Foothills Sentry - October 2024

Foothills Sentry Page 4 OCTOBER 2024 ACTION! Family. Friends. Community. We’re all in this together. State Farm, Bloomington, IL 1801073 Ron Esparza, Agent Insurance Lic#: 0C79663 827 S. Tustin Ave Orange, CA 92866 Bus: 714-505-3400 ron@ronesparza.com dan@ D an S l ater. com 7 1 4 - 7 4 4 - 2 2 0 2 15 3 7 E . C ha p ma n A ve. O ra n g e, C A 9 2 8 6 6 DAN SLATER I t ’ s pump k i n time! street level. The exercise would have moved 1,240,000 cubic yards of dirt over five years, and encompassed up to 60 truck trips per day. Dave Hillman, who fished at Hurwitz pond as a boy, still rou- tinely hikes around that area. One day, in 2016, he encountered three men in suits walking around the property. “You don’t usually see people in suits in that area,” he notes, “so I asked them what they were doing.” He learned Chandler had bought the acreage. Shortly after, he learned of the backfilling plan, and that Chan- dler had filed for a grading permit from the city. Hillman contacted Joel and Bonnie Robinson, who live near the site and are committed to pro- tecting Santiago Creek. Joel, an experienced naturalist who stud- ies local habitats and conducts nature tours, was out of town at the time. His mother Bonnie, an experienced environmental advo- cate, started a letter writing cam- paign to every agency she could think of. The pair went to Orange City Hall to look at the grading plans. “It was clear,” Hillman says, “they were going to approve the permit without even looking at the site.” Shout to the rooftops Hillman and Robinson, along with like-minded neighbors, spoke at city council meetings. They met with Congresswoman Katie Porter and State Senator Dave Min. Robinson wrote letters and emails to California Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, FEMA, the Army Corps of En- gineers and the Santa Ana Water Regional Water Quality Control Board. She got little traction. Fish and Wildlife had already ap- proved the project; FEMA had re- drawn flood maps that indicated a reduced scope of potential San- tiago Creek flooding; and the city was poised to approve the grading permit. The only approval yet to he garnered was that of the Water Quality Control Board. “What we learned,” Hillman recalls, "is that these government agencies are underfunded and un- derstaffed. They can’t investigate everything themselves and tend to rely on information given to them by the applicant.” Robinson cites a report writ- ten by a Chandler consultant as an example. “They submitted a ‘Low Impact Conservation Plan’ that was just not right,” she says. “It said that the site had been cleared of brush every year. It had never been cleared. It got the spe- cies wrong. Joel went to the site and documented what plants and animals were really there. The consultant’s mitigation plan was to recreate a wetland in a different ecosystem, 10 miles away, with species that weren’t impacted by the Chandler project. It wasn’t mitigation at all, and it wouldn’t have worked.” A neighbor of Robinson ana- lyzed the elevation changes of the area over the years by looking at Google Maps and other resourc- es. He found that the proposed construction waste site was so close to Santiago Creek and the recharge basin up the road, that the project was “an accident wait- ing to happen.” A state-sanctioned reprieve Meanwhile, Hillman learned that the state had enacted legisla- tion that allowed abandoned mine sites that filled with water and evolved into wetlands could be declared “waters of the state.” He encouraged a member of the wa- ter agency to tour the site. It was officially declared “waters of the state” in August 2020. That dec- laration put the grading permit on hold. The water board rejected Chandler’s first two applications, but was preparing to accept a Mayor Dan Slater encouraged the city to establish a Santiago Creek Commission to act in an advisory ca- pacity regarding the preservation and/or enhancement of the ecological, scenic, historical, and recreational resource of the Santiago Creek Area. Commissioners display plans and visions for the creek dating back 50 years. From left, Addison Adams, Robert Baca, David Hillman, Michael Knight, Brendon Moeller, Pamela Galera and Susan Tillou. "Chandler" continued from page 1 Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND) compiled by a Chandler consultant, that essentially said the project would not result in any significant environmental damage. Enter Mayor Dan Slater. When Slater was campaigning for mayor, he got an earful about the Chandler project from East Or- ange voters. He also shared their vision of a preserved and eventu- ally restored Santiago Creek that could become a real asset to the city. “I knew the issue was front and center,” Slater recalls. “Before I was sworn in, I went to the city manager and city attorney and told them this has to stop, that we as a city have to do whatev- er we can to stop it. They were shocked.” But the then-city attor- ney hired a consultant to write a letter to the water board explain- ing the city’s objections to the project, and demanding an Envi- ronmental Impact Report (EIR). Floodgates opened That letter was among 372 the water board received from resi- dents and environmental groups. “I don’t think the board had ever experienced that before,” Hill- man says. A public hearing on the MND was postponed from January, to February, to April. In August 2023, a public workshop was held at Orange City Hall. The room was packed. Dozens of people addressed the water board staff, reiterating the natural value of the property, and asking for a full-fledged EIR instead of set- tling for a MND. There were so many people who wanted to be heard that the meeting ran over the time allot- ted. “We’re going to have to end this, because our scheduled time is up,” an executive staff member declared. “No,” Mayor Slater as- sured them. “You don’t have to clear the room, you can stay as The long-abandoned mine pit has been reclaimed by nature. long as you need to.” The board subsequently decid- ed that an EIR was necessary. Make a loud noise One of the letters the board re- ceived pointed out a little-known clause in the water agency’s legal mandates. It noted a very high bar for the “Least Environmen- tally Damaging Practicable Al- ternative.” In order to approve a project, the agency has to find a reason for it that outweighs the damages to the environment. “Those letters made a huge im- pression on the property owner,” Slater said. “And it was clear there was a change of direction from the city.” Chandler came to the city and proposed giving Orange the “pit” in exchange for the expansion of its Blue Ribbon Nursery business. It took months of negotiations and staff work to figure out how to make it happen. And happen it did. “Chandler did the right thing,” David Hillman notes. “And we like Blue Ribbon Nursery. The community will support it.” It took a good number of resi- dents to educate the community, the city and government agencies about the damage a construction waste infill would do to Santiago Creek. In addition to David Hill- man, Joel and Bonnie Robinson, major unsung players were Leslie Manderscheid, Dennis Riley and Theresa Sears.