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The Environmental Board on June 5 took a look at the draft of the citywide environmental impact report for city’s Housing Element zoning code update. The chair of the Environmental Quality Control Board urged the public to comment early in the process rather than later.
The state mandates updates to the Housing Element of the General Plan every eight years. Updating the zoning code is part of that and that’s why Seal Beach officials are doing a citywide environmental impact report.
The public comment period for the draft EIR ends at 5 p.m., Monday, June 23.
The draft EIR is available on the city website.
Audience members included past council member Schelly Sustarsic and current council members Joe Kalmick and Patty Senecal.
The following is not a transcript, but highlights from the 90-minute meeting of the Environmental Quality Control Board.
“The Housing Element, which integrates/updates supporting socioeconomic, demographic, and household data, is specifically intended to accommodate the City’s RHNA allocation of 1,243 new dwelling units,” according to the executive summary of the draft of the EIR. (RHNA stands for Regional Housing Needs Assessment. Note RHNA is pronounced “rhina”.)
Community Development Director Alexa Smittle said last time the city was required to find room for two units.
The EIR identified eight sites in Seal Beach as potential housing sites. Smittle said the EIR agrees to amend the Main Street Specific Plan to allow residential use on the second floor.
District Three Environmental Board Member Susan Perrell told the public that the longer the public waits to comment, the less it counts. “If you have concerns and you have comments, now is the time to get them in the record because you will have the most influence the final draft,” Perrell said.
District Four Board Member Belle Hsu, speaking at her first board meeting, asked if insurance was being talked about when they talk about all these different sites.
Smittle said that through the California Environmental Quality Act, insurance was not included as part of the EIR analysis.
Perrell said two objects were in conflict with each other: The objective to improve quality of life and the third objective to amend land use standards in the city code to comply with state laws and RHNA. “According to the draft environmental impact report, building that 1,243 new housing units meeting that RHNA will create many significant, and supposedly unavoidable impacts, in several impact categories,” she said.
“So what do we do about that?” Perrell asked.
“I hope we will think about erring on the side of quality of life for Seal Beach residents,” Perrell said.
Perrell said the draft EIR failed to meet that objective.
District One Board Member James Villanueva said the board needed to take a holistic view of what they define as quality of life.
District Two Board Member Michael W. Depew Sr. said the EIR identified water as a less than significant factor.
“You can’t buy more water when it doesn’t exist,” he said.
He proposed concentrating on what to do with developer fees to mitigate population growth on the water supply.
Hsu brought up drainage issues in Seal Beach.
Perrell said she would submit her concerns in writing and encouraged the public to do the same. “Ninety-nine Marina Drive is different from any other sites” she said.
The property is site 8 in the draft EIR.
“It’s a public recreation space,” she said
“It’s full of trees and shrubs and grasses and birds and reptiles insects and mammals and people,” Perrell said.
“The draft environmental impact report says it contains an abandoned handball court,” she said.
She said in reality, the handball court is not abandoned.
She said it seemed clear to her that the draft EIR didn’t fully document the protected species and habitat on the site.
“I’m concerned that without an accurate baseline assessment of recreational and biological resources we really won’t know the impacts and we really don’t know how to mitigate them,” Perrell said. She said the city was underwater on recreation space.
“There appears to be no mitigation for loss of habitat or recreation value,” Perrell said.
“I think this site deserves its own EIR,” she said.
“We don’t have any say in whether this Housing Element rule is fitting for us or not, so we have to be our own defense team,” said Horning.
According to the consultants, after the Housing Element is certified any project on a specific site would be reviewed individually.
Villanueva said it would be a shame to see 99 Marina Drive be densely developed, they were talking about 3 acres in an area where housing is difficult to come by.
He suggested setting aside part of the land for open space as was done at the former DWP property (now known as Ocean Place).
Perrell said the Coastal Commission had a lot to do with that.
Smittle said none of the Housing Element sites can be 100% build out.
Public comments
District Three Planning Commissioner Richard Coles said he spent 10 years on the Environmental Board.
He said the city needed separate EIRs.
Coles, an engineer, said further analysis of stormwater conditions are essential to any criteria you develop.
He said the Seal Beach needs to rethink how the city fixes its infrastructure.
Coles advised rethinking allowing residential use on Main Street. “Some of those structures are in excess of a hundred years old.
“People in this community cherish the way it looks, as is,” Coles said.
District Four Councilwoman Senecal brought the impact of traffic on the air. She said Seal Beach has bike lanes next to the cars.
“It seems disproportional that we’re putting a lot of people at risk and adding more risk into the system,” Senecal said.
“I would like to know in the EIR, can we require the South Coast AQMD to put air monitoring on these sites or near these sites on a continual tracking basis of the air quality so we know what’s going on?” Senecal asked.
She asked if the city can look at the decibels of the sound that would come off the projects.
She said the city needs to take road dust seriously.
“You are bubbling us in with an enormous amount of air quality issues, sound issues, and, again this road dust issue,” she said.
“I know we have we’re being overridden by Sacramento on a lot of stuff, but I just would like it to be in the record. This is concerning and this is not balanced,” she said.
Schelly Sustarsic of College Park East brought up flooding issues.
“Quality of life is not good,” she said. Sustarsic said there would be a competition for space to put water.
According to Sustarsic, when you look north of the freeway, three sites compose 1,111 sights out of the RHNA requirement of 1,243 sites.
She said Seal Beach shouldn’t be painted with a broad brush, apparently referring to the citywide draft EIR.
“I have an issue with a finding of no significant impact regards to airport hazards,” she said.
“What do we do about the next Housing Element cycle?” Sustarsic asked.
