Foothills Sentry August 2020

Foothills Sentry Page 2 DURING THESE CHALLENDING TIMES, Whether YOU stay inside or venturE out, know your home, business & FAMILY are safe and secure! GETTING BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS 714 282 0828 | jadtec.com | ACO4202 PEACE OF MIND PROTECTION jadte c.com $ 15 95 /mo SECURITY JADTEC By Tina Richards The opening brief in a lawsuit filed by the Orange Park Asso- ciation against the City of Orange challenging its certification of the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for Milan Capital’s Trails at Santiago Creek, delivers a lengthy list of the EIR’s flaws, fallacies, deferments and contradictions and asks the court to reverse the ap- proval. Environmental Impact Reports, a requirement of the Califor- nia Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), are not mindless paper- work, bureaucratic red tape or a box to check in the development process. They are intended to provide decision-makers and the public with a comprehensive understand- ing of how a given development will affect air and water quality, traffic, noise, natural resources, aesthetics and a slew of other con- cerns. The EIR for the Trails at San- tiago, a 128-unit housing project proposed to be built between San- tiago Canyon Road and Santiago Creek in East Orange, does little or none of that. Accentuate the positive “The site contains silt ponds, gravel pits, contaminated soils, and leaking methane gas,” the legal brief written by OPA at- torneys advises. “These hazards present enormous development constraints, which CEQA requires to be meaningfully analyzed, dis- closed, and mitigated before proj- ect approval. But the EIR short cuts meaningful environmental analysis by recycling obsolete studies, deferring critical plans until after project approvals.” The site is also located in a high fire hazard zone and is on a flood plain that has been underwater, most recently in 1969. It is also subject to flooding if the Villa Park Dam were to fail. Based on the EIR’s outdated studies, curso- ry analysis and promises of future plans, the city found the project will result in almost no significant environmental impacts. Ironically, much of the Trail’s EIR recycles the EIR produced for a previous project on the same site in 2014. The Orange Planning Commis- sion and City Council rejected that plan. While the majority of East Or- ange residents oppose the proj- Lawsuit seeks to overturn Orange City Council’s certification of EIR for East Orange housing development ect, noting the area was always intended to be open space or a regional park, as defined in three land-use documents dating back to 1973, some of the site’s neigh- bors in The Reserve and Mabury Ranch support the housing devel- opment. They argue that housing is better than the mounds of con- struction waste that continues to pile up on the property, and that the developer has promised to restore Santiago Creek and leave acres of open space, with trails and amenities. Guess again The EIR, however, does not support that promise with any de- tails or plans, and offers no hint of who would do the clean up, how exactly the creek would be restored, how flood control would be managed, how wildlife would be protected, how trails and ame- nities would be designed, how much it would cost, who would pay for it and who would take charge of preserving and main- taining the acreage. Remediation plans, wildlife displacement, flood control, trails and amenities will all be ad- dressed “in the future.” OC Parks has indicated it is not interested, based on what is and isn’t in the EIR. The benefits claimed in the EIR, OPA’s attorneys wrote, “… are based on undefined, under- funded plans to be prepared by some unspecified entity in the future.” Likewise, the site’s scope of contamination, chemical pollu- tion and consequent remediation will be fully investigated “in the future,” as will resident evacua- tion plans in the event of flooding or fire. Of note, the 2017 Canyon 2 Fire that forced evacuees onto congested roads and clogged ex- its was not mentioned. Eliminate the negative Many details that did find their way into the EIR were contradic- tory or incomplete. The report says that site preparation will require 245,400 truck trips, but those were not included in the traffic study, which was limited to the 1,219 daily passenger car trips associated with the future subdi- vision. The traffic study itself was done in 2010; the EIR did not ex- plain how that data reflects “cur- rent conditions.” The EIR’s noise analysis rests on the assumption that the proj- ect “does not propose any uses that would require a substantial number of truck trips.” But the same document notes that the project “would result in substan- tial numbers of trucks traveling to and from the site on a daily basis.” The noise, dust and traf- fic analysis also failed to consider the Chandler fill operation, just downstream, that would intro- duce 64,000 truck trips onto the same streets. The City of Orange has a tree ordinance designed to preserve and protect mature trees. The EIR duly reported that “there are 323 trees on the project site” and, lat- er, that the “project site contains 204 trees.” Never-ending story The first Draft EIR released for review in 2018 was so heavily criticized by public agencies and citizens that the city compelled the developer to produce a “Re- circulated EIR.” It, too, contained deficiencies brought up by the public during the planning com- mission and city council hearings on the Trails at Santiago Creek. Councilmembers Kim Nichols, Mike Alvarez and Chip Monaco, under the leadership of Mayor Mark Murphy, approved the project and certified the EIR in a unanimous vote in October 2019. Shortly thereafter, Orange voters circulated a petition to place the issue on the November 2020 bal- lot. More than twice the needed number of signatures were col- lected, and the measure asking voters to reject Milan’s project will appear on the ballot. The lawsuit challenging the EIR was filed on Nov. 21, 2019, and is slated to be heard in Supe- rior Court on Oct. 19. “The real environmental costs of this project are still unknown, and the benefits and purported mitigation largely illusory,” the opening brief asserts. “The public deserves to have a full account- ing of both to ensure that the deal made by the City and Milan does not sell them short.” Villa Park to provide meals for vulnerable Villa Park City Council, at its June 23 meeting, approved the use of funds from the County of Orange to provide meals for at- risk individuals in the city who are sheltering in place due to the pandemic. The Villa Park Rotary, with the support of the Villa Park Commu- nity Services Foundation, is tak- ing the lead on this Villa Park Ro- tary Club Senior Meal Program, and will coordinate the delivery of meals from local restaurants to Villa Park seniors and other vul- nerable individuals. Should you know of a neighbor or someone who might need the meal delivery, please call (714) 289-0047 or email info@rcvp. org. August 2020