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BEEP Files Lawsuit Over Playa Vista's Last Phase
November 18, 2004
ADVOCATES FOR TAXPAYERS AND THE ENVIRONMENT FILE LAWSUIT OVER CORPORATE WELFARE FOR BALLONA WETLANDS-PLAYA VISTA PHASE 2 DEVELOPMENT
Stating that the City Council of Los Angeles is fleecing the taxpayers for the benefit of one of the largest real estate developers in the City, 4 groups have filed a lawsuit in L.A. Superior Court over the September 22nd, 2004 approval of 2600 condominiums and a shopping center on and near the Ballona Wetlands in West Los Angeles. The lawsuit charges that the City falsely overstates the alleged benefits of the Playa Vista project, while covering up the problems it creates, calling it a notorious example of assuring huge profits to developers while sticking taxpayers with the bill. The approval of development at the 110 acre site also puts an unnecessary obstacle in plans to clean up Santa Monica Bay via the voter-approved ballot measure Proposition O.
The plaintiffs are the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Associations and the Coalition Against the Pipeline, which won a landmark Appeals Court case in the year 2000 that concerned a longstanding City policy of approving massive traffic-causing developments with little assurance that the traffic problems would be fixed, or that there would be any money to do it if it was possible. Joining the suit are local Ballona Wetlands defenders BEEP (the Ballona Ecosystem Education Project), and ETINA (Environmentalism Through Inspiration and Non-Violent Action). The City conceded in 2001 that its TIMP, known as the Transportation Mitigation and Improvement Program, is infeasible for lack of secure funding from other levels of government, said Lawrence Teeter, attorney for the plaintiffs. The project at issue is Playa Vista Phase 2, and while the project is forecast in its Environmental Impact Report to dump more than 24,000 cars on local streets each day, the developer, Playa Capital Company, has minimal plans to fix traffic jams, such as reprogramming some traffic signals, and buying 5 buses for the Culver City bus line, while paying some of their operating costs for ten years. Shifting even more of the burden to residents and taxpayers, Playa Vista traffic studies have deliberately understated the true impacts of project traffic, as alleged by the neighboring City of Santa Monica and the L.A. County Regional Planning Department in their comments to the City Planning department. This leaves the general public with the bill for the inevitable gridlocked traffic when and if this project is built. Corporate Welfare was a huge sore spot in the first phase of Playa Vista, approved in 1993 and now under construction. Then, developers promised to include full on-site sewage and trash recycling facilities in order to not overwhelm the City Hyperion sewage plant system and City landfills. The City Council and Playa Vista later quietly decided to cancel these recycling facilities, putting the burden back on taxpayer funded facilities. Phase 1 also promised $100 million to fix local traffic problems, but behind the scenes, Playa Vista convinced the State and Federal governments to kick in over $30 million of the promised traffic fixes, along with other taxpayer-funded giveaways.
The Playa Vista site has been at the center of a long-standing battle over preserving green space and cleaning up our polluted Santa Monica Bay, said Rex Frankel, President of BEEP. The City is now under order of the U.S. EPA to stop pouring storm drain pollution into the ocean, and the City has a choice of spending well over $3 billion, according to their own estimates, by using conventional treatment plants to clean storm drain pollution; or they can make the Playa Vista/eastern Ballona Wetlands site a keystone in cleaning the ocean the natural way, and in the process, saving taxpayers a ton of money and re-creating a network of creeks, wetlands and parks throughout the L.A. basin. Back in September, BEEP presented a cost-benefit study to the City Council showing that recreating natural wetlands throughout the City would clean up Santa Monica Bay at less than 1/4th of the cost of conventional treatment methods, potentially saving billions in taxpayer dollars, while creating valuable park space for the 4 million residents of the City. This study was based on the costs of pollution treatment projects by the Cities of Santa Monica and Irvine, in Orange County.
Another lawsuit against Phase 2 has been filed by the City of Santa Monica, the Ballona Wetlands Land Trust, the Surfrider Foundation, and the Tribal Chief of the San Gabriel Band of the Gabrieleno Indians.
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