County should become active player in preserving Gaviota Coast

Article taken from the Santa Barbara News Press
Published with permission

County should become active player
in preserving Gaviota Coast

12/2/02

Voice From THE SOUTH COAST; Bob Keats

On Tuesday, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors will hold another public hearing on a proposal for development at Naples, which is located on the Gaviota Coast. The development proposal is based on the Naples Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which would begin the county permitting process for as many as 55 luxury homes in a gated community in the midst of the last significant stretch of undeveloped rural coastal land in Southern California.

According to the county's recently completed Gaviota Coast Resource Study, the Naples area contains some of the most highly sensitive natural resources on the Gaviota coast.

The approval of the MOU has raised the following issues:

*Bifurcation. The MOU splits the environmental review for the proposed development into an "inland" project and a "coastal" project. The bifurcation would allow the homes in the "inland" project to be approved with less environmental protection for wildlife habitats, watersheds and scenery than would be required for the "coastal" project, because the houses in the "inland" project would be outside the better-protected coastal zone.

Furthermore, the bifurcation is inconsistent with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and there is ample case law to support this (Arviv Enterprises v. South Valley Area Planning Commission, County of Inyo v. City of Los Angeles, McQueen v. Board of Directors). If one of the purposes of the Naples MOU is to settle current litigation from property owners at Naples, isn't it self-defeating to include a provision that so obviously exposes the county to the possibility of more litigation against the countyit in the future?

*Growth-inducing impacts. During the past several years, many people in our community have become united on one theme: protect the Gaviota Coast from urban development. The Naples MOU, however, not only allows urbanization, but it also encourages development by accelerating the urbanization process. The Naples MOU is already contributing to the urbanization of the Gaviota Coast by increasing property values on undeveloped coastal agricultural land that is two miles outside the urban boundary. This process will result in higher property taxes for surrounding parcels. Higher property taxes will make it more difficult, if not economically impossible, for farmers and ranchers to continue their agricultural operations and to keep their land.

*Rezoning agricultural land. The MOU would result in the rezoning of agricultural land. Although the intent of the rezone is to prevent the project from setting a precedent for permitting an urban housing project on agricultural land, the rezone actually sets a potentially worse precedent by changing the zoning designation of agricultural land in order to permit non-agricultural commercial development.

*Coastal mesas and local control. One of the most discouraging aspects of the Naples MOU is that it allows development of the 200 acres of land between Highway 101 and the ocean, which was not permitted in the original Naples MOU that was approved two years ago.

In each of our South Coast cities, substantial numbers of local citizens have supported the preservation, for public use, of our undeveloped coastal mesas at the Carpinteria Bluffs, Douglas Preserve and Ellwood Shores. Conserving coastal mesas is the essence of local coastal land use control, and allowing development of the bluff-top coastal mesa at Naples is clearly inconsistent with local conservation efforts.

Given all of the problems inherent in the Naples MOU, at the very least the county should amend the MOU to remove the bifurcation of the proposed development. This will ensure that the environmental review process is consistent with CEQA, and it will ensure that the entire project will adhere to the more environmentally protective policies for the coastal zone.

The county should follow the example that it set with the Ellwood/Devereaux Plan. The county should become an active, rather than passive partner in the conservation of open space for public use outside the urban boundary on the Gaviota coast.

The place to start is Naples.

Bob Keats is a member of the Santa Barbara chapter of the Surfer Rider Foundation and 35-year resident of the South Coast.