney for BHP Billiton told the Environmental Protection Agency that it is impossible to place catalytic scrubbers on its Malibu terminal to remove hundreds of tons of smog-producing chemicals because the high-temperature catalytic burners can’t be used on a pitching, swaying ship.

In a letter obtained by the Malibu Surfside News, Thomas R. Wood wrote that scrubbers have never been connected to LNG boilers onboard ships, “and the technology is currently not feasible.” An accompanying technical report says the huge ship would have to be further enlarged to make room for the pollution-control equipment, and even then movement of the ship may cause the scrubbers to work improperly.

At issue is a federal requirement that the LNG terminal use “best available control technology” to reduce the 484 tons of smog-producing chemicals that Cabrillo Port would release into the coastal skies near Malibu each year. Since a similar LNG plant near Baltimore uses a high-temperature flame to remove nitrogen oxide from the smokestack, EPA wants to know why Billiton doesn’t plan that technology for its ship.

The technical report provided by BHP Billiton says the “sloshing effect” from waves would cause burner flames in the catalytic scrubbers to “potentially cause the head on the burner to vary, thus introducing instabilities in the flow...These issues cannot simply be ‘designed around’ because there is little or no data upon which to base the FSRU (ship) design.”

The BHPB report notes that the 82-foot-high scrubbers, mounted on top of the ship, would sway back and forth five feet if the ship rolled just one degree in the ocean waves. The reports says maintenance workers onboard the ship “may potentially be exposed to a release of cold hydrocarbon gas during an emergency venting situation” should the scrubbers fail due to wave action.

In Houston, BHP Billiton spokesman Patrick Cassidy said the report and letter shows that scrubbers have “never been used for submerged combustion vaporizers in a marine application, and substantial research would be required to determine whether the technology is feasible for that application.”

Cassidy said putting the LNG plant offshore, while making the pollution scrubbers impossible, has major advantages.
“Cabrillo Port provides numerous other benefits by virtue of its offshore location, including safety and environmental features, that can’t be had with an onshore facility.

“These include a smaller environmental footprint, a buffer zone of no less than 13 miles that puts the operation safely away from any onshore activities, such as schools, neighborhoods, and businesses; and proximity to existing pipeline infrastructure which minimizes onshore disturbance,” he said.

An attorney at the Environmental Defense Center scoffed at that. “That’s just classic BHP Billiton, saying, ‘Look at all the pretty bows we’ve put on this package, and disregard all the negative impacts,” said EDC attorney Karen Kraus.

The BHPB letter adds attention to the EPA air pollution permit controversy. Last week, Rep. Henry Waxman demanded that EPA turn over its legal memos and e-mails regarding the agency’s 2005 decision to yield to White House pressure and move towards exempting the company from the strictest level of smog rules, which might make building the LNG terminal impossible.

BHPB’s Cassidy this week downplayed the significance of the Waxman inquiry. “The letter is being addressed by EPA, and the issues raised are not new news,” he said in a telephone interview Monday.

Cassidy raised the argument that the company can build its terminal without complying with local onshore smog regulations. “It also should be noted that Cabrillo Port is 14 miles offshore and would not be located in Ventura or Los Angeles counties,” he added.

That distinction may prove critical, if the company spokesperson is correct. Although California coastal jurisdiction only extends three miles offshore, federal law requires the EPA to enforce state smog rules for deepwater port projects out to 200 miles offshore.

The EPA tentatively ruled in 2004 that Ventura County smog rules apply to Cabrillo Port, a holding that has not yet been formally challenged by BHP Billiton. The Ventura smog agency has recently reaffirmed that the LNG terminal must buy smog offsets—a possible fatal blow to the terminal, since Ventura County does not have much heavy industry that can be “greened up” to provide BHPB with smog credits.

Publisher’s Notebook: Soundlessness

BY ANNE SOBLE

So many in my generation, early environmentalists, radicalized in high school and college, and imbued with the belief that the world had to change or face disaster, were influenced by Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” in 1962. Those who had travelled to Cuba, blocked lunch counters and rode Freedom Buses, and believed in nature and revolution instead of corporate technology as tools of social progress, were motivated to put a spotlight on toxins in the environment. Carsonites pushed for the ban of the pesticides DDT and PCB in 1972, an early example of how to peacefully provide counterweights to vested financial interests in a environmental battle that is not all that dissimilar to today’s debate over liquified natural gas. As with the current purveyors of chemical and technological products that have deleterious consequences, opponents must challenge industry disinformation, as well as rebuke elected and appointed public officials for doing industry’s bidding.

On the West Coast, the use of DDT nearly exterminated the brown pelican, but once its use was stopped, these birds slowly, steadily, came back. Still, the latest federal scientific research (too often a contradiction in terms) appears to show that fish in South Coast waters still contain some of the highest concentrations of DDT and PCB found in the world. These levels are lower than those of decades ago, but are still unhealthy. As a result, the bald eagle is not fairing as well as the pelican. DDT levels remain high enough to weaken the shells of eggs on Santa Catalina Island. Eggs must be removed to improve their odds of hatching. The pesticides are taking longer than first thought to degrade to less toxic components. The EPA and NOAA data, admittedly four years old, shows great fluctuations in concentration, with the greatest levels located well south of Malibu. Fish in local waters are safe unless otherwise posted, so the world-renown image of anglers on the Malibu Pier is not in jeopardy. Even so, apart from recreational anglers who throw back their catch, those who fish anywhere off the South Coast should carefully heed all notices about water quality.

We keep asking why it is so difficult for society to accept that so many of the toxins that are put in the ground and the water, as well as our bodies, may be quick and cheap fixes for a need, but they can have long-term disastrous consequences.

Who’s Looking After the Look on Pacific Coast Highway?

• Curtailing Commercial Use of Malibu’s Main Artery Involves an Array of Agencies

BY HANS LAETZ

At one end of the parking area above Broad Beach, tourists with Michigan license plates pose next to the “27 Miles of Scenic Beauty” sign, the California coast they came to see stretching to Point Dume. It was another picture-perfect moment in Malibu.

At the other end of the lot, a construction worker revs up a front-end loader, drops gravel into a large dump truck, and discretely relieves himself next to one of the several piles of gravel stored at the non-permitted, unofficial construction materials storage site.

The mess in Malibu’s front yard is one of several unsightly problems along Pacific Coast Highway, the world-famous road that is also this city’s main street.

At Point Dume, as many as five sewage pumping trucks at a time park between the stored dumpsters, and cars for sale sit below one of Malibu’s last billboards. The trucks park along PCH to transfer their loads into bigger ones, consolidating sewage for the long trip to a sewage plant in Van Nuys.

Just down PCH, dumpsters permanently line the highway next to $10 million-plus homes, forcing bicyclists into traffic. City officials have to deal with the state Department of Transportation, the county, water quality agencies and others to try to keep the road sightly and traffic moving.

“We try to keep a lid on it, and then something comes out of nowhere and people start calling,” said Mayor Ken Kearsley. “And boy, do they call.”

Such complaints spurred city officials to phone the septic tank pumping companies this week, with a message that too much trans-truck pumping activity is happening on PCH at Point Dume.

“It’s not illegal, all we can do is tell them we are getting complaints, said city permit services manager Gail Sumpter. “We’ve asked them to move before, like when they were consolidating their loads on Civic Center Way. I called them and said, ‘Come on, guys, you can’t do this here.’”

Pumping company officials could not be reached, but a spokeswoman for a trade group said residents need to have their septic tanks pumped, and the companies need to consolidate their loads to keep costs down. “If three little trucks can transfer to one big truck, that means the three little trucks can go back out to three more jobs, and that saves homeowners money,” said Donna Ferraro of the National Waste Haulers Organization.

As for the wildcat gravel pit at the Trancas-area scenic overlook, Sumpter said Monday she will tell an Oxnard septic system company to remove it. The unofficial storage yard has been operating for more than a year on land owned by Los Angeles County, a wedge of unimproved but scenic land between Pacific Coast Highway and Broad Beach Road.

Ely, Jr. Pumping Service of Oxnard has kept four to six piles of various-sized sand and rock, a front-end loader, and a variety of trucks parked in the area for over a year. At times, brand-new concrete seepage pit liners have been stored on the site.

“That’s not right at all,” said Bailard Road homeowner Kay Collins. Like many people interviewed, she was surprised that the construction material between her house and the ocean was not a Caltrans project, but a private enterprise on public land.

“That’s very ugly, I thought Caltrans was still there storing stuff,” said Pt. Dume resident André Gruber, who drives by the site regularly.

Owner Ely Simental did not return a reporter’s phone call. Ely’s trucks have been spotted hauling the material to construction sites in Malibu Park and Point Dume, several miles from the piles.

Sumpter said she was not aware the storage facility was operating, and said there are no permits for this use on the land owned by Los Angeles County. “It would need a conditional use permit, and erosion control plans, and it would have to be on land they control,” she said.

The wildcat storage yard appeared after Caltrans set up a temporary storage yard while replacing a washed-out culvert under PCH west of Trancas. When Caltrans pulled out, the septic tank construction supplies remained.

“Our guys tell us they have no material out there within sight,” said Caltrans spokeswoman Judy Gish. “We’ve been done out there for more than a year.”

California Highway Patrol and Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department officials expressed surprise at a reporter’s question about commercial car carriers hauling brand new BMWs and Mitsubishis from Port Hueneme to points east through Malibu. On some days, four or five truckloads of cars, still in protective plastic, roll through Malibu within an hour.

“When we see ’em, we cite ’em,” said traffic Sgt. Philip Brooks at the Malibu-Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station. “Every once in awhile, we get a call about more trucks, and we go sit down there to wait for them and then cite the ones that we find.”

Last week, one truck driver stopped at the scenic overlook next to the gravel yard to take a photo.

He told a reporter that he had not seen any signs banning trucks through Malibu. Indeed, there are no signs on the road from Port Hueneme to Pacific Coast Highway to tell truckers that PCH is off limits to through trucks.

One sign on PCH near Point Mugu says, “No trucks past Decker Road” but doesn’t say where Decker Road is, or give directions to the alternate route to Los Angeles.

“It’s just an impossible task, dealing with all these agencies,” Kearsley lamented. “It’s like mowing through a jungle.”

It Snows in the Malibu Mountains

Photo credit, MSN/Hans Laetz

SNOWMANIA—It was Kitzbühel on Kanan Dume Road, well, maybe not quite, but for the first time in more than two decades, there was enough snow to create traffic problems. Drivers were stuck in the hills, which were coated with three inches of snow above 2000 feet in elevation near the 90265 line last Wednesday. About 60 cars and trucks were parked inside one tunnel for a half hour, until a Los Angeles County plow truck was used to remove snow for the first time in its existence.

Charmlee Park Camping Still on the Negotiating Table

• West Malibu Residents Say They Are Being Put in Fire Danger to Appease Conservancy

BY BILL KOENEKER

Despite pleas from homeowner association members, west Malibu residents and Charmlee Park supporters, the Malibu City Council last week declined to take overnight camping in Charmlee off the negotiating table with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy on its proposed public works plan. The two agencies are apparently making an effort to avoid going to the courtroom despite pending litigation between the two parties by engaging in a lengthy set of discussions.

The council, on a 4-1 vote, with Councilmember Pamela Conley Ulrich dissenting, approved a proposed Memorandum of Understanding between the city and the conservancy and directed the city attorney to file what is called a stipulated preliminary injunction and stay of litigation in the case.

In what was described as an unusual display of openness in local government, the council and its city attorney conducted their closed session in the open combined with a public hearing before any action was taken. City Attorney Christi Hogin cited the long history of contention between the city, the conservancy and the homeowners in Ramirez Canyon, who have objected to how the SMMC uses its headquarters, the former residential compound of Barbra Streisand.

The city attorney said the MOU does not resolve all of the problems the two agencies face, but would create an opportunity for the conservancy and the city to share a dialogue.

Hogin said what the MOU would do is stay the litigation, while the SMMC would rescind the public works plan—a proposal that would connect trails and overnight campsites in Corral, Escondido, Solstice and Ramirez canyons, and includes increased activities at SMMC headquarters.

Additionally, the Conservancy would agree to apply for a Local Coastal Program amendment, which would have to be approved by the city and certified by the California Coastal Commission. “Most of the public works plan will probably be in the LCPA,” added Hogin, who said the overnight camping at Charmlee was one of many options that were put on the table to show good faith to conservancy officials.

But it might have been the city attorney’s comment that the MOU called for eliminating overnight camping in the aforementioned canyons “because of fire hazard,” that seemed to leave many west Malibu residents and those who live near Charmlee slack jawed.

Many west end residents filled the council chambers. Some spoke about how there was no difference between the hazards in mid-Malibu and west Malibu where there are just as many homes downwind and in the path of any fire that starts in Charmlee.

If a fire started in the area and traveling southeast, it could burn all the way through to Broad Beach on its way to the sea.

Lucille Keller, who spoke on behalf of the Malibu Township Council, talked about the hundreds of homes and thousands of residents who would be impacted by any fire in the park. “Charmlee is close to the population areas of west Malibu. It puts several thousand people at risk,” she said.

However, the majority of the council insisted the opportunity to bring the conservancy and its executive director Joe Edmiston to the table was too great to risk taking any option off it.

Edmiston was characterized as a “snake” by one speaker, who said, “He has already bitten you,” to a council member who countered Edmiston is a “runaway bride who we just got to the altar.”

Councilmember Jeff Jennings elaborated on the position of the city and the SMMC. “This is of itself a victory. Joe has taken a big step. The conservancy and the city are close to a complete resolution of the problem,” he said.

Councilmember Andy Stern agreed. “I think this is a huge victory. What you didn’t want is a public works plan. The conservancy has rescinded that. What we are accomplishing is huge,” he said.

Conley Ulich took a different tack, saying the action might be a victory for those in the mid-Malibu canyons, but did little for folks living near Charmlee Park.

The lone dissenting member said there are many campsites already in the 90265 zip code, and that other alternatives, such as expanding camping at Leo Carrillo State Park, should be explored. She also indicated that expanded use of the city’s park shuttle at the headlands should also be discussed.

Conley Ulich introduced a motion to eliminate the section dealing with overnight camping in the MOU, but could not get a second on the motion for a vote.

Councilmember Sharon Barovsky said she would not vote for any overnight camping proposal unless it could be proven safe. “I am aware of fire. But I don’t want to take anything off the table,” she said.

Mayor Ken Kearsley was even more laudatory about the summit between Edmiston and municipal officials. “This is Nixon going to China. All through the [cityhood] debate, the thing we wanted the most was local control. To guide our own destiny. The public works plan there was no local control. This is not about camping. That is just one of the possibilities. We have to talk. This is the first step. Then we can talk about camping. If we have camping, we have to make sure it is controlled. We want to stop that thinking that we are exclusive. That environment is for everybody. I am going to support this,” the mayor said.

“I am not Nixon, and I am not going to support it,” proclaimed Conley Ulich.

Snow Falls on the 90265 Boundary Line and Makes History

• But Mother Nature Continues to Deny Malibu the Rain that Is So Desperately Needed

BY HANS LAETZ

It was, to put this delicately, a Malibu moment.

The sharply-dressed woman stood in the center of snow-covered, ice-encrusted Kanan Dume Road, cell phone to her ear, her sleek Carrera diagonally blocking the downhill lane.

“I don’t know how to drive in the snow! And I’m not moving this car until my husband gets here!”

A female California Highway Patrol officer got on her car’s loudspeaker: “Lady, if I can drive on it, you can drive on it. Move your car now!”

Some of the 30 or so penned-up car and truck drivers, stuck in Tunnel Two’s downhill bore for the last hour, were unhappy to say the least. “Push it out of the way!” one shouted at the driver of the black Porsche, brand new with a paper plate, blocking the road out of the snowbound pass. “Push it into the canyon!”

A county dumptruck plowed past, slaloming around stopped cars while heading downhill though the uphill lanes. The newly conscripted plowman—if that’s what he would be called—laughed and gave a thumbs up. It was likely the first time that this skiploader had moved snow, instead of rocks and mud.

“The fire crew is here now, and if you don’t move that car, they are going to pick it up and move it for you,” announced the same female voice on the CHP public address system. Someone took the keys, and inched the Porsche off the road.

Had the snow crisis on Kanan Dume Road ended? No, it had just moved 300 feet down the hill, where a burly cement truck driver was now refusing to leave Tunnel Three’s shelter until the road ahead of him was plowed.

Fear of the ice knew no gender bounds on Kanan Dume Road last Wednesday afternoon.

The winter low pressure system announced its presence shortly after lunch, when two enormous thunder claps echoed out of the canyons.

Although it was 55 and sunny down at Zuma Beach, a wintertime thunderhead built upas cold Arctic air met warm coastal air. Word quickly spread through the cell-phone network in Malibu that it was snowing on Kanan.

The snow level was at about 1700 feet above sea level—just at Mulholland Drive, on the ocean side of the hill. But it dipped far below that on the colder, inland side. About four inches of snow fell at the higher elevations, giving the newly-planted vineyards around Rocky Oaks the look of Germany’s Rhine Valley in the winter.

“I was here in 1986 when it snowed just like this up here,” exulted CHP Sgt. Gary Greenfield. “Except that happened at night, so it froze, and it didn’t turn to slush like this stuff did.”

From the comparative warmth of his Pasadena office, Jet Propulsion Lab meteorology expert William Patzert noted that temperatures had dropped 50-plus degrees since the 80-degree winds that had hit Malibu the week before.

“This El Niño we were supposed to have, has instead been El Busto,” he said. “And the climate system gets a lot of volatility if there is no overall pattern controlling it.

“So we had this tremendous mountain of cold air that just poured out of the Arctic last week, down to the Mexican border, and when it met some moisture, we got a snowstorm over Malibu.”

Patzert said the storm was “a once-in-a-lifetime thing. We had an event like this in 1963, but to see a really big snowfall out there we have to go back to ’49.”

Back in the mountains, as twilight fell, the snowfall turned to rain, traffic began to get heavy, and children were carted up to see the sight by their excited parents. Some kids were yanked out of school early. The snow at the Kanan turnouts was quickly churned into slushy mud.

At Tunnel Two, CHP officers in the median watched as traffic began flowing again, and took pictures of each other in the snow with their cell phones. “If we can prove we have to work in the snow, maybe they will give us those great big snow hats,” one Valley-based CHiP explained.

Warmer overnight temperatures melted a lot of the snow, although enough lingered, along with some black ice, to keep sightseers coming until most of it disappeared late Thursday.

The snow was no sooner gone than Malibu returned to a red flag alert with strong Santa Ana winds through the week, and only a slight possibility of rain in sight.

Patzert’s long-term forecast? “Well, there is weather, and there is climate. We know who is in charge of the weather: Mother Nature. But mankind is in charge of the climate, and we know things are getting warmer, there is no question about that.”

Long Beach LNG Bid Voted Down—Cabrillo Port Critics Buoyed

• But Others Wonder Whether This May Lead to Added Pressure on Behalf of Local Project

BY HANS LAETZ

A proposed liquefied natural gas terminal in the middle of Long Beach Harbor was killed by port officials Monday night, a widely anticipated action that might increase pressure on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to approve the Malibu LNG terminal proposed by BHP Billiton.

The Long Beach action came the same day that the California Coastal Commission set the date and place for what may be the final government hearing for the proposed Cabrillo Port floating regasification terminal: April 12 in Santa Barbara.

Long Beach’s port commissioners said the project’s benefits to local residents, including $500 million in rent payments to the city over 40 years, were not worth the risk of pollution and possible catastrophic accident, with 140,000 residents living within three miles of the plant. The Long Beach LNG plant was one of five currently proposed for California, but was unusual in that local government had apparent veto power as landlord.

The decision came after Long Beach city attorney Robert Shannon said the LNG project’s environmental analysis “fails to provide necessary information to the public, most critically in the area of public safety and security, as legally required” by state environmental laws. Like the Cabrillo Port project, the Long Beach security analysis and terrorism threat assessments are secret and beyond public review, and Shannon said projects cannot be approved under state law without public disclosure.

The president of Sound Energy Solutions, the Mitsubishi subsidiary that spent millions of dollars proposing the Long Beach LNG project, said, “We are surprised by the action taken by the Harbor Commission and the Port of Long Beach. We just resumed negotiations last week with the city at the direction of the city manager,” said Thomas Giles.

“We are currently reviewing all of our options,” he added.

An industry lobbyist in Washington said SES “might sue Long Beach to try to reopen negotiations, or might put more money on the table. But it would be
premature to say that the apparent end of the Long Beach terminal puts more pressure on the state to approve any one of the other competing terminal proposals,” said Center for LNG spokesperson William Cooper.

In Sacramento, a spokesman for an industry group that has been campaigning for LNG terminals said he could not comment on any particular project. “But the need for LNG terminals in California is most important to increasing the natural gas supply in the state and lower energy costs,” said Gino diCaro of the California Manufacturers and Technology Association.

BHP Billiton spokesman Patrick Cassidy said, “We don’t have any comment on the Long Beach project at this time. LNG is a clean, economical and stable fuel that can advance California’s energy and environmental goals.”

Anti-LNG activists cheered the decision, and said they do not think it increases pressure on the governor to approve Malibu’s project. “If our state takes a hard look at our energy future, it will determine we don’t need LNG anywhere, and that includes Cabrillo Port, and Baja California,” said Rory Cox, an activist with Pacific Environment.

Susan Jordan, director of California Coastal Protection Network, said that Cabrillo Port, the only other project currently in advanced environmental review, could be killed at several points this year. “Then we will have a clean slate and can compare all the various proposals,” she said.

Neither California nor the federal government has competitive licensing, where various proposals would be compared against each other with the best ones winning. A proposal to do so in California died in the Legislature last year.

As for the Malibu LNG terminal hearings, Coastal Commission officials said that a location for the daylong April 12 session, which will probably attract extensive public testimony, was finally found in Santa Barbara.

The site had been moved up and down the central California coast several times when no facility could be located nearby, and some angry Malibu and Oxnard residents were upset at the prospect of traveling 170 miles up the coast to one of the proposed sites in San Luis Obispo.

On Monday morning the commission had almost moved the meeting to the Port of Los Angeles, but at the last minute was offered space in Santa Barbara, 55 miles from Malibu’s northern end, where the aircraft-carrier-sized ship would be located. “There was an incredible amount of effort to accommodate the concerns of the public in Malibu and Oxnard,” said commission spokesperson Sarah Christie in Sacramento.

In Santa Barbara, attorneys for the CCC and BHP Billiton are expected to square off over the commission’s jurisdiction over the project’s smog permits. The state claims it has the power to reject or approve the project license and smog permits issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, while BHP Billiton president Renee Klimczak contends that Coastal has limited jurisdiction.

Christie said public testimony would be accepted at the meeting, and the commission is expecting a huge crowd.

The April meeting could be preempted by a session of the California State Lands Commission sometime in March, likely to be held in Southern California. That little-known agency has licensing authority, in conjunction with two federal agencies, on the LNG project.

To top that off, EPA has indicated it might also reopen hearings on the project’s controversial air pollution permit as well.

The April 12 Coastal meeting will be at Fess Parker’s Doubletree Resort, 633 E. Cabrillo St., Santa Barbara.

I-N F-I-R-S-T PE-R-S-O-N

It’s Not Easy Being Malibu

BY HANS LAETZ

About 10,000 gallons of raw L.A. sewage spilled Friday near Pacific Palisades; maybe you smelled it or saw the pumping trucks off Pacific Coast Highway. No big deal, the beach was closed for a day. It rated a 20-second voice-over on the TV news.

Of course, a few weeks ago, a couple hundred gallons of street runoff—not raw sewage, but standard urban runoff— leaked into Malibu Lagoon. My computer’s Google news alert went berserk as articles from around the world piled in—another sewage spill in the “exclusive celebrity enclave,” as the outside media loves to tag Malibu.

Errors and a snarky attitude dog stories about Malibu.

Take the recent whopper about local movie stars—Malibu residents are always movie stars in many news outlets’ stylebooks—facing the possibility of having to give up DNA samples in a search for sewage leaks. Los Angeles County had to call a news conference the next day to knock that one down, but misleading “Malibu stink” stories are still winging their way around the world. Even the North Korea Daily in Pyongyang ran a headline over the Malibu star poop scoop: the sun never sets on the Malibu celebrity toilet fixation.

Last October, I stood next to a putative environmental reporter on the Malibu Pier during the big LNG Paddleout. The reporter didn’t ask the stars about LNG, but whether they thought Malibu movie types have a right to complain about LNG when their septic tanks are polluting the ocean on a regular basis? After first responding with blank stares, all agreed that no, septic tanks should not leak into the ocean, and yes, by golly, they should be repaired if they do. Of course, these latter comments were not reported.

The media’s star-struck attitude towards Malibu surfaced again last week, in a one-sided article about the Ramirez Canyon battle that quoted Joe Edmiston as saying Malibu should do the right thing, but only quoted the city’s attorney as noting that it had just snowed out here. Reading this latest article, one would think Malibuites earnestly want to erect tollgates so underprivileged visitors will not drive through celebrity poop on every snowy canyon road.

Another publication last week took Malibu residents to task for not erecting barricades when they learned that the son of a corrupt, possibly murderous African political strongman had purchased a $35 million mansion overlooking Malibu Pier. The article suggests that Malibuites have been too easy on him. Perhaps they should march on his gate with flaming torches, or at least T-P his mailbox.

Of course, the African son-of-a-despot had been living in Los Angeles for years, ostensibly unnoticed by that L.A. publication. His move to a Malibu mansion, however, made it news, even though the Malibu Surfside News had that story in its Nov. 16 issue, a few days after an international human rights group revealed the connection.

These incidents are not exceptions, but the media norm.

Perhaps some of the mistakes can be attributed to ignorance or lazy reporting, but there appears to be real bias as well. And even more may be going on, especially with some of the things being flung around about Malibu as the LNG battle comes to a head.

BHP Billiton is spending millions on public relations, including finding allies in the Australian press who say the only persons opposing Cabrillo Port are millionaire movie star crybabies. Pro-Billiton blogs on the Web paint Malibuites as coddled millionaires and billionaires.

A former Long Beach city council member, who made an unsuccessful bid for mayor, carries the BHPB flag with comments about Malibu being full of spoiled stars awash in sewage that were parroted by the media and the Net. Malibu is an easy target for someone with an axe to grind.

Meanwhile, TV reports on Friday said another 10,000 gallons of sewage spilled into the ocean down in—drum roll, please—Long Beach. That makes 20,000 gallons of sewage spilled from area sewers last week, versus none from Malibu’s creaky, celebrity-poop-laden septic tanks.

Even in the coverage of the Malibu Road fire, being a celebrity garnered extra solace from the big city press. Or was that just schadenfreude with a sympathetic headline?

Publisher’s Notebook: Poisons and Palominos

BY ANNE SOBLE

Federal agencies are bottomless chasms where one department may have no idea what the others are doing. That’s just as well with the federal Environmental Protection Agency that has flip-flopped on Cabrillo Port, because another division has proposed new controls for rat poison that would end over-the-counter sales of the most toxic chemicals and go a long way toward protecting wildlife and pets, as well as children. The News has run a number of stories on the effect these poisons have on wildlife in the Santa Monica Mountains, claiming lives of cougars, coyotes, bobcats, and many smaller animals that either eat rodents that have ingested the poison or consume fatal levels of poison-laced bait. EPA data show that rat poison has been detected in animals carcasses, as well as 27 species of birds. Under these rules, three chemicals—brodifacoum, bromodialone and difethialone—so-called second-generation anticoagulants would be curtailed. They work by inhibiting the absorption of vitamin K, which leads to internal bleeding and death. Six other rodent poisons will be available to homeowners, but these products will be sold only in tamper-resistant bait stations, making them inaccessible to animals and children. The regulations made public last week are subject to public comment for 60 days before being adopted. The rules are not as strong as they could be, as licensed pest control companies will still be able to use the controlled products, but when they use them outdoors, such as on golf courses and large greenbelt areas, they must be put in tamper-resistant bait stations that would make them inaccessible. Better bait station design is also required. It’s a first step.

A federal appeals court said horses cannot be slaughtered for food in Texas, where two of America’s three processing plants that ship horsemeat overseas are located. The decision, issued last Friday by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, overturns a lower court’s ruling in 2006 on a 1949 Texas law that banned horse slaughter for the purpose of selling the meat for food because equines are symbolic of the Old West and an integral part of the nation’s history. The lower court, not quite as taken with Western lore, had said the Texas law was invalid because it was repealed by another statute and was preempted by federal law. However, a panel of three judges on the 5th Circuit disagreed, saying the law still stood and was still enforceable. Judge Fortunato Benavides wrote, “The lone cowboy riding his horse on a Texas trail is a cinematic icon. Not once in memory did the cowboy eat his horse.” About 88,000 horses, mules and other equines were slaughtered in 2005, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. The Humane Society of the United States, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, applauded the 5th Circuit decision. So do we.
Now, if it would only begin to rain.

Malibu Road Fire Cause Is Still Under Investigation

• Questions Are Being Raised about Brush Clearance Practices and Their Possible Contribution

BY HANS LAETZ

As arson investigators continue to seek a cause of last week’s Malibu Road brushfire, residents along the beach have some pointed questions about supposed brush clearance on the burned parkland. But firefighters say brush clearance by a parks agency, while perhaps not up to standard, had little to do with the loss of five houses.

Unofficial damage estimates stand at $60 million, making the Malibu Bluffs fire of Jan. 8 one of the most expensive brushfires on a per-acre basis in state history, one fire official said. No people were hurt in the fire, which charged to the ocean and took 300 firefighters three hours to extinguish, and a half-day to mop up.

But the story took a more somber turn two days after the fire, when the remains of one resident’s dog were found in the debris. “Angel,” a small white dog owned by Malibu Road residents Al Ehringer and Christina Carmel, was the only unaccounted-for pet remaining until her remains were discovered Wednesday.

A handwritten sign posted at Ehringer’s and Carmel’s burned-out house thanked the dozens of volunteers who walked around the area, looking for pets scattered by the Jan. 8 firestorm, which blew from Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu Road in less than eight minutes.

Another of Ehringer’s and Carmel’s dogs, a chocolate Lab named “Teddy Bear,” rode out the fire in a beach-level hot tub as houses and decks around it burned. The dog ran off, but was recovered hiding in a nearby house’s support piers Tuesday morning.

Their two other dogs also survived. “Bo,” a black chow, dug a hole in the sand and stayed there until found by a firefighter; and “Bubba,” a mixed breed, was able to find shelter from the flames.

Arson investigators for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department had not released a cause of the fire as of Tuesday, eight days after flames roared down two small arroyos and over the hills southwest of Bluffs Park. Speculation remains centered on a possible tossed cigarette from a car on Pacific Coast Highway into overgrown brush along the highway.

Fire officials continue to review radio logs, and interview individual firefighters, as they reconstruct how the fire grew, and how houses were lost and saved. “Any way you look at it, there was some amazing firefighting performed,” said County Fire Battalion Chief Terry DeJournett.

Malibu Mayor Ken Kearsley agreed, but said he wanted to make sure the right decisions had been made when the original dispatch went out at 5:01 p.m. on that hot, windy Monday afternoon.

“It seemed to me we had a lot of fire trucks up on PCH where the fire started, and not enough down where the fire was heading, on Malibu Road. But I don’t want to Monday-morning quarterback, and I am not saying that anything was done wrong,” he emphasized.

“I do want to make sure that the right questions are being asked about the response,” Kearsley said. The veteran of a half dozen Malibu fires said he looked forward to getting the fire department’s final analysis.

DeJournett said the original deployment was “exactly as it should have been. We had three trucks go down Malibu Road, one truck go to the point of origin, to keep it from spreading laterally there, and one engine go to the helispot” to pump water for the fire helicopters in transit.

Firefighters on board those three trucks on Malibu Road had to make fast decisions about which homes to save, which to protect, and which to allow to continue to burn. DeJournett said. “When Engine 70 arrived (from the Carbon Canyon fire station), Suzanne Somers’ house was already involved,” he said.

A Malibu Surfside News photo of Engine 70’s arrival is time-stamped at 5:10, just nine minutes after the blaze broke out nearly one half mile away, and shows that unkempt roadside brush at the bottom of the bluff had not yet started burning.

“Clearly, that (Somers’) house was affected by burning embers just shooting down the bluff, up and under the house” DeJournett said. The fire battalion chief said he doubted if the small amount of brush and ornamental plants that burned on the north side of Malibu Road ignited the house.

“That brush wasn’t burning when the house started,” he said. Gesturing to the skeletons of sage and sumac plants up the hill, he added, “This was a flashover fire, and it wasn’t very hot. If it were a hot fire, that hillside would be nuked, and the charcoal we see would instead be all white ash.

Additional trucks from the strike force, pre-positioned in Agoura Hills, rolled out of Malibu Canyon and up Malibu Road, arriving at 5:24 p.m. By that time, several houses had already been consumed by fires that had started under them, and plants on both sides of the road were aflame.

DeJournett said a small arroyo with a cement channel at its bottom, leading down from the bluffs, may have funneled heat and sparks through a tunnel under the road and then under one beachfront house, dooming it. “All that heat, all those embers, would have just poured down off the bluff and into that channel,” he said.

Some Malibu Road residents have long been unhappy with brush clearance efforts by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, the autonomous government agency that controls the open space near Bluffs Park through one of its affiliated agencies. Dan Hillman, a five-decade resident, said he had been on the phone with the agency three days before the fire demanding that heavy brush on the bluff slope be trimmed.

“That property was cleared to the limits of the law,” countered Santa Monica Conservancy spokesman Dash Solarz. “I don’t believe there’s anything that could have been done in a windstorm like that.”

The fire battalion chief agreed, although DeJournett said it did not appear to him that all of the brush within 100 feet of Malibu Road houses is removed as of this week. “A lot of those plants are ornamentals, and do not burn intensely. But the fire and brands just poured over the bluff,” he said.

Residents have been sparring with state agencies for decades about the amount of fire-ready brush and weeds that have accumulated on the land between Pacific Coast Highway and Malibu Road, which had been owned by the State Parks department for decades.

Last year, the City of Malibu purchased the Bluffs Park grassy area and the Michael Landon Recreation Center from state parks, and the brush-covered hillsides were transferred to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy – the same agency that wants to operate campsites in the hills above Malibu. City officials do not believe that the municipality owns any of the land that burned.

State Parks spokesman Roy Stearns said in a telephone interview that the parks department paid county jail inmates to clear the brush within 100 feet of the Malibu Road beach houses over the past several years. “We had a year left on the contract, so State Parks decided to just go ahead and have the county corrections crews continue to brush that area on behalf of the new state agency, the Conservancy.

A walk on the bluffs above Malibu Road just west of the burned-out area reveals numerous places where wild brush and human-planted shrubs, succulents and trees exist well within 100 feet of structures. But most of the brush within the clear zone had been removed in most places, and most large trees had been “lollipopped” to remove dead branches at the bottom.

Kearsley said the 100-foot limit may be insufficient in some areas where topography and local wind conditions can cause fire to jump a great distance instantaneously. “We need to be smart about this, and to reconsider the proper limits,” he said. “It may be appropriate in some places to clear back 300 feet, but it needs to be done smartly.”

City of Malibu planners and building inspectors are clearing their desks to process fire-related permits, and had already issued the first building permit for repairs just one day after the fire. “That was for a home that didn’t get any structural damage and only had some minor damage,” said Gail Sumpter, the city’s permit services manager.

Sumpter said the city is waiving fees for demolition and cleanup permits, but said insurance should cover fees for new building permits.

One major concern, she said, is fire-damaged wooden pilings and beams that have to be removed in some cases from within the surf line. “We will have people like our environmental programs analyst to make sure that when they clean things up they protect our environment,” she said.

All of the homes that are rebuilt will need to have septic systems replaced with new state-of-the-art onsite wastewater treatment systems, and will need to meet tougher new fire codes, she said. Several newer houses in the fire’s path built with more-modern methods did not ignite.

But whether that was due to smart building, or just plain luck, was unclear, said DeJournett as he marveled at the capricious nature of the fire. A compound of three homes undergoing renovations right in the middle of the fire did not burn despite numerous exposed studs, construction materials and open walls.

“The arriving fire trucks ignored that complex, and after they got things under control up the beach, one of the engines came back and found three separate points where the houses had begun burning’” the battalion chief said. “That owner is incredibly lucky.

“Conservatively speaking, at $60 million in destroyed beach houses and just 20 acres of brush burned, that makes this fire one of the most expensive fires in terms of dollar-loss-per-acre in California history,” DeJournett said.

OVERVIEW—An aerial photograph by Richard Mollica, a City of Malibu planner, taken from a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s helicopter, shows most of the 20 acres that burned on Monday, Jan. 8. The fire leaped from Pacific Coast Highway to underneath several beachfront houses and decks in fewer than eight minutes, fire officials say. The list of destroyed residences has been updated by fire officials and includes 24266, 24352, 24358, 24380 and 24402 Malibu Road. The house at 24320 Malibu Road is now being descibed as “severely damaged” by fire officials and is undergoing further review. The fire remains under investigation.

Photo credit, MSN/Hans Laetz
THEORY—County Fire Battalion Chief Terry DeJournett points to charred terrain and theorizes how heat and sparks could have traveled down a small arroyo leading from the bluffs and ignited one of the beachfront homes.

Revisions to Draft County LCP Are Indicators of Document’s Direction

• Changes in the Works for Vineyards and Horse Facilities

BY BILL KOENEKER

The comments and proposed changes to Los Angeles County’s draft Local Coastal Program cover a wide array of topics including agricultural and equestrian uses.

Some of the public comments deal with how the LCP rules would treat vineyards in the hills above Malibu and the care and boarding of horses. Other comments include trails and building on ridgelines.

The county’s LCP will apply to the unincorporated areas of Malibu and the Santa Monica Mountains. The county’s regional planning commission is expected to consider the draft document at a hearing on January 24. The City of Malibu has its own LCP.

After public comments about how the environment should be protected from vineyard pesticide runoff, the staff indicated it revised rules so that runoff from agricultural areas and animal containment facilities must be retained onsite.

There was also some discussion about the legality of placing limitations on vineyards and whether that violates the policies of the Coastal Act. The staff maintains there is a balance in the draft document between supporting and protecting agricultural resources while at the same time protecting water quality and coastal resources.

Additionally, there were comments about the advisability of utilizing vineyards as buffers from wildland fires. County planners maintain that while grape vines may be less flammable than chaparral—it is believed they are used, in part, by some property owners as a buffer from wildfires—they can also impact natural resources.

“They can actually compromise water quality because of irrigation requirements, the pesticides that are regularly used on them and the fact that competing vegetation that would otherwise provide an erosion protection function is typically removed from underneath grape vines,” a planner responded.

Consequently, there are other limits on vineyards. They are prohibited in Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Areas and restricted in the county’s Sensitive Environmental Resource Areas.

“Vineyards are only allowed beyond fuel modification zones A, B, C with a major coastal development permit, which will impose conditions to minimize impacts to resources,” the staff report added.

Another widely discussed topic of consideration deals with keeping horses in the unincorporated areas of the Santa Monica Mountains. The staff response is the proposed LCP does not change the current limit of eight horses per acre.

The proposed LCP does not include structures in the calculation of area available for equestrian utilization.

The staff recommendation is to delete the provision requiring that acreage used to determine the number of horses allowed on a parcel of land be calculated using “net” acreage.

An administrative permit will be required for persons keeping up to 24 horses on their property in the R-C zone and a major coastal permit will be required for individuals wanting to keep more than 24 horses in the R-C-zone.

The staff agreed that the proposed limit of a four-foot high fence for horses is inadequate and “after further consideration” agreed that six-foot heights should be permitted.

The staff also agreed with public comments about the potential impacts of dust pollution from large animal containment. They concurred that it is not a serious problem and eliminated the requirement of a holding pond.

There was also further discussion about what constituted an ESHA. One big difference in ESHA designations pointed out by county planners that was mandated by the Coastal Commission in the city’s LCP is how coastal sage scrub is considered.

“Coastal sage scrub is not considered as sensitive as other plant communities in the Santa Monica Mountains, nor is it specifically described in the LCP as sensitive habitat. The LCP addresses the protection of CSS in several ways.

“The CSS community will appear on the biological inventory that must be submitted with each development proposal for review by the staff biologist and it will be subject to further biological review if necessary once each proposal is reviewed,” a staff comment suggests.

Public comments will still be accepted during the hearing, as well as during the remainder of the review period. Comments on the draft Los Angeles County Local Coastal Plan for the unincorporated Santa Monica Mountains can also be emailed to coastal@planning.lacounty.gov or sent by regular mail to the Department of Regional Planning, Community Studies II Section, 320 W. Temple Street, 13th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90012-3223.

Congressional Probe into EPA Flip-Flop on CP

BY HANS LAETZ

Congress late Tuesday opened an investigation into why BHP Billiton was able to win an important regulatory reversal for its Cabrillo Port plan from the Environmental Protection Agency. This congressional probe is one of the first announced by House Democrats since they took control of Congress this year, and could throw a monkeywrench into plans to station a permanent, floating liquefied natural gas terminal off the Malibu coast.

Henry Waxman, the new chairman of the House Committee of Oversight and Government Reform, asked EPA administrator Stephen Johnson to explain why EPA regional officials reversed themselves after saying three times that Cabrillo Port would have to comply with the strictest level of smog controls, including buying “smog offsets” that may be impossible to obtain at any price.

Waxman is the representative for coastal Malibu and West Los Angeles, two areas most likely to bear the impact of the 484 tons of smog-producing chemicals that the Australian company wants to send skyward per year. Cabrillo Port, the proposed floating LNG terminal, would sit 13.8 miles off the Malibu coast.

“It has come to my attention that EPA has reversed its interpretation of the governing laws and regulations in examining the air permit application for this project,” Waxman wrote in a letter to the EPA Tuesday. That reversal came after the White House Energy Office interceded on behalf of BHPB and the Australian government, which strongly backs the $50 billion, 40-year export project.

A Freedom of Information Act request from the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center uncovered a chain of communications from the White House to EPA regional officials in San Francisco, prodding them to grant BHPB an exemption from the smog rules that all other industries must follow. The EDC is a law group funded by the Cal.ifornia Coastal Protection Network, which is coordinating coastal residents fighting several LNG terminals planned for Long Beach, Malibu and Oxnard.

In June 2005, a Malibu reporter uncovered the sudden EPA reversal, which the agency attributed to a decision to “use its discretion” in interpreting Ventura County smog rules. The subsequent uproar caused the Ventura smog board to vote 9-0 last October to tell EPA it had made a mistake.

Waxman has demanded that EPA turn over to congressional investigators all documents behind the legal rationale for the reversal, including legal memos that were not covered by the EDC’s request for public documents. Waxman’s letter set a Jan. 23 deadline for the EPA’s legal analysis on the BHPB exemption to be handed over to congressional investigators, and a Feb. 13 deadline for the agency to hand over emails and other communications.

A call to a BHPB official at his home was not returned late Tuesday.

Along the Pacific coast, the news was toasted by LNG opponents. “If I had a bottle of Dom Perignon, I’d pop it right now,” said Malibu Council Member Andy Stern, the most vocal LNG critic on the city council. “Those of us involved in watching this project have been very concerned about several aspects, and this is one of them.”

Susan Jordan, the CCPN executive director, said her activists “have long maintained that the EPA reversal on the BHP Billiton proposal was politically motivated, and ultimately illegal. We look forward to hearing what the committee learns during the next several weeks.”

The EPA reversal is not final, and its ultimate ruling will come this spring.

LNG Terrorism and Security Issues Move to the Forefront

• Cabrillo Port Critics May Benefit from Opposition Groundwork Against East Coast Project

BY HANS LAETZ

The concept of a floating liquefied natural gas terminal is roiling the waters in Long Island Sound, and California anti-LNG advocates are hoping to link opposition to Malibu’s Cabrillo Port project with the controversy on the East Coast.

On Monday, the entire Connecticut congressional delegation signed a letter opposing a floating LNG terminal proposed for 10 miles off New Haven. The Broadwater Energy concept is very similar to BHP Billiton’s proposed “Cabrillo Port” LNG terminal 13.8 miles off the Malibu coast.

Last week, a Connecticut public safety official said Broadwater’s security plans place a huge, non-reimbursable burden on local disaster responders. “We’re looking at this just like a nuclear power project in terms of the security burdens it puts on the local communities, and the LNG company is not promising us anything in terms of who is going to pay for this,” said Wayne Sanford, Connecticut’s deputy commissioner for Disaster Management and Homeland Security, in a telephone interview from New Haven.

“Any state agency like our emergency management department needs to pay attention to the need to plan for disasters at a plant like this,” Sanford said. “It’s not right for the taxpayers of Connecticut for our agency to develop plans, implement plans and expend money to pay for security plans for this plant, and Broadwater should be paying for those expenditures just like a nuclear power plant would.”

Even though Broadwater is 2550 miles from Cabrillo Port, California LNG opponents are watching it closely. The two LNG terminals are technically very similar, and the Long Island Sound terminal is a few months ahead of Cabrillo Port in the regulatory process.

Responsibilities and costs for similar security plans at Cabrillo Port have been kept discretely secret from the public. Plant opponents note that the 2500-page Environmental Impact Report does not say anything about public safety planning, or the burden that BHP Billiton wants to place on California fire and police agencies, as well as the Coast Guard.

All of the 45 proposed LNG terminals around the country would place added responsibilities and burdens on Coast Guard vessels, and Sanford said, “That’s a big issue, because the Coast Guard may not be able to meet those responsibilities.”

A $17 billion program to rebuild Coast Guard ships and build new aircraft has run into severe trouble that may threaten the agency’s ability to meet existing missions, according to investigations by the Washington Post and New York Times. Eight Coast Guard cutters are docked permanently because major hull cracks developed after they were lengthened.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal last week also demanded that federal officials reject Broadwater because the Coast Guard won’t have enough ships or equipment to guard it, or respond to a catastrophic incident.

On Monday, Blumenthal and some New Haven area members of Congress called for a no-fly zone to prevent terrorist air attacks at Broadwater. “To put it most simply,” he told a small crowd at Groton-New London Airport, “we’re opening a new front in the war against Broadwater.”

A Coast Guard security analysis on Broadwater released last year said additional measures, including more firefighting capability, would be needed to manage risks to navigation safety and security in Long Island Sound. One Congressman there quoted the Coast Guard as saying 70 more people and one more ship would be needed to patrol the LNG terminal adequately.

But the Coast Guard’s Cabrillo Port security assessment has been kept under wraps, and the California LNG project has not faced any questions along those lines. A spokesman for Sheriff Lee Baca, who under California law is the top disaster planner for the Southern California region, said the issue has not come up.

“I don’t even know if Lee has an opinion on that,” said Steve Whitmore, the sheriff’s spokesman.

BHP Billiton officials have said two tugboats that would guard the facility day and night would provide security at the LNG terminal. Additional smaller boats might be deployed when the tugboats are busy assisting LNG carriers, but no information as to whether those boats would be armed, or how they would defend the ships, has been released.

In addition, no details about local law enforcement, fire department or Coast Guard assistance, or disaster planning for Cabrillo Port have been released. Questions have been met with a “no comment due to the potential for terrorism” answer.

Although terrorism and security is a major issue in the East Coast LNG battles, it has taken a relative back seat in the California LNG debate. California Coastal Protection Network’s executive director, Susan Jordan, said she discussed security problems last week in Washington, DC, when she met with East Coast congressional staff. “We met with staffers from the offices of Rep. (Ed) Markey, and Senators (Edward) Kennedy, (Hillary Rodham) Clinton, and (Joseph) Lieberman,” Jordan said. “A big issue is whether or not the Coast Guard is going to be able to offer protection at the level these targets for terrorism are going to need.”

Jordan also met with staff from California’s delegation, and said Congress is planning to watch closely how the Coast Guard, Commerce Department and Environmental Protection Agency enforce the law as they process Cabrillo Port’s license and permits this spring.

California Senator Barbara Boxer is now in charge of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and local Congressman Henry Waxman is in charge of the House Government Reform Committee. Jordan said she discussed Cabrillo Port with staffers for both officials.

“I think BHP Billiton has a tremendous challenge because of the design they have chosen and the strategy they have wedded themselves to,” she said. “BHP Billiton is not entitled to the (smog rule) exemption that they want, and the Congress is going to be watching what happens with EPA on that one.”

EPA originally sought the strictest level of enforcement of smog rules for Cabrillo Port, including smog offset requirements that one official said would make it impossible to build the plant. BHP Billiton contends it should be exempted from the strictest smog rules because Ventura County exempted small generators on Anacapa and San Nicolas islands.

After receiving extensive pressure from Australia and the White House, regional EPA flip-flopped and said they would grant BHPB the exemption. That raised a public outcry, including about 12,000 letters of opposition.

That in turn prompted Ventura’s smog agency last year to tell EPA that the company should be treated like all other industrial smog generators in the area. BHP Billiton called that “a surprise” and said it may sue.

BHP Billiton’s permanently anchored ship would generate in excess of 484 tons of smog-causing chemicals per year into the air just upwind of Malibu, and LNG opponents say this single LNG import process would increase California’s total greenhouse gas contribution by five percent. Although company officials deny those claims, Cabrillo Port would be the largest single source of smog in Ventura County, or in the coastal waters off Southern California.

EPA now says it will issue a final make-or-break decision this spring.

Publisher’s Notebook: Now Hear This...

BY ANNE SOBLE

The first calls for restrictions on the use of sonar by the U.S. Navy in training exercises off the California coast were made more than 20 years ago by environmentalists and marine biologists who held humans responsible for their adverse impacts on the magnificent and intelligent denizens of the deep. Among those speaking out was the late Mary Frampton of Save Our Coast. The California Coastal Commission’s recent action to make some of these restrictions a reality is testimony to the work of SOC and many other groups that provided a voice for the voiceless of the sea. It’s impossible to enumerate how many letters were written and opinions expressed by those who believed that sonar, especially high levels of sonar, impacted habitat. Navy officials ridiculed the science and even questioned the patriotism of anyone who dared to say that testing should be limited.

It took litigation to get the Navy to the table and the first step toward preparation of a mitigation plan for controlling sonar use in oceanic training exercises. Although the Navy still has to respond to the commission’s recommendations, there is general agreement to avoid sensitive marine habitats and pay particular concern to whale migration patterns and potential interference from sonar to mammal communication and navigation. The technology used for tracking submerged objects, such as submarines, has been shown to adversely affect most marine mammals. Loss of hearing and physical damage to aural anatomy has been documented in beached animals and carcasses. The Navy denied this for decades, but some of the recent research indicates that incidents of marine mammal death and unusual detrimental behavior (including pod separation, loss of sense of direction, and alteration of feeding patterns) correlate with the presence of exercises utilizing sonar. Studies continue to look at a broad array of marine life, as some scientists think the impact also extends to reproduction capability, which is of particular concern with endangered species. As a result, the CCC was urged to exercise its ability to act on matters beyond its geographic boundaries because of their potential to impact marine life off the California coast. It took many years, but Save Our Coast, the National Resources Defense Council and all the other groups that were involved in this, fought the good fight and won.

Malibu Fire - AFTERMATH

Photo credit, MSN/Frank Lamonea

AFTERMATH—Monday’s fast-moving brushfire stripped the area between Malbu Bluffs Park and Malibu Road of nearly all vegetation. After the flames and smoke subsided, all that remained between Pacific Coast Highway and access to the beach below was covered with a fine layer of ash. Still, a few hardy specimens stand, and among some of the lost plants are those that will come back after the fire with renewed vigor. This picture will once again be green.

Wind-Driven Wildfire Claims Five Malibu Road Homes

• Firefighters Credited with Preventing Fast-Moving Blaze from Totally Decimating Area

BY HANS LAETZ

Malibu’s first major brushfire in three years brought 300 firefighters, and nearly as many journalists and paparazzi, to see the 11 destroyed or damaged beachfront structures along Malibu Road Monday night. But despite the multi-million dollar losses, residents, firefighters and public safety officials all breathed that familiar Malibu disaster sigh of “that was bad, but could have been much worse.”

Arson investigators, utility crews, friends looking for lost dogs, and building inspectors with red and yellow tags roamed Malibu Road Tuesday morning. Some homeowners picked their way among what may add up to more than $40 million worth of ashes and charred beams.

“You firefighter guys kicked butt!” exclaimed Scott Halley, a contractor working at one undamaged house, to a group of bone-weary firefighters dousing Suzanne Somers’ wrecked house with foam on Tuesday, 14 hours after the fire roared through it.

More than 300 Los Angeles County firefighters extinguished the fast-moving conflagration that snapped and roared down from Pacific Coast Highway to the beach in less than 10 minutes Monday, borne on hot, dry winds. “I knew we had trouble when I didn’t see smoke when we came out of Malibu Canyon, just a big orange glow,” said Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Kevin Huben. “The smoke was blowing straight out to sea.”

The decision by the county fire department to pre-position extra trucks and crews near Malibu for the red flag alert was hailed for saving numerous houses in Monday night’s fire. But it was the courage of firefighters who went under burning decks and laid hoses across wet sand that truly saved the day, officials said.

“We had fire hoses on the beach, right next to the water and on wet sand,” marveled fire Capt. Rick Pfeiffer late Monday night. “Only in Malibu.”

Sparks from the burning brush up the hill roiled across Malibu Road and under the wood decks, and only heroic action on the sand saved several houses from meeting the same fate as their decks.

“There were firefighters climbing under the stilts at great risk to themselves,” said County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, walking down Malibu Road late Monday night. “These houses are built on wooden timbers, and the sparks just blew up in under there.”

Somers, the infomercial queen and ’70s TV idol who lost the beach house built on pilings that she shared with her actor husband, Alan Hamel, told journalists Tuesday, “I really think we’ll learn something great from this.”

“What else can you do with tragedy, but look for opportunity to grow spiritually and emotionally?” she asked the cameras.

Somers said Tuesday she plans to rebuild at the location, adding, “It was a beautiful house, and it will be again.”

The first wisps of smoke were spotted west of Bluffs Park at 5:02 p.m. By 5:15, it had chewed through a third of a mile of brush and was burning trees on both sides of the narrow old Malibu Road, fought only by the 10 fire trucks based in Malibu and a few residents with garden hoses.

The full force of fire trucks stationed along the Malibu coast was on scene within minutes of the alarm, but to persons standing on Malibu Road, it seemed like an eternity before additional engines arrived. Several structures were fully ablaze when members of an L.A. County Fire strike team arrived from Agoura Hills and rolled up Malibu Road a half hour after the flames were first spotted.

At the height of the fire, county fireboats from Marina del Rey sat ready to begin spraying additional water on the houses, or pick up any persons who swam for their lives. But the evacuation up on Malibu Road was eerily calm and unpanicked.

Several residents calmly used garden hoses to spray roofs, a pair of Latino day workers went from door to door making sure everyone was aware of the blaze. It was those workers who alerted a sheriff’s deputy about an elderly person unable to leave home, just as flames leaped south of the road.

“Somewhere on this road we had an invalid whose house was filling up with smoke,” said Huben. “We pulled him out, and also took out a lady a couple of doors up who had chest pains.”

No other injuries were reported. But the 40-mile-per-hour winds blasted sparks over the houses, and swirled the embers down and roiling back up under the elevated beachfront homes. A lone county tanker driver, unable to do anything other than wait for additional trucks, watched helplessly as 50-foot-high flames towered over the road, first on the north side, then from the houses on the south.

“Are you OK? Do you need help?” asked the few people standing on Malibu Road to their neighbors. A lone sheriff’s deputy stationed at the smoke’s edge kept backing his car up, one lot width at a time, as the fire poured down out of the bluffs.

By 5:30, the extra strike force trucks and other crews from Topanga, Agoura Hills and Calabasas streamed into the smoke and sparks. Firefighters quickly pulled hoses down onto the beach, and then worked from the bottom up, cutting through decks and preventing the entire row of pricey beachfront homes from conflagrating.

Rod MacLeod lost a $7 million house that he rents out, but did not lose his residence a few houses down the road. “This was our dream, our cute little ‘Gidget goes to Hawaii house’,” he said. “But it’s only a house, and no one was hurt.

“But I really feel sorry for the guy two homes down, he had a great old Craftsman home, with a turret and a fabulous wood interior,” MacLeod said. Television news pictures of the burning turret, as well as exploding cars and spot-on helicopter water drops, was telecast live around the world, reinforcing Malibu’s reputation for frequent calamity despite several years of recent relative quiet.

MacLeod, a real estate developer who owns several beachfront homes, estimated it could take him two years to rebuild his investment house, which he said had just been vacated by tenants from London who were paying $18,000 per month rent.

Firefighter Mark Bennis was on a truck normally stationed in South Los Angeles, but positioned in Agoura for the red flag event, as it pulled up to 24352 Malibu Road. “There was a gas line blowing out, and there was fire wrapped all the way around the garage. We were just trying to keep down the heat so we could get a handle on the houses to the side.”

Several expensive cars were lost, including a Jaguar parked in Somers’ driveway, and a familiar Mercedes bearing BUHOMES on the license plate, owned by Realtor Christina Carmel.

Three county helicopters worked long after sunset, their pilots very familiar with this immediate section of coast. The Pepperdine University water reclamation ponds, used often to refill fire choppers, are just across Pacific Coast Highway from the fire’s point of origin.

Firefighters had good water pressure for a half hour, until it suddenly dropped when a water line broke about a half mile west of the blaze. “I’m not surprised that happened, that a surge on the lines broke one of them or a hydrant,” said the City’s chief building official, Vic Peterson. “It’s an old system, and it doesn’t hold up very well.”

Water, gas and electric crews were escorted through heavy PCH traffic into the area, and a county Public Works Department crew had the road dug up and the line patched in less than an hour. Fire officials said they had sufficient supplies in tankers and were not handicapped by the broken water line.

As the flames were knocked down, a fire department chow wagon served steak and rice to weary firefighters. Neighbors walked up and down the road, looking for dogs and cats that had been inside some of the houses that burned.

One family was reportedly in Australia, with a petsitter taking care of four dogs inside the house before it burned down to the pilings. Two of the dogs were found and taken to a nearby vet’s office, but two dogs were missing overnight. One of the pets, a lone chocolate brown Labrador, was found wimpering in some pilings up the beach Tuesday morning.

The fire consumed heavy brush that had last burned in 1996, local residents said. Some beach dwellers had said last fall that they were concerned about a lack of brush clearance on the weedy hillside just above Malibu Road, and several had hired their own crews to go onto other people’s land to clear brush, remove invasive reeds and trim trees.

Malibu’s city council, meeting behind closed doors on legal matters, hastily adjourned Monday night as the city’s emergency operations center was set up in council chambers. Councilmember Sharon Barovsky, who lives seven houses down from a now-burnt-out house, rushed home to rescue her cat.

Joel Walker, a former city planning commissioner whose house was spared by this fire, said this fire moved so fast he was amazed. “We were downstairs by the beach, and I looked up and saw the column of smoke. By the time I got upstairs, the fire was already right down to the road.”

Yaroslavsky said this section of Malibu Road got singed only because the fire started on the ocean side of PCH. “Usually fires in here come over the hills from the 101 corridor, and these houses get shielded by the big firebreaks above Pepperdine” said the longtime county supervisor. “The only reason these houses got hit is because this fire started on the ocean side of PCH.”

The fire’s point of origination was being meticulously sifted and photographed by arson investigators from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department at a grove of trees midway between John Tyler Drive and Malibu Canyon Road. At press time, no cause had been established.

The fire, called the “Malibu Incident,” was the second major Santa Ana wind blaze to strike Malibu in a January in three years. The 2003 Pacific fire, which started with a downed power line on Trancas Canyon Road, burned one structure, a barn, as it blew west in the foothills above Broad Beach.

CAPTION 1., page 2., Photo credit, MSN Photos/Hans Laetz
AERIAL HEROES—Shrouded in blood-red smoke, one of the crack county helicopter pilots prepares to nail another successful water drop in Monday’s Malibu Road fire. Using night goggles, the pilots ferried critical water drops to the site well after darkness set in.

CAPTION 2., photo credit, MSN Photos/Hans Laetz
FLAMES—Fire crews focused on saving structures between ones that were already engulfed in flames and unsaveable. Lost were homes at 25266, 24402, 24352, 24358 and 24380 Malibu Road. Flying embers required 360-degree monitoring.

CAPTION 3., photo credit, MSN Photos/Hans Laetz
CONTROL—Residents who chose to leave the area did so without panic, keeping the road open for fire equipment.

CAPTION 4, photo credit, MSN Photos/Hans Laetz
BACKUP—Tanker trucks brought in water to augment and, at one point, replace the water supply when there were problems.

CAPTION 5, page 3, Phot credit, MSN/Frank Lamonea
START SITE—Fire investigators combed the area near the Michael Landon Center in Bluffs Park where the Malibu Road fire is believed to have started. The investigation continues.

CAPTION 5, pPhot credit, MSN/Frank Lamonea
OPEN SEATING—Two chairs sit amidst inches of ashes at the back of a residence. Perhaps the totem protected them.

CAPTION 5, phot credit, MSN/Frank Lamonea
TOTAL LOSS—The homes that burned went up in flames so quickly that little remained but skeletal outlines of what they once were. Among those losing their homes was longtime local resident and former community activist Al Ehringer who, neighbors said, was out of the country when the fire occurred. Additional photos located on page 14.

Parched Postscript

ANNE SOBLE

I had just said to myself that I should stop ruminating out loud about Santa Ana winds, the lack of rain, the low humidity and the ever present red flag conditions that have prevailed in Malibu for the last few weeks. The dry eyes, parched skin and even the nosebleeds that some people experience during these bouts of meteorological abuse are bad enough in their own right, but the final insult—and injury—is wildfire. In the less than five minutes between when one of the student interns called on her cell phone to say she spotted what were the first wisps of smoke as she was turning onto the Pepperdine campus and we received a call from an ace local reporter who happened to be yards from the fire zone, two-and-three-story-tall flames were visible up and down the coast. Malibu Road was burning. Staff reinforcements headed down to the scene, others answered the growing number of “what’s-going- on” telephone calls that the newspaper receives during fires, floods and other natural calamities. So much for staying on production schedule. At times like this, it’s deadlines be damned.

Those who stayed to man the proverbial fort turned on the two television sets and one radio in the office. The first broadcast reports about the fire were riddled with inaccuracies: a helicopter reporter said the fire was near Kanan and PCH; a news reader wondered whether the fire might jump to Broad Beach; and, of course, everyone in Malibu was being described as a celebrity or extremely wealthy. Then maps of Malibu were found, and the aforementioned reporter was conscripted into service with such long stretches of air time on seemingly every television channel and radio station that we were beginning to wonder if a cloning had occurred. Accurate information, supplemented by historical perspective and local insight, begin to emerge. And this was done with the calm and control that Malibuites—from longtimers to newcomers—have learned is vital to enduring, let alone surviving, a raging brushfire.

Wildfire, whatever its origin, is a fact of life in Malibu. We can’t reiterate too often that every area of the community, even those where homes are located right on the water, is as vulnerable as the remote ranches steeped in chaparral. Fire is not about “if.” It is about “when.”

CAPTION 1., photo credit, MSN/Mariana Aroditis
MIXED MESSAGE—A City of Malibu-approved outdoor smoking area at Bluffs Park is just yards from where fire crews (seen working in the background) think the Malibu Road brushfire might have started. Might it be time for the city to rethink the wisdom of designating outdoor smoking areas?

Revised Version of the Draft County LCP Is Available for Public Review

• The Regional Planning Commission Has Scheduled a ‘Continued Hearing’ on Matter

BY BILL KOENEKER

Los Angeles County officials have given notice that the revisions and comments to the proposed Local Coastal Program for unincorporated Malibu and the Santa Monica Mountains will be available for review between January 10 and January 23.

There have been two public hearings where a variety of stakeholders provided comments and input to the document. The staff compiled written responses to the comments received and made changes to the document for the upcoming planning commission hearing on January 24.

The county planning commission will conduct what is being called a “continued hearing,” on the proposed LCP on January 24 and will consider the staff documents and accept additional public input at the meeting.

The comments and revisions are available at the Malibu Library, other area libraries, the planning department office and on the department’s website at http://planning.co.la.ca.us/spSmmlcp.htm.

Public comments are still being accepted at the hearing or during the review period and can be e-mailed to coastal@planning.lacounty.gov or mailed to Department of Regional Planning, Community Studies II Section, 320 W. Temple Street, 13 Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90012-3223.

The county adopted the Malibu Land Use Plan for the Santa Monica Mountains, which was certified by the California Coastal Commission in 1986. An implementation program was never adopted and the coastal agency continues to take responsibility for issuing coastal permits. To achieve a complete LCP, county planners prepared a draft plan and put together an implementation program.

After p