‘Stop the Clock’ Is Almost Over: Agencies Get Ready to Make LNG Decisions Soon

• Trio of Meetings by Mid-April Will Chart Fate of Malibu’s Horizon

BY HANS LAETZ

Three separate agencies will hold three separate hearings within two weeks of each other in late March and early April to decide if an aircraft-carrier-sized energy terminal can be anchored 16 miles off Zuma Beach.

The lead agency handling BHP Billiton’s liquefied natural gas terminal—marketed as Cabrillo Port—is rushing to meet deadlines set into law, a Coast Guard official said Tuesday. The Coast Guard is one of six federal and state agencies that the Australian company is seeking permits or licenses from, and is acting as lead agency in the matter.

Cmdr. Mark Prescott, who heads the Coast Guard’s Deepwater Ports Standards office in Washington, said a massive Environmental Impact Report will be released in about two weeks. That will be followed by the Coast Guard’s final hearing on the matter, probably in Oxnard and “probably at the end of March.”

While federal officials consider their decision in Washington, the California State Lands Commission will hold its hearing and take its critical vote in Oxnard on April 9. Three days later, on April 12 in Santa Barbara, the California Coastal Commission will review the LNG terminal to see if it complies with California’s Coastal Zone Management Act plans.

Although the facility will be closest to Malibu and will be visible from most of the city on most days, no public hearings will be held here. Plant opponents say the lands commission may be the best chance at blocking the $800 million project, which will be visible from the Malibu Civic Center west to Point Mugu.

“The whole process is ridiculous given the serious nature and long term ramifications of this decision,” said Susan Jordan, executive director of California Coastal Protection Network. “And having to attend three major hearings in a matter of two weeks places an undue and unfortunate burden on the public.”

Triggering the flurry of public meetings is the imminent publication of the third version of Cabrillo Port’s Environmental Impact Report, which will again assess the project’s impact on the air, sea, wildlife, national security and neighbors. Two previous versions, each the size of two telephone books, have triggered more than 1400 specific objections about supposed problems, dangers and omissions that must be addressed in this version.

Officials had hoped to have the massive new study published next week, but report delays in readying it. That document is now scheduled to be released no earlier than Friday, March 2, giving LNG opponents as little as three weeks to analyze what is expected to be two phone books’ worth of data.

“It is so frustrating to receive information that only the agencies and BHP Billiton have been working with for months, and then have only four weeks to analyze it,” said lead attorney Linda Krop at the Environmental Defense Center.

“Yes, that’s a short window,” said Prescott. “But people will have already seen the draft environmental report, and the second draft report, and although obviously there will be changes, the bulk of the document will be the same.”

Krop, the attorney who heads the legal and scientific fight against the project, says it has been impossible to analyze new studies that the Coast Guard and BHP Billiton have been negotiating over. “For example, now they are talking about a revised cooling process that will include releasing amounts of chlorine and copper into the ocean. We haven’t had any chance to see their studies or examine them.

“This whole thing has been such a moving target, and now we receive all this new information that only the applicant and the agencies have had to work with for all these months,” she said.

John Lockhart, an Oxnard public relations representative working for BHP Billiton, said, “We don’t set the hearing dates. We just attend them when they are set by the regulatory agency.”

The first draft of the EIR was extensively updated in 2005, and public hearings on the second version generated another 1400 specific comments about alleged errors, omissions or other concerns in the revised document. Among changes expected in the new document are answers to more than 120 major operational questions posed by the federal government in 2005.

These questions ranged from such basic issues as where exactly the ship would be anchored—BHP Billiton had supplied two different spots—to such issues as how the ship would be protected against terrorists, and how two pipelines would be laid across 22 miles of seabed and through a bird sanctuary.

Less than two weeks after the federal hearing, two state agencies will hold back-to-back hearings on Cabrillo Port. At a daylong public hearing in Oxnard on April 9, the three members of the California State Lands Commission will take testimony and decide if BHP Billiton’s twin gas pipelines may cross state tidelands near Oxnard to come ashore.

The three commission members are Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, new State Controller John Chiang and the governor’s finance director, Michael Genest. By law, Chiang and Genest may send an alternate person to vote, and the commission has the right to reject the proposal or approve it with conditions.

State law mandates that an environmental report that has been significantly changed should be sent back out for more public review and comment, and that is what happened in 2004. Although delaying Cabrillo Port’s permits might decrease the likelihood that it will be built, coastal advocates say they want the Lands Commission to kill the project outright.

“We don’t want it recirculated (for comment),” said Jordan at the California Coastal Protection Network, which is partly funded by the City of Malibu and by local contributors. “We want the project killed, which is why we will be asking them not to certify the environmental document and to deny the lease.”

Even after the Coast Guard, State Lands Commission and Coastal Commission all vote, the Environmental Protection Agency must decide on the company’s request to avoid strict local smog rules that would appear to block the company’s proposed release of 484 tons of smog ingredients per year at Cabrillo Port.

The EPA permit process is the subject of a Congressional probe, and a matter of great controversy, after it was reported in a Malibu newspaper that the White House had intervened on behalf of BHP Billiton to get a waiver from federal and state air pollution laws.

And finally, the federal hearing in Oxnard will trigger a 45-day clock for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to consider and possibly reject the project.

Cabrillo Port Sails Past Detailed Security Assessment Required for Other LNG Projects

BY HANS LAETZ

A quirk in federal laws will send Cabrillo Port out for a vote from federal and state regulators in a few weeks without the highest-detail level of assessment of its security, public safety and firefighting demands, a Coast Guard official said Tuesday. Thecontroversy over safety for liquefied natural gas operations comes as a New York congressman is charging that the Coast Guard may not be able to handle its existing mission, much less the added burdens of a fleet of new offshore LNG terminals.

A detailed study, called a “waterways suitability assessment,” found that the Coast Guard would need another ship and at least 48 more people to properly protect Broadwater, a proposed floating regasification and storage unit in Long Island Sound, New York. This planned LNG ship is similar in function and design to the proposed Cabrillo Port floating LNG terminal near Malibu.

Although the Coast Guard was required to prepare and release a precise and detailed security analysis for the LNG terminal proposed for New York, as well as one proposed for Oregon, no similar waterways suitability analysis is required under the different set of federal laws that cover BHP Billiton’s Cabrillo Port LNG project proposed for Malibu waters, said Coast Guard Cmdr. Mark Prescott.

A Coast Guard official said the agency will not perform a detailed suitability analysis of Cabrillo Port security and firefighting needs, including the demands to be placed on local public safety agencies, until after the plant gets its federal license.

“We certainly did a very robust analysis for the environmental impact report’s risk assessment,” Prescott said in a telephone interview Tuesday. But that study, he acknowledged, was considerably-less detailed than the Long Island Sound assessment last December.

“Whether the sector commander out here is going to have to have additional boats or guardsmen on duty out here is something we will determine after they (BHP Billiton) have a license,” Prescott said. “That is when we will be working with the sector commander to come up with exact requirements.

The existing Cabrillo Port EIR has several partially and totally blacked-out pages in its security assessment, and is not nearly as detailed as the Broadwater analysis. The Cabrillo EIR was heavily criticized last year, the newest version will be released in a few weeks, officials say.

Because Broadwater would sit within State of New York waters, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is in charge of it, and federal law requires a detailed Coast Guard assessment. But Cabrillo Port sits outside California waters, in Coast Guard jurisdiction, and the federal laws do not require the Coast Guard to conduct the same level of detailed security assessment that the very same agency had to provide to federal, New York and Connecticut officials.

“That’s just incredible,” sputtered Susan Jordan, director of the California Coastal Protection Network, when told of the differing Coast Guard plans. “California gets discriminated against? Where is the logic in that?

“You can’t say ‘we’ll tell the people if and how we can protect them’ after you grant the license,” she said. “They can’t be serious.”

Malibu city council member Andy Stern, a frequently vocal LNG opponent, was incredulous. “It’s one more in a series of outrageous actions that the federal government has made in total disregard for the health and safety of the residents of Oxnard and Malibu and Los Angeles County.

The Broadwater report is a detailed, 168-page study that specifically spells out how many additional Coast Guard crew, officers and ships will be needed to guard the LNG terminal and the LNG carriers that will unload there. It also says the company does not have responsibility to help the Coast Guard or local governments pay for additional patrol and fire vessels that would be needed.

But the report says the Coast Guard “currently does not have the resources required to implement the measures that have been identified as being necessary to effectively manage the potential risk to navigation safety and maritime security associated with the Broadwater Energy proposal.”

The report says the Coast Guard would be faced with “either curtailing current activities within the Sector, reassigning resources from outside of the Sector, or for the Coast Guard to seek additional resources through the budget process.”

More than 40 LNG terminals have been proposed along the nation’s coasts, and the Coast Guard would bear the brunt of preventing terrorism or accidents at all of them. Although no terrorist has ever struck an LNG carrier, some security experts says the ships are likely targets as they carry more combustible energy than a small nuclear bomb.

A spokesman for BHP Billiton did not have any reaction to the matter.

Congressman Tim Bishop, D-N.Y., has demanded hearings into the Coast Guard’s ability to protect floating LNG terminals in New England and the California coasts.

Bishop represents an area along Long Island Sound where Broadwater would be anchored. The New England LNG terminal is attracting similar controversy to Cabrillo, with the region’s Congressional delegation uniformly lined up to oppose the energy import and storage ship.

“There are many unanswered questions about what impact Broadwater and similar projects will have on the Coast Guard’s limited resources,” Bishop said. “As a member of the Coast Guard’s oversight committee, I want answers.”

Nationally, the Coast Guard has been hard-pressed to meet existing service goals due to a modernization program that has had disastrous results.

Plans to remodel and lengthen several Coast Guard cutters have resulted in hull cracks that have made some cutters unsafe and unusable, and there are also major problems with a new fleet of Coast Guard helicopters.

CAPTION 1., photo credit, MSN/Hans Laetz
REDACTIONS—Whole pages that address security issues are blacked out in the Revised Draft Environmental Impact Report.

Cabrillo Port Impact on Whales Remains a Major Contention

‘How are you going to save the whales?’ asks one federal agency of another. ‘We’re not going to say now’ is the answer.

BY HANS LAETZ

The federal agency that protects whales, sea turtles, seals and other ocean mammals has told the United States Coast Guard that it cannot sign off on plans for a liquefied natural gas terminal proposed for the Malibu coastline, because it has not been given enough information about how Cabrillo Port will impact sea animals.

The differences between the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Coast Guard could further delay or cause more serious problems for BHP Billiton’s request to anchor an $800 million, aircraft-carrier-sized LNG terminal off the coast.
And as a result, some commercial whalewatchers along the Central California coast are suddenly watching Cabrillo Port warily. “If this thing scares the whales away, they will elect to completely bypass the channel and migrate outside the back of the islands,” said Santa Barbara whaleboat Capt. Dennis Longaberger. “That could completely destroy us.”

Marine fisheries experts warn that Cabrillo Port’s construction and eventual 24/7 gas boiler operations could be so loud as to chase migrating whales away from the key choke point between Point Mugu and Anacapa Island, as the noisy LNG terminal will sit between the two. Migrating whales might avoid Santa Monica Bay and the Santa Barbara Channel, traveling instead on the far side of the Channel Islands.

In addition, NMFS warns of the danger from “the possibility of impacts to marine mammals and sea turtles from ship strikes, and possible avoidance behavior by these animals in response to increase(d) ship traffic associated with the project.” Federal law requires any agency planning to permit a project that might harm protected ocean animals to consult with NMFS, and to come up with a plan to avoid injuries and monitor compliance.

NMFS officials have repeatedly told the two federal agencies deciding on Cabrillo Port, the Coast Guard and the Commerce Department, that they cannot fulfill their legally mandated goal of consulting on the project unless they get detailed information about how many ships can be expected to strike and kill whales and sea turtles within the 200-mile federal territory.

The Coast Guard has told NMFS that it will not supply a wildlife mitigation plan for Cabrillo Port until it has approved the project’s environmental documents and issued an operating permit, and then will only examine the impact in nearby waters, not out to the 200-mile line.

“They have told us they will not supply us with a mitigation plan or a monitoring plan until after the environmental studies are already approved, and we really need our questions answered before we can determine if the project is in compliance [with federal laws],” said NMFS marine mammals biologist Monica DeAngelis from her Long Beach office.

The environmental studies have been underway nearly four years, and the final version will be released to the public in late February. Ocean advocates say the big federal and state study—which is tantamount to approval—cannot possibly be finalized without knowing how many whales and other sea mammals might be killed or driven away by Cabrillo Port.

“If it endangers a protected species, and if that is not addressed in the Environmental Impact Study, then there is no way for the Coast Guard to make a conclusive determination of what the impact of the project will be,” said Karen Kraus, an attorney for the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center.

That, she said, is one of many legal problems that could mire the project in lawsuits for years.

According to company projections, construction activity will emit 192 decibels of underwater noise, levels the federal government says are loud enough to kill, injure, or scare away whales and their food supply.

Once construction is over, gas boilers are projected to operate 24/7 over the project’s 40-year lifetime, and be so loud as to prevent normal conversation on boats at the edge of the ship’s security cordon, 1100 yards off the floating facility.

The current draft environmental report does not say how loud that sound will be underwater, how far the sound will travel, or how migratory whales and other animals will react to that.

Coast Guard officials in Washington did not return requests for comment, their standard practice. But in a letter sent to NMFS last December, Coast Guard officials said they would require BHP Billiton to avoid injuring sea turtles and whales as much as practicable.

“We acknowledge that turtles (and marine mammals) may be entangled in construction or operating equipment, resulting in injury or mortality,” the Coast Guard letter said. “All construction support vessels will carry a qualified marine mammal monitor with a 360-degree view to watch and alert vessel crews of the presence of marine mammals and sea turtles.

“The applicant will also ensure that vessel operations will deploy any material with the potential for ensnaring turtles (and marine mammals) only as long as necessary to complete the task,” said Mark Prescott, the chief of the Coast Guard’s Deepwater Ports Standards Division.

Speaking onboard the whalewatching boat Sunset Kidd from Stearns Wharf, Longaberger says he had not until now known that Cabrillo Port might impact the ocean creatures that he visits on a daily basis.

“We offer our cruises on a sailboat, and let me assure you, the whales act completely differently when they are near motors. The relationship we have with the whales offshore is completely different when they are near boats with engines.”

Longaberger operates one of more than a dozen whalewatching boats between Santa Barbara and Redondo Beach, boats that would find their whales too far offshore if they avoid the Anacapa-Mugu passage. “That could just force them out on the far side of the islands, too far for us to go,” he said.

The final draft of the environmental impact assessments could be released to the public as early as Feb. 23, with a joint hearing planned by the Coast Guard, Commerce Department and California State Lands Commission following, probably in late March.

If approved by those three agencies, the California Coastal Commission would consider Cabrillo Port at its meeting on April 12 in Santa Barbara. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger could then play a role in the approval process.

But even after that, Cabrillo Port would also need a key air pollution permit from the Environmental Protection Agency, which was supposed to rule on the matter last summer. EPA has been delayed by a major public uproar over apparent White House interference in the matter.

Congress has demanded documents from EPA about its 2005 regulatory flip-flop on the proposed annual discharge of 484 tons of smog-causing chemicals.

A spokesman for Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, said some documents have been handed over, but not yet analyzed.

City Council Agrees to Additional Study of Point of Sale Septic Tank Inspections

• Realtors Convince Officials to Move Slowly on Program Specifics

BY BILL KOENEKER

Urged by the local real estate community to take a slower, closer look, the Malibu City Council this week agreed to have its staff work with the Malibu Association of Realtors for the proposed point of sale inspection of septic systems.

City officials said the primary function of the proposal is to provide an inspection and status report for existing on-site wastewater treatment systems during real estate transactions.

The efforts are described as an attempt to identify and upgrade those systems that might be failing and may pose a risk to the public health.

Municipal officials paint the program as a means to assist the real estate community and the buyers and sellers with a standardized approach for inspection of OWTS. The outcome of the proposal would result in the issuance of an operating permit.

Councilmember Jeff Jennings likened it to a termite inspection.

However, some Realtors said the matter had not been fully vetted with the real estate community, which is the primary business sector in Malibu. Others said there are still too many questions.

“How do we get a septic fixed in 30 days?” asked Realtor Brian Merrick. “What is the cost of a survey? We haven’t heard anything definitive.”

Christine Rodgerson, who is the current president of the Malibu Association of Realtors, said the industry supported the concept but there had never been a presentation to the board.

“We are asking for a delay until the board has a meeting to discuss it. We hope the city and the largest industry [in Malibu] can work together,” she said.

Another Realtor, Terry Lucoff, said the program would not effectively address the issue of contamination of the ocean. “It won’t alleviate the program. The point of sale [proposal] does not solve the problem,” he added.

His colleague, Paul Grisanti, said there was no information on how much the inspections would cost. “I think it will be much more expensive and [homeowners] won’t get out for under $5000,” he added.

Jennings explained that he and the council were willing to have the Realtors explore the issues in depth, but warned the city was constrained in what they could or could not do because of Malibu’s agreement with the Regional Water Quality Control Board.

“The problem is we have to do something like this. We thought this was the less painful. To do it when there is cash,” he said.

City officials also stressed this is one of many options to clean up the waters of Malibu. That the program was a way to establish a database of all of the septic systems in Malibu and that eventually all of the septic systems would be “captured” in the database of the city.

The inspection might require modifications, repairs, complete replacement or no further action. The mechanism for handling the required monies for the necessary work will be the responsibility of the real estate agents and the sellers and buyers, according to a staff report.

Presence of Mystery Cougar Is Confirmed

• National Park Service Hopes to Collar the New Cat and Add It to Study

BY HANS LAETZ

The big cougar nicknamed “Phantom” was ambling down the dark path, far above the Big Rock subdivision, on a cool fall night last November. Something smelled good, little did the puma know it was a commercial wild cat lure from a can, smeared around a wildlife path high in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Flash! The phantom is no longer unknown, a motion-sensing camera has grabbed its picture.

“He’s an adult lion, not a kitten,” said Seth Riley, a National Park Service biologist and big cat tracker. “The camera was in a similar area to where P-8 had died just a few weeks earlier.”

The new mountain lion is believed to be the one that fought P-8, the young male mountain lion wearing a radio tag who died of a fight-caused infection last October, said Riley.

Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area Supt. Woody Smeck said the discovery of the new cat lends new importance to the ongoing private fundraising drive aimed at replenishing the account for the ongoing mountain cat study.

“The costs vary per year, but we’re looking at about $150,000 per year in costs for the ecologists to do their work, and the supplies,” he said. The federal budget does not have an earmark for local big cats.

The new cat, who won’t be labeled P (for puma) plus a number until he or she is collared, joins two other pumas known to be in the upper elevations of the Santa Monicas, avoiding people and roaming as far as Point Mugu to the west and some 40 miles past Malibu to the 405 freeway in the east.

P-1, the patriarch of the original clan, remains at the western end of the mountains, feasting on mule deer. His radio collar is actually a GPS-equipped cellphone that calls home whenever it detects cellular service.

“One thing that’s interesting is that he hasn’t been on the eastern side of the range for quite some time,” Riley said. “He’s big enough to whack anyone in his way, so we don’t know if he’s avoiding the other guy or not.”

P-6, the last surviving cub sired by P-1, remains in the Malibu Creek State Park area. The cub’s mother, and two of its siblings, were killed by P-1; and sibling P-8 met his death after tangling with the mystery cat last fall in Tuna Canyon.

P-5 and P-6 were not believed related directly to the Malibu-area cats, and ranged on both sides of the 118 freeway near Simi Valley. Both died after ingesting rat poison, possibly caused by eating coyotes that had met their demise by snarfing poisoned rodents.

Park officials are withholding the public unveiling of “Phantom cat’s” photo until an invitation-only fundraiser next weekend in Agoura, where money will be raised for additional puma studies.

Officials don’t know the gender of the new cat, but are guessing it’s a male. “That’s a very critical question, for all kinds of reasons,” Riley said. Officials are concerned that a lack of fresh DNA in the isolated Santa Monica cougar habitat could weaken the gene pool.

“We think it is a male, because P-8 was a good-sized mountain lion, and this one killed P-8. And males tend to fight more,” he said.

Even if he is a brawler, Smeck said the fresh mountain lion blood lines are important to the entire wildlife picture in the mountains above Malibu.

“If we lose the mountain lion then we’ve lost the top carnivore in the food chain, and we begin to lose the checks and balances that keep the whole system in place,” the park superintendent said.

Publisher’s Notebook: Cougar Confirmation

BY ANNE SOBLE

Although no other explanation seemed likely after the death late last year of one of the National Park Service-monitored mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains, there is now physical confirmation that a new big cat is in the area. It is impossible to say how long the cougar has been in the Santa Monicas, or perhaps, even to determine with certainty where it came from and what route it took to get here. Not only the NPS mountain lion study team, but wildlife proponents, and environmentalists in general, are heralding the news. The local cougar population has suffered serious setbacks: some attributable to the species, fighting over territory or food; others to human interface, including large-scale rodenticide use and traffic collisions. The Park Service intends to capture and collar the big cat. A few renegade guerrilla environmentalists would rather see the largest predator in the local ecosystem elude all captors, even the scientists, as it establishes local roots.

The new cat’s acknowledgement comes at a time when there are again rumblings in Sacramento that the sport hunting of mountain lions should be resumed. The hunting lobby, and what I think of as the fear lobby, try to utilize every adverse encounter with wild animals to campaign for painting bull’s-eyes on the critters’ backs. The mass media doesn’t help. A cougar is a “killer cougar,” as is a coyote or other predator that does its part in a balanced natural system. Even the word predator has been conscripted for the worst of human behavior, adding to the programmed fear and revulsion. The latest encounter to stir the legislative cronies of the big cat hunting crowd is the one last month in Northern California. But, somehow lost in the graphic accounts of a puma attack is the fact that a 65-year-old woman was able to fight off a hungry cat with a stick and a ballpoint pen. This is not to belittle any injury that occurred, but what she didn’t have—fear—was more important than what she used. As long as animals are demonized, humans will respond fearfully instead of taking the basic precautions to ensure their safety. That includes acknowledging and respecting wildlife and acting accordingly when in wildlands. Humans are not mountain lion prey. They don’t look like it, smell like it, and, if they keep their wits about them, won’t act like it. Those humans who want all wild animals eradicated so they never have to contemplate a possible adverse encounter have to get past their fear.

Fire Officials Rebut City Council Members’ Criticism

• One of the Key Issues Is the Arrival Time of the First Responders to Malibu Road

BY BILL KOENEKER

The official fire department incident commander’s report on the Jan. 8 fire that started at Bluffs Park and spread to Malibu Road, called the Malibu Incident, paints a different picture than has been suggested by some Malibu City Council members.

Mayor Ken Kearsley and Councilmember Sharon Barovsky have taken the fire department to task over the initial agency response to the fire that destroyed five homes, seriously daamaged a sixth home and left another six with fire scars.

This is in sharp contrast to many homowners in the Malibu Road area. A number of them recently threw a thank-you gathering for firefighters; and others, including resident Suzanne Somers who lost her home (see letter to the editor on page 4), praise firefighters for protecting hundreds of homes under difficult circumstances.

Contrary to many media reports on the fire, Barovsky has charged that it was 20 minutes before any fire companies made it to Malibu Road.

However, the Los Angeles County Fire Department report shows an altogether different timeline. It states that eight minutes after the fire was reported at 5:01 p.m., engine 70 was on the scene at Malibu Road. The report goes on to state that while on route, 70 was diverted to Malibu Road by the incident commander to check for exposures.

It was 19 minutes after the fire started, according to the report, that three structures were reported to be fully involved.

At 5:20 p.m., strike team 1120A was on the scene, fire officials report. By 5:25 p.m., additional resources began arriving.

The official report that was presented to the council by Assistant Fire Chief Reginald Lee at its last meeting indicates that a total of 300 personnel were used, including 44 engine companies, which included two strike teams, one quint, three helicopters, two paramedic squads, two water tenders, eight patrols, eight camp crews, one dozer team, 10 battalion chiefs, three assistant chiefs, two deputy chiefs, four public information officers, lifeguard resources, one Los Angeles City Fire Department strike team and two safety officers. State Parks provided one engine, two patrols and one water tender.

Chief Lee told the Malibu Surfside News this week, that he did not debate the council members’ statements at the meeting because “I wasn’t going to get into an argument with them.”

The 31-year LACFD veteran said he has not been contacted by either of the critical council members to follow up on their remarks. The City of Malibu contracts with Los Angeles County for fire protection services.

At a previous city council session, some council members called for a blue ribbon panel or committee to further investigate the handling of the fire. However, no such item is on the agenda for the city council meeting next Monday night.

The only agenda item related to the fire is an item for the termination of a declaration of local emergency for the Malibu incident.

Photo credit, MSN/Bill Koeneker

REPORT STANDS— Reginald Lee, the assistant fire chief for the Malibu area, Division 7 of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, works out of the Carbon Beach Station headquarters. He outlined the Jan. 8 fire response timetable.

New Stormwater Treatment Facility Is Ready for Its Close-Up

BY HANS LAETZ

As TV cameras rolled and print journalists took notes Friday, Malibu officials crowded around the control panel at the city’s new $5.8 million stormwater treatment plant. The switch was flipped.

And nothing happened: the plant was functioning just like it was supposed to.

The water-cleaning machine is in standby mode, ready to begin filtering, disinfecting and releasing up to 1400 gallons per minute of rainwater gathered from commercial development in the Civic Center area. Low-flow water runoff will be stripped of fertilizer residue, manure and urban flotsam, and, whenever possible used for irrigation in nearby gardens.

“But this is just the first step,” said Mayor Ken Kearsley to the crowd of 60 people attending the ribbon-cutting ceremony. “When we get Legacy Park built, this building is built with the capacity to treat 85-90 percent of all the stormwater that falls in the Civic Center area.”

All that water has to be stored temporarily, and the city has its brand new $25 million site in mind. Malibu Legacy Park is being designed to serve as a giant sponge capable of holding water for use on landscaping or subjected to evaporation, Kearsley said.

Kearsley predicted a day in the near future “when the 5 million people who go out to First Point every year get some hope that they’re not going to come down with an ear infection, or a throat infection.”

It took five months to build the facility at the corner of Civic Center Way and Cross Creek Road, and the three drains that lead to it from the nearby comercial areas.

Like the entire Malibu Creek watershed project, the city added a share of local tax money to state grants to build the new facility. The State Water Resources Control Board put up $4 million in grants, the State Coastal Conservancy kicked in $1 million, and $500,000 came from the California Integrated Waste Management Board. The city contributed $300,000 in general funds.

“This is of enormous regional importance,” said state Assemblymember Julia Brownley. “It’s no small thing that a small city can cobble together $25 million for the park purchase,” she said.

Mark Gold, the executive director of Heal The Bay, a group that monitors ocean water quality up and down the coast, said his longtime goal of seeing “Malibu grow up and take responsibility for its problems” has been accomplished.

“This project is going to clean up Surfrider Beach,” he said. Malibu is taking leadership to make sure they do their part to clean up Surfrider Beach for all of the millions of people who swim there every year.

“This is a watershed day for Malibu.”


CAPTION b. Photo credit, MSN/Frank Lamonea

CELEBRATION—State Senator Sheila Kuehl flips the switch at the ribbon-cutting for the city’s new stormwater treatment plant last Friday. City, county and state officials attended the ceremony for the long-awaited facility located at Civic Center Way and Cross Creek Road.

Publisher’s Notebook: Political Smoke

BY ANNE SOBLE

Local firefighters don’t have to respond to critical members of the city council who appear to either have faulty timepieces or, perish the thought, are experiencing serious signs of presbyopia; enough people in the community will do that for them. Every one of us who has been on the fire line with crews from the Los Angeles County Fire Department is in their corner. That doesn’t mean we are blind to systemic shortcomings, whether due to the need for increased funding, or the still developing science of fire prevention, prediction and control. Sure, there are archaic practices that need to be addressed. And ground forces and air forces have the same goal, putting down a fire with the least possible loss. You don’t have to live in Malibu very long before you learn what it means to be on wildfire alert. Sooner or later, nearly everyone smells smoke. But nature, not man, is the ultimate firefighter, and wind (or lack of it) is the weapon of choice.

My last brimstone experience was the 1993 fire on Malibu’s western flank (the one that, if it had met up with the Topanga fire simultaneously wreaking havoc at the eastern flank, could have immolated much of what we know as Malibu), When fire strikes at my place, it’s on with the Luccheses (this is a Malibu cowgirl) and out come the leads, halters, muzzles, bridles, etc. for the critter round-up. First the dogs and cats were ensconced in carriers, then a truckload of goats headed for the office parking lot, horses and burros (there were no llamas then) were jumbled together and trailered to safety. The crews from three trucks were on the grounds and did exhaustive preparation as the deafening fire surged over the ridge. We watched crew members set backfires behind barns and other outbuildings; each firefighter demonstrating the skill and courage that marks the profession. That does not mean that they are superhuman. They would have been no less courageous and professional if they were overpowered by the 50 mph winds blowing at the time and were unable to save a single structure.

What does this have to do with last month’s fire on Malibu Road? In this case,it’s not just the official logs, but journalists’ photographs and tapes, as well as witnesses at the scene, corroborate that the January 8 responders did their job in an admirable time frame under daunting circumstances. Malibu is the target of so much misinformation from outside the community, it’s a shame to see the same thing happening at City Hall.

Role of Attorney and Chumash Leader in LNG Debate under Fire

• Advance Copy of Pro-LNG Column Leads to Challenge of Environmental Credentials

BY HANS LAETZ

A nationally famous environmental lawyer has weighed into the Cabrillo Port controversy with a newspaper column that backs liquefied natural gas imports and has LNG opponents furious.

But Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says people should not misinterpret his recent newspaper column as an endorsement of the proposed BHP Billiton liquefied natural gas terminal near Malibu. That does not satisfy many coastal activists, who are charging Kennedy with hypocrisy and playing along with the company’s public relations efforts.

“If people are interpreting my general endorsement of LNG imports as an endorsement of Cabrillo Port, they are making an erroneous leap,” Kennedy told the Malibu Surfside News in an interview from his New York office on Monday.

In Sunday’s Ventura County Star, Kennedy wrote that he “supports Ventura Coastkeeper Mati Waiya’s courageous consideration of offshore liquefied natural gas facilities near Ventura County.” Kennedy’s opinion column did not specifically endorse BHP Billiton’s proposed Malibu LNG terminal, or even mention the project proposed for 13.8 miles off Malibu’s north end.

But many view it as an implied endorsement of Cabrillo Port. Among those who reacted this way is Keely Shaye Brosnan, the Malibu activist and wife of actor Pierce Brosnan, who obtained an advance copy of the column.

In an opinion piece that was published in the same issue of the Ventura paper, she said, “For a respected lawyer who built his reputation on the strictest enforcement of environmental laws, Mr. Kennedy seems indifferent to BHP’s ongoing efforts to secure an exemption from the Clean Air Act.”

“He could have reached out to the communities of Oxnard and Malibu and asked them why they opposed the BHP Billiton LNG terminal project. He could have supported legislation that would have required a neutral evaluation of all pending LNG terminals in California,” Brosnan said in her rebuttal.

At the center of the opinion fray is Mati Waiya, the director of the Wishtoyo Foundation and Ventura Coastkeeper, the nonprofit agencies he founded to promote native culture and clean water on the Malibu and Ventura coasts.

A highly visible participant at many official Malibu functions, Waiya is a Chumash descendent who has in the past filed comments critiquing some technical aspects of Cabrillo Port, the proposed LNG terminal midway between Malibu and Anacapa Island, a water route held sacred by the Chumash.

Waiya told The News Monday that he supports importing LNG to the United States, but not necessarily the $800 million BHP Billiton project. “I support an LNG import plant, but only if it can meet all federal environmental laws. I am not going to support anything that doesn’t comply with the law, period.”

Waiya said the visual impact of Cabrillo Port would be less than the cumulative private residential development that has crowded the Malibu coast.

Kennedy said he and Waiya are on record as supporting the concept of LNG imports to replace coal and other power sources that they say are dirtier. “I have supported LNG facilities near my house, if they can be built to comply with environmental laws,” Kennedy said. “But I have not endorsed this particular project, and in fact, the Cabrillo Port project has all kinds of problems that I think may be fatal to it.”

“If that thing is built right now, it would be the largest source of smog in Ventura County,” Kennedy said. “We have three children at home with asthma, and that’s a huge concern for us.”

In the interview, Kennedy noted he has supported LNG terminals near his New England home. But detractors point out that Kennedy has publicly opposed a clean energy wind turbine project proposed near his Hyannisport, Mass. family compound on the grounds it will spoil a pristine view.

BHP Billiton is seeking two major rulings on clean air laws in order to get permits for the 484 tons of smog-causing chemicals that the LNG terminal would send up each year just upwind of Malibu. It wants its LNG ship to be regulated as if it were on an island, eliminating the need to buy smog offsets that may prove to be an insurmountable obstacle to the LNG project.

The company has also just requested a waiver from a requirement that it use industry-standard air pollution scrubbers, because the company says the devices are too big, unsafe and unproven for use on a swaying ship.

The Kennedy column was reportedly drafted nearly two months ago, and environmentalists charge that its release was timed by BHP Billiton’s law and public relations firm to coincide with upcoming public hearings. The firm, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, has a million-dollar lobbying contract for BHPB’s Malibu project.

The alleged source of the document before its publication, Manatt attorney David Huard, was asked by The News if the firm manipulated the timing of the release of the Kennedy report, and he replied with a terse, “I have no comment.”

When asked why he might have e-mailed the Kennedy column to others last week, before it was published, he replied he had “shared the document with a friend of mine in the environmental movement, as it came across my desk.”

Huard said he would not explain how Manatt got the Kennedy document ahead of its publication date. “If I thought I was talking to an objective viewer of the circumstances, I would. But I am familiar with the publication, and I won’t,” Huard said Monday. He then sent the reporter an e-mail saying, “Just to repeat—I have no comment.”

Waiya expressed concern that his public opinion on LNG imports in general has been confused with his opinion on the BHP Billiton project. “We all act so righteous about this, but then we all turn on our lights at home,” he said. “The energy has to come from somewhere, and this is so much better than burning more coal.”

As for Cabrillo Port, Waiya said, “I’ve never endorsed it, I’ve considered their arguments, and I cannot endorse it unless it meets every single environmental rule.”

Waiya noted that some of the criticism being directed at him comes from the fact that his Wishtoyo Foundation has been partly funded by BHP Billiton. “I took money (for Wishtoyo) from BHP Billiton, and I paid the experts to review that before I accepted… because I knew it might be misinterpreted, and I wanted to be transparent.

“It didn’t color my opinion of them, and I haven’t endorsed (Cabrillo Port), even after we took the grant to help our cause.” Waiya said. “I have considered that the natural gas might be needed, but I don’t trust this governor, and I don’t trust this president, on this project.”

Despite the narrow phrasing of the Kennedy opinion piece, anti-LNG activists said it clearly implies an endorsement for Cabrillo Port, the marketing name chosen by the Australian company for its floating aircraft-carrier-sized energy terminal plans proposed for the ocean 16 miles northwest of Point Dume.

“Of course, that’s what it was,” said Mike de Martino, an LNG opponent. “I don’t see how you can read it as anything else than an endorsement of BHP.”

De Martino said Kennedy’s record is sullied by his campaigning for LNG imports at the same time he is leading the fight against the proposed Massachusetts wind turbine.