Army Corps destruction in SF Valley preserve a preview of agency treatment of Whittier Narrows?

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is the land management agency ultimately in charge of most of the Whittier Narrows Natural Area, including most of the 11 or 12 acres the Discovery Center Authority needs for its water museum project. The corps' clear-cutting last month of 43 acres of land rich in plant life and wildlife in the San Fernando Valley's Sepulveda Basin wildlife preserve offers a cautionary tale for those of us concerned about the fate of our own wildlife sanctuary on the San Gabriel River.

As Los Angeles Times journalist Louis Sahagun wrote on Dec. 29: "An area that just a week ago was lush habitat on the Sepulveda Basin's wild side, home to one of the most diverse bird populations in Southern California, has been reduced to dirt and broken limbs — by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers." 

Sahagun reports that the corps had reclassified the preserve as a "vegetation management area," with a new mission to replace existing plants with new vegetation in order to "improve access for Army Corps staffers, increase public safety and discourage crime in an area plagued by sex-for-drugs encampments." The agency declared that no environmental impact report was necessary,  posted a Finding of No Significant Impact to its website for 15 days of public comment, but according to the Sierra Club "informed no one of its existence."

By Dec. 28, Sahagun wrote, "nearly all of the vegetation — native and non-native — had been removed. Decomposed granite trails, signs, stone structures and other improvements bought and installed with public money had been plowed under."

Reaction was swift and utterly predictable -- except by the corps apparently. Local chapters of Audubon, Sierra Club, the Native Plant Society, local neighborhood groups, state and federal representatives all voiced their shock, disbelief and disapproval of the corps' actions. And while the attention brought to the destruction of wildlife habitat and recreational resources and the failure to consider, inform and include the public in any meaningful way won't bring back those 43 acres, it might help to prevent such destruction of other areas managed by the corps and by other agencies.

That includes the Whittier Narrows wildlife sanctuary.

Friends file legal appeal against Discovery Center!

When it rains, it pours, the saying goes. And for the San Gabriel River Discovery Center at the moment it's coming down in buckets.

The LA Weekly reported yesterday that the Friends of the Whittier Narrows Natural Area have filed an appeal against the planned water museum and meeting hall, which would, writes Dennis Romero:

"essentially tear out a beautiful area along the rivers (the San Gabriel and Rio Hondo diverge here) to install a building where you could appreciate . . . the beautiful area along the rivers."

Romero also mentioned State Parks' widely reported decision last week rejecting the Discovery Center Authority's request for $7 million in bond money to build the water museum.

He includes a nice quote from Friends President Jim Odling:

"Our organization and members are grateful to State Parks for recognizing, as so many in the local community have, that the Discovery Center project would, in fact, take us backwards in our efforts to protect California's natural and cultural resources."

With the appeal filed, the work of protecting our resources goes on.

Discovery Center brutally rebuffed! State officials reject application for $7 million in bond funds

Hot off the press: The San Gabriel River Discovery Center Authority's request for $7 million in state bond funds was D-E-N-I-E-D.

The Los Angeles Times broke the story Friday online. Here's a more detailed follow-up:

Grant request for Whittier Narrows nature center is rejected

By my calculations, based on the figures in the application the authority submitted to California State Parks, the project is now $17 million in the hole. (The estimated construction cost is $22 million. The authority told State Parks it had about $5 million committed.)

Is this the end project? If it is, Discovery Center officials aren't letting on.

Outgoing Discovery Center Authority boss Belinda Faustinos told the Times the project would "seek other funding avenues."

True to their word, they're now looking to the California Community Foundation for money.

But that means that some of the most powerful elected and unelected officials in the local area will be competing against tsunami survivors, asthma and diabetes research programs, and disability rights advocates, among others, for charitable dollars.

All for a trophy water museum and meeting center officials are forcing down the throats of an unwilling public.

If I were one of the donors upon whom the foundation depends and I learned what the foundation was proposing, I'd start thinking about taking my money elsewhere.

To see who else could become a Discovery Center victim if the foundation hands the authority a check, click here. (Scroll up and down the page to see the entire list of June 2010 grantees.)

70 feet of petition signatures opposing Discovery Center delivered to authority board March 21

Friends President Jim Odling wrote today:

The board of the San Gabriel River Discovery Center Authority got a surprise at its meeting last week when members of the Friends of the Whittier Narrows Natural Area delivered more than 1,100 petition signatures opposing the authority’s $22 million taxpayer-funded water museum.

Friends board members Ed Barajas, Michael Barba and I delivered the signatures — the vast majority coming from people living and working in the Whittier Narrows area — as a 70-foot banner, which stretched out from one end of the board room to the other.

You can watch a video of our presentation here:



You, our many terrific supporters, made this dramatic and important moment possible.

Your signatures and signature gathering efforts are sending a clear message to officials that the community wants the Whittier Narrows wildlife sanctuary and its nature center preserved.

As I said in my comments to the board, the signatures represent an incredible spectrum of the community, including Latinos, Native Americans, community and environmental activists, volunteer docents and more than 200 local high school and college students, among others.

These 1,100 voices are the most recent expression of concern over the destruction and waste promised by the Discovery Center project — concern that has been growing.

Last November, the Gabrieleno Band of Mission Indians announced their opposition to the project. Local chapters of the Sierra Club, Audubon Society and California Native Plant Society pulled out of the project booster club last year. And in 2008 the county’s environmental review board deemed the project “incompatible” with the Whittier Narrows Significant Ecological Area.

Together we can help save the Whittier Narrows wildlife sanctuary, the community’s access to firsthand experiences of nature there and our evermore-scarce financial resources.

Thank you for your continuing support.

Sincerely,
Jim Odling
President, Friends of the Whittier Narrows Natural Area

Gabrieleno Indians oppose Whittier Narrows water museum/meeting hall project — Los Angeles Times

In a widely reported development in the story of the controversial water museum proposed for the Whittier Narrows Natural Area, the Gabrieleno Band of Mission Indians announced their opposition to the project Thursday at the threatened wildlife sanctuary.

“It's one thing for a child to push a button and see a picture of nature. But there is nothing like walking along a trail here, seeing, smelling, hearing, and touching nature all around you.” — Lucy Pedregon, Gabrieleno Indian and educator.

Click here to read the story that appeared in the Los Angeles Times on Friday. The story was also reported in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, on the architecture website la.curbed.com, and in numerous locations on the Internet and blogosphere.

The tribal representatives and others who spoke at the event all communicated the message that the project — a $22 million taxpayer-funded water museum and meeting hall called the San Gabriel River Discovery Center — would be inappropriate development for an important area of remaining open space and a historic center of Gabrieleno culture; would destroy rare habitat, plants and wildlife; and threatens to disturb ancestral remains and artifacts.

Members of the tribe, the original Native American inhabitants of the Los Angeles basin, questioned the rationale for the project and its cost in natural, historical and cultural resources.

“It's one thing for a child to push a button and see a picture of nature,” said Lucy Pedregon, a Gabrieleno and a media aide in the Hacienda-La Puente school district. “But there is nothing like walking along a trail here, seeing, smelling, hearing, and touching nature all around you.”

The Gabrielenos also offered an alternative vision for the Whittier Narrows wildlife sanctuary and its nature center, including renovation of the existing facilities and inclusion of Native American history and artifacts, improvements to interpretive displays along nature trails, and a monthly volunteer program focused on sharing Native American culture with the community.

Renovation of existing interpretive centers or the adaptive reuse of other buildings has been successfully achieved at a number of locations in Southern California, including the National Park Service’s Scorpion Ranch Visitor Center on Santa Cruz Island, Los Angeles County’s Placerita Canyon Nature Center and Haramokngna cultural center high in the Angeles National Forest.

The Gabrieleno vision would use this sustainable, historically and environmentally focused approach to develop a rich cultural resource in the heart of urban east Los Angeles County.

Friends' petition invites community to add its voice to campaign to save Whittier Narrows Natural Area

We’ve started a petition to help the community tell officials that we want the Whittier Narrows Natural Area and Nature Center preserved today and for future generations, not sacrificed to make way for a government and water agency water museum and meeting hall.

To go to the petition, including its background information, or preamble, you can click here or click on the link below. You can also go directly to the signature page by clicking on the "Sign our Petition" counter at the right.

By signing today, you help to send a clear message that our tax dollars, our public lands and our children's access to firsthand experiences of nature are not to be sacrificed in a misguided attempt to build an unsustainable $22 million water agency marketing tool.

As part of the petition, we offer our vision for truly community-focused, fiscally responsible and environmentally appropriate improvements at our community’s wildlife sanctuary:

• Restoration of habitat and improvement of trails and interpretive displays
• Eco-friendly renovation of the nature center
• Historical landmark status for the entire Whittier Narrows Recreation Area, as recommended in a federal historic resources survey of Whittier Narrows.

With your help, we can prevent the terrible waste and failure that has plagued water museum projects, and project like them, from claiming the Whittier Narrows Natural Area as yet another victim. Please sign today, and please ask your friends, family and others to sign too.

Together we can save the Whittier Narrows Natural Area.

Find our petition at http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-whittier-narrows-natural-area.html

Troubled water museum project brings in 'main force' behind failed water museum project

The past is prologue, as the saying goes, and so news coming out of an agency struggling to build a $22 million publicly funded water museum proposed on the Whittier Narrows wildlife sanctuary should have taxpayers and ratepayers very worried about how officials are handling millions of their dollars.

At the Oct. 18 meeting of the San Gabriel River Discovery Center Authority, board President Robert Apodaca announced that the agency has brought in former water official Phillip J. Pace to assist with fundraising for the project and said Pace would be working “behind the scenes."

The role that Pace played in another, now-failed water museum project was far more evident.

In a 2007 story on the troubles then plaguing the $26 million Center for Water Education, the Los Angeles Times called Pace the “main force” behind the project.

The paper reported that the board of directors of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California approved a $4.67 million bailout of the project, an amount that “was on top of $16 million in ratepayer money that the agency previously allocated to the Hemet-based Center for Water Education, which was on the verge of bankruptcy even before officially opening.”

The Press-Enterprise reported that the board “canceled the lease and took over the museum from the nonprofit foundation district directors had created to build and operate the facility.”

Pace, one of the district directors at the time, chaired the nonprofit foundation.

The project’s troubles also prompted California State Parks to warn the district that a $5 million grant might have to be repaid if it didn’t come up with a plan that fit the intent of the grant.

The Discovery Center Authority has applied to State Parks for a $7 million grant, reports the Los Angeles Times in a story on the impending retirement of the authority’s executive officer, Belinda V. Faustinos.

But Faustinos says that water bonds for recreation and habitat restoration, the source of such grants, are "slim picking these days."

Today, the district’s Hemet building houses its relocated Diamond Valley Lake Visitor Center, a charter school and an archeology museum. Not quite what ratepayers expect out of their water bills.

Now Pace brings what the authority board president calls his “great record of doing these types of things” to the trouble-plagued Whittier Narrows project.

Fundraising for the water museum and meeting hall has been stalled at less than $10 million for some years now. Last January, driven by financial worries, the authority reduced the construction price tag $5 million by reducing the project’s size. And five months later, Faustinos conceded that long-term operations funding was also an “issue.”

Authority board member Dan Arrighi called Pace “a good fit for us.”

Such words should strike terror into the hearts of taxpayers and ratepayers.

See also: Relocated water museum reopens as Diamond Valley Lake Visitor Center (Press-Enterprise PE.com website)

'$84K salary just don't pay the bills,' says RMC, Discovery Center chief, announces plans to retire

The timing is suspicious, to say the least.

Three months after the state Department of Finance issues a report and audit (link below) declaring that the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy "has not exercised adequate fiduciary oversight of bond funds," the conservancy's executive director announces her retirement.

Faustinos, who earns $84,000 annually, told the Times that retirement is "something I’ve been thinking about for a while because of salary cuts for state employees -– the checkbook doesn’t balance any more at the end of the month.”

The Los Angeles Times' Louis Sahagun broke the story (link below) of Belinda Faustinos' decision to retire on the paper's Greenspace blog today.

Faustinos, who earns $84,000 annually, told the Times that retirement is "something I’ve been thinking about for a while because of salary cuts for state employees -– the checkbook doesn’t balance any more at the end of the month.”

Yep -- $84,000 a year just doesn't go as far as it used to.

It's important to note of the recent audit that many of the problems it identified were first brought to light in an earlier 2006 audit but went uncorrected.

It reminds naturalareafan a whole lot of the story outgoing drug czar Ralph Landry tells the incoming czar in the movie Traffic:

"You know, when they forced Khruschev out, he sat down and wrote two letters to his successor.

"He said, 'When you get yourself into a situation you can't get out of, open the first letter, and you'll be safe. When you get yourself into another situation you can't get out of, open the second letter.'

"Well, soon enough, this guy found himself in a tight place, so he opened the first letter, which said: 'Blame everything on me.' So he blames the old man, it worked like a charm.

"He got himself into a second situation he couldn't get out of, he opened the second letter. It said: 'Sit down, and write two letters.'"

Then again, perhaps it is as easy to explain as annual salaries. One can imagine that, with the connections Faustinos has made, first at the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and now at the RMC, she has the potential to make far more money as a lobbiest than the $84,000 per year she's had to settle for as a government employee.

Links:

- Audit of San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy's Propositions 40 and 50 Bond Funds (PDF file)

- Conservancy official for L.A. and Orange Counties to retire (Los Angeles Times Greenspace blog)

Central Basin MWD support for troubled Discovery Center project could cost customers millions

If officials at Central Basin Municipal Water District have their way, cities, water retailers and ratepayers who get their water from the district could end up paying millions of dollars over the coming years to prop up a financially troubled water museum project that a district official concedes customers do not want.

At the most conservative estimate, projected over the time Central Basin and Upper San Gabriel Valley MWDs would be expected to support the project, the additional costs would reach into the millions of dollars for each district and its customers.

At a June meeting of the San Gabriel River Discovery Center Authority, board President and Central Basin Director Robert Apodaca said that customer cities and agencies were concerned about the district’s support for the project — a $22 million taxpayer/ratepayer-funded water museum and meeting hall — and that “they don’t feel [the project] is a priority for them.”

Central Basin's Robert Apodaca dismissed opposition to the Discovery Center from the district's own customer cities and water agencies as "excuses to criticize" the project.

But Apodaca dismissed the opposition as “excuses to criticize” the project. He then offered additional district resources, saying, “We have a large staff. We have the resources. And we’re willing to share those,” adding later, “We have money to do things.”

At the same meeting, authority Executive Director Belinda V. Faustinos conceded that long-term funding for the controversial project is an “issue” and said that the authority would likely turn to Central Basin and a second district, Upper San Gabriel Valley MWD, to cover the project’s additional costs. “If we need to look at some ongoing operations costs down the road, it could potentially come from the water agency partners,” she said.

Faustinos said that long-term costs for the proposed facility — which would replace an existing Los Angeles County-owned-and-operated nature center already used by Central Basin to deliver education programs — will be a minimum of $200,000 annually beyond what the county and the two district’s pay for the nature center and for education programs, respectively.

Even at the most conservative estimate, projected over the time the districts would be expected to support the project, the additional costs would reach into the millions of dollars for each district and its customers. Such support, and statements that Central Basin has “money to do things,” stand in stark contrast to recent district actions, decisions and statements that seem to indicate a water district where finances are extremely tight — and getting tighter.

Those decisions and actions include: (1) more than doubling a surcharge on water, (2) borrowing tens of millions of dollars, (3) claiming to have made $1 million in budget cuts, and (4) passing on to customers the Metropolitan Water District’s most recent rate increase because, said Central Basin’s general manager, “We don't really have outside income to absorb this.”

If Central Basin officials have their way, their customers — some of whom pay among the county's highest property taxes or sales taxes — also will be absorbing the multimillion-dollar costs of a water museum they do not want.

Discovery Center long-term funding is an ‘issue,’ says authority Executive Officer Belinda Faustinos

Eight months after a government agency dominated by unelected water executives and public employees gave its approval for a controversial publicly funded $22 million water museum, the same agency appears to have no firm idea of the project’s long-term operations and maintenance costs. Nor has the agency been able to secure funding commitments to pay the long-term costs.

At a meeting of the authority board of directors in June, the agency’s executive officer, Belinda V. Faustinos, conceded that long-term funding was an “issue.”

In January, the San Gabriel River Discovery Center Authority approved the water museum and meeting hall proposed for the Whittier Narrows wildlife sanctuary between the Montebello and Puente hills. Yet in April, the LA Weekly reported that the authority, in addition to being short of needed construction funds, “does not even have an updated estimate of future operating costs.”

At a meeting of the authority board of directors in June, the agency’s executive officer, Belinda V. Faustinos, conceded that long-term funding was an “issue.” She said that costs beyond what the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation pays for its existing Whittier Narrows Nature Center and what two authority-member water districts pay for their current education programs would likely be a minimum of $200,000 annually, “if not more.”

It appears that officials prefer to dedicate meeting time, as they have recently, to selecting logos and letterhead and coming up with a design for a facility they can’t afford to build and probably can't afford to operate or maintain.

A document from the same June meeting shows that the authority had failed to secure commitments for long-term funding even by that point. Board agendas from a second June meeting, the authority’s July meeting and its August meeting show no attempts by the authority to address the critical matters of the project’s long-term costs and funding.

Long-term costs and the ability or willingness of organizations to pay those costs are at the heart of the viability question for such projects. “What comes to me is that it’s easy to build something [but] it’s hard to sustain the operation,” Michael Feeney, of the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County, told the LA Weekly, reflecting on the county’s troubled Watershed Resource Center.

“Everyone was excited to build it and there was a lot of enthusiasm at first,” he said. But, writes LA Weekly journalist Tibby Rothman, “the officials at the various agencies grew reluctant to devote the funds needed to keep it going. According to Feeney, the resource center is largely shuttered now, though not only for financial reasons.”

Similar problems contributed to the failure of the multimillion-dollar Children’s Museum of Los Angeles and to the troubles of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s big-ticket Center for Water Education in Hemet — today a costly white elephant for MWD ratepayers.

But rather than address the serious problems that plague the Discovery Center project, it appears that officials prefer to dedicate meeting time, as they have recently, to selecting logos and letterhead and coming up with a design for a facility they can’t afford to build and probably can't afford to operate or maintain.

Last community-based environmental organization walks away from Discovery Center project

And then there were none.

The last community-based environmental organization on the booster committee for the troubled San Gabriel River Discovery Center water museum project voted in July to remove itself from the committee.

The exit of the local chapter of the California Native Plant Society is the latest page in an exodus from the project. In past years, the Discovery Center Authority claimed to have nearly 30 members on the committee. Today the list is down to seven.

The project booster committee is now made up almost exclusively of government agencies and water districts, a fact which reveals the project for what it is: unsustainable pork-barrel spending at a time when the taxpayer and ratepayer can no longer bear it.

The $22 million taxpayer-funded water museum and meeting hall -- deemed "incompatible" with the Whittier Narrows Significant Ecological Area by the county's own habitat experts -- is being pushed by a group of government agencies and water districts. Now, their booster committee consists almost exclusively of other government agencies and water districts.

Remaining members include the watershed council, an interest group dominated by agencies, water districts and utility companies; and another government agency whose chairman supports expanded oil drilling in the nearby Whittier Hills even though the agency was established to protect habitat and wildlife there.

Organizations that have decided to walk away because of their opposition to the project or their concerns about its goals, impacts and viability include the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society and the Whittier Narrows Nature Center Associates. Volunteer members of these and other organizations are deeply committed to community, conservation and education -- and they reject the destruction of wildlife habitat and public lands for a building intended primarily as a meeting hall for government officials and water execs.

But the authority seems to be little concerned that the local community, the habitat experts and the conservationists have all rejected the project. With a handful of its fellow agencies still on the booster club, the authority can claim a kind of support. But that support reveals the project for what it is: unsustainable pork-barrel spending at a time when the taxpayer and ratepayer can no longer bear it.

Nature education and bulldozers don't mix

What do the Whittier Narrows Natural Area, Ballona Wetlands, Abalone Cove Shoreline Park and Rancho Los Cerritos all have in common? At each location, officials have decided that nature education begins not with nature but with bulldozers.

In recent months, naturalareafan has learned that the proposed San Gabriel River Discovery Center isn't the only project in Southern California following the same worn-out recipe. Other projects that would require destruction of open space and wildlife habitat include:

- A proposed facility at the Ballona Wetlands -- as if the massive Playa Vista project didn't devour enough of the rare coastal wetland area

- A proposed facility at Abalone Cove Shoreline Park in Rancho Palos Verdes -- RPV already has a large coastal interpretive center

- A planned facility at Rancho Los Cerritos in Long Beach -- native plants were torn out and open space graded for the project

Most people would probably agree that Southern California is overbuilt and that open space is at a premium. So it seems truly strange that some people think destroying open space, wildlife habitat or public lands in order to put up yet more buildings is somehow ok.

But these projects have their critics.

There is the Friends lawsuit against the Discovery Center Authority, of course. And a group called Save Our Shoreline has an online petition that allows signers to express their opposition to the Abalone Cove project. And conservationists from the South Bay and the Westside have expressed their disappointment over the destruction of land at Ballona and Rancho Los Cerritos.

I invite you to sign the SOS petition. They're at 485 signature as I write this. Help put them over 500. Help keep the bulldozers out of our remaining wild places and open spaces.
--
Photo: Bulldozer, by MonsterPhotoISO, Flickr

Water bond reveals swine in museum's clothing

The yearlong debate surrounding the $11 billion water bond shined a bright light on what government officials like to call "water education facilities" -- a category that includes the proposed San Gabriel River Discovery Center.

What did that light reveal? That such projects are little more than government pork.

Democratic legislators, Republican legislators, political observers -- people from across the spectrum pointed out that these projects are the superfluous, costly ingredients intended to do nothing more than sweeten the deal to build political support for legislation.

But don't take my word for it:

The Los Angeles Times, Aug. 10, 2010:

"Sen. Lois Wolk (D-Davis) criticized the bond for including money for economic development projects, a water taxi service at Lake Tahoe and the construction of water education centers, saying that spending is not directly related to improving water quality.

"'It is fiscally irresponsible,' Wolk said. 'We need to repeal it, revise it and refocus it on the true needs of California.'"

The Los Angeles Times, Aug. 18, 2009:

"The bond proposal includes funding for bike paths, museums, visitor centers, tree planting, economic development and the purchase of property from land speculators and oil companies -- all in the districts of lawmakers whose key votes helped it pass the Legislature.

"'It's unfortunate that so many pet projects were put in that it has just created a Christmas tree out of this bond, and most of them don't produce one drop of water,' said Sen. Jeff Denham (R-Atwater), who voted against the measure when it cleared the Legislature this month."

The Los Angeles Times' George Skelton, Aug. 19, 2009:

"No matter how clever and careful the writer, on occasion a work should be ripped up and retooled. That also goes for writers of legislation.

"A prime example: Sacramento's new state water bond proposal. Granted, this bloated $11.1-billion bond is laced with humor: A waterworks package that provides borrowed money -- at twice the ticket price, counting interest -- for building bike trails, buying open space and developing 'watershed education centers.'

"OK, it is not funny," Skelton writes. "It's politics. It's pork."

Skelton's right: It's not funny.

And the proposed Discovery Center is so not-funny -- government officials ignoring the will of the people, attempting to build a project that destroys what it supposedly is intended to interpret, lashing the taxpayer to a project that promises to waste tens of millions of dollars -- that you have to laugh to keep from crying.

To my mind, one of the least funny aspects is that while the county, the state and the two water districts behind the project are raising taxes and water rates, all while slashing budgets and services for things people actually need and use, the Discovery Center Authority would have us believe that a water museum and meeting hall is something other than the multimillion-dollar government boondoggle it so obviously is.

It's not funny. It's just sad.
--
Photo: Potbellied pig, by Ian Britton, FreeFoto.com

Lawsuit protecting Whittier Narrows wildlife sanctuary for community and nature continues

Our lawsuit targeting the controversial, expensive and destructive San Gabriel River Discovery Center project continues to protect the community’s prized Whittier Narrows Natural Area, a historic wildlife sanctuary of tremendous ecological value.

We filed the suit in February, under the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, which the Planning and Conservation League calls the state’s “premier environmental law” and a “powerful tool for public participation.” The suit charges that the Discovery Center Authority failed to meet its legal obligations under CEQA and the Seismic Hazards Mapping Act when it certified an inadequate final environmental impact report and approved the project.

The authority’s own records show that meetings, VIP tours and special events aimed at water district executives and government officials make up the vast majority of new programming for the $22 million taxpayer-funded facility.

CEQA violations cited in the suit include the authority’s failure to fully disclose and evaluate the environmental harm the proposed water museum and meeting center and its sprawling compound of structures would cause. The suit also charges that the authority ignored the project’s public safety impacts from seismic hazards and failed to prepare a feasible, funded and legally enforceable plan to mitigate the project’s adverse environmental impacts.

The authority has relentlessly marketed and greenwashed the Discovery Center as an environmental project for more than a decade, yet it has done little or nothing in that same period of time to preserve or restore habitat at the natural area or to enhance existing educational programs there. And the authority’s own records show that meetings, VIP tours and special events aimed at water district executives and government officials make up the vast majority of new programming planned for the $22 million taxpayer-funded facility.

For more information on our organization, the Friends of the Whittier Narrows Natural Area, and our efforts to protect an important community resource, please see the following links:

• Our website: http://naturalareafriends.net/
• The text of our lawsuit is available at http://naturalareafriends.net/eir
• Our press release on the suit is available at http://naturalareafriends.net/media_room

Sierra Club refuses to endorse Discovery Center

In a serious blow to the controversial San Gabriel River Discovery Center, the local chapter of the Sierra Club in May refused to endorse the proposed water museum and meeting center that threatens important community and environmental resources in east Los Angeles County .

One Sierra Club member said the center appeared to be a monument to water districts and county agencies. Another said the project would “destroy the atmosphere of local community — something that is as rare and valuable as remnant habitat.”

The executive committee (board of directors) of the Angeles Chapter opted instead for neutrality toward the $22 million taxpayer-funded project proposed for the Whittier Narrows Natural Area.

The significance of the Sierra Club move cannot be overstated. The local chapter has been involved in the project since 1999. For the organization to turn around now and refuse to give its blessing — after presentations by Belinda Faustinos, director of the Discovery Center Authority, and Russ Guiney, director of Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation — is an important indication of the serious, unanswered questions that surround the project and the joint powers authority attempting to build it over the opposition of the community.

In discussions leading up to the chapter decision, local Sierra Club leaders questioned the wisdom of the project. One member said the center appeared to be a monument to water districts and county agencies. Another said the project would “destroy the atmosphere of local community — something that is as rare and valuable as remnant habitat.”

Project opponents within the Sierra Club and outside it (the latter including Bill Robinson, a director at one of the authority’s member water districts) made the case that too many grave doubts exist regarding the authority’s goals and priorities, the questionable environmental ethics and educational need for the Discovery Center , and the project’s financial viability.

For more information on our efforts to protect the natural area, please visit our website at http://www.naturalareafriends.net/.
--
Photo: John Muir (Library of Congress)

Protecting corridors there, threatening them here

The Whittier Daily News and other Los Angeles-area media are reporting that the U.S. Forest Service wants to bring lands that stretch from the Santa Monica Mountains to the San Gabriel Mountains "under federal protection and would study the possibilities of trail development, land acquisition and preservation of wildlife corridors that connect different sections of open space in the area."

At a recent event at Pasadena's Eaton Canyon Nature Center, U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff said: "These are incredible wild areas that are loosely connected corridors that allow for wildlife to pass through. If the areas become disconnected we lose those corridors."

The five-year study that was recently initiated to look into creation of the "Rim of the Valley Corridor" is not without its critics, but there still appears to be much to recommend the idea.

The agencies and water districts pushing the proposed San Gabriel River Discovery Center should take a page from these efforts. The Discovery Center, Lario Creek and other related projects, instead of enhancing the Whittier Narrows wildlife sanctuary and habitat connectivity, promise to destroy habitat and likely threaten habitat connectivity. (See the accompanying connectivity map, taken from the San Gabriel River Corridor Master Plan, and note where most corridors intersect .)

It's tragic that a few organizations charged with stewardship of our evermore scarce resources -- financial, ecological, recreational -- can be blind to reality and deaf to reason. But it's heartening to see that at least a few officials, such as Mr. Schiff, appear to be working for the good of the community and the environment.

LA Weekly: Lack of money, poor financial planning the 'gorilla in the room' for Discovery Center

Don't miss the LA Weekly's stunning, sobering story on the proposed San Gabriel River Discovery Center: "Pave to Save Whittier Narrows?"

"Funding — including some of the construction money — has not been secured. The Discovery Center Authority does not even have an updated estimate of future operating costs."

While reporter Tibby Rothman looks at the important environmental questions that plague the controversial project, her story focuses on the project's other ongoing green problem: lack of money.

As Rothman writes: "Ultimately, however, the gorilla in the room is not about environmental ethics but about money.

Belinda V. Faustinos, executive director of the San Gabriel River Discovery Center Authority, "concedes that, in fact, that funding — including some of the construction money — has not been secured. The Discovery Center Authority does not even have an updated estimate of future operating costs."

But as Rothman points out -- and as readers of this blog already know -- serious financial troubles have plagued projects too similar to the Discovery Center to ignore or brush off.

"What comes to me is that it's easy to build something [but] it's hard to sustain the operation," says Michael Feeney, executive director of the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County, speaking of Santa Barbara's troubled Watershed Resource Center.

Rothman tells the cautionary tale of Santa Barbara's "largely shuttered" Watershed Resource Center and includes quotes from someone familiar with that troubled project:

"'What comes to me is that it's easy to build something [but] it's hard to sustain the operation,' says Michael Feeney, executive director of the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County.

"Feeney points to the experience of Santa Barbara's Community Environmental Council, which constructed the Watershed Resource Center at a county beach, but no longer owns it.

"'Everyone was excited to build it and there was a lot of enthusiasm at first,' he says. But the officials at the various agencies grew reluctant to devote the funds needed to keep it going."

Southern California taxpayers and ratepayers watched this same sad story play out on at least two other occasions -- first with the Center for Water Education in Hemet, then with the Children's Museum at Hansen Dam -- losing tens of millions of dollars in the process.

Feeney gets the last word in the LA Weekly article, suggesting the fatal flaw of projects that try to graft indoor, entertainment-oriented facilities onto areas where the focus is naturally (no pun intended) on outdoor recreation and education.

"Everyone goes to the beach to go to the beach," he notes. "They don't go to go inside a building."

'Fault that could eat L.A.' runs beneath Whittier Narrows location of proposed Discovery Center

Would you situate a multimillion-dollar building intended to be used by tens of thousands of people -- including children -- each year in a liquefaction zone sitting atop "the fault that could eat L.A."?

That appears to be exactly what the San Gabriel River Discovery Center Authority intends to do with its controversial project.

A story at latimes.com last Saturday reported that the March 16 Pico Rivera earthquake occurred on the Puente Hills thrust fault, which stretches from the Puente Hills through downtown Los Angeles and "is capable of producing a devastating, magnitude 7.5 quake."

This is the same fault, described by a USGS seismologist as "the fault that could eat L.A., that experts believe produced the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake, which killed eight people.

The latimes.com Web site also provides a good map showing the location of both quakes just about in the center of the fault area -- which turns out to be the same spot where one finds the Whittier Narrows, the location for the proposed Discovery Center.

An additional risk factor is that the Discovery Center would be located in a liquefaction zone, a high risk area in which "liquefaction occurs when an earthquake jars loosely compacted, moist earth, causing the soil to lose its stability, often becoming gelatinous."

The authority's choice to approve the Discovery Center apparently before adequately identifying and disclosing seismic hazards is part of the Friends lawsuit against the authority and the project. (You can find a link to the lawsuit here.)

I find it incredibly troubling that the authority insists on proceeding with the Discovery Center when everything seems to argue against the project, such as:

• Earthquake and flood hazards of the proposed location
• Community opposition to the project
• Likely damage to habitat and wildlife
• Inability to secure private or foundation funding

Perhaps its too broad a statement to claim that the whole authority is 100 percent behind the project. At last Monday's RMC board meeting, when the board voted to approve RMC funds to defend against the lawsuit, one board member asked if any of the other authority member agencies were contributing money.

Nope. Just the RMC.

It looks to me like three out of four of the member agencies are either unwilling or unable to pay their fair share.

So much for their "full support" of the Discovery Center.

RMC's 'edifice complex' siphoning millions of public dollars from conservation mission in SG Valley

Remember the movie Contact? Remember when, after the destruction of the first spaceship, billionaire S. R. Hadden reveals to scientist Eleanor Arroway that a second spaceship had been secretly built?

"First rule in government spending," Hadden says. "Why build one when you can have two at twice the price?" But such spendthrift ways don't appear ambitious enough for the RMC.

"First rule in government spending," Hadden says. "Why build one when you can have two at twice the price?"

Well, it appears the Rivers and Mountains Conservancy saw Contact and decided even Hadden's spendthrift ways weren't ambitious enough: within only two or three miles of each other, the RMC wants built not one, not two, but three interpretive centers -- and all, one can assume, to be built with our tax dollars.

The Friends published a press release recently connecting the dots on the RMC's intentions. And although it might sound absurd, it's all true.

The RMC and its partners want the San Gabriel River Discovery Center at the Whittier Narrows Natural Area. They want the "Duck Farm on the San Gabriel River" less than three miles up the river from the natural area. And they want a Whittier Narrows "welcome center" on Rosemead Boulevard, again only a couple of miles from the site of the Discovery Center.

Friends board member Gloria Valladolid called the plan “indefensible and obscene” when placed in the context of the budget cuts that are eviscerating state, county and local services.

Spending $30 million on a "watershed education facility" (the Discovery Center) and who knows how much more on the Duck Farm and Whittier Narrows welcome center seems especially scandalous -- Can it get worse? you ask -- when you learn that the RMC simply gave itself $3 million for the Discovery Center without vetting the grant through its competitive grant process.

The RMC spends tens of thousands of dollars -- maybe into six figures -- developing its grant guidelines and then simply ignores those guidelines, doesn't even bother with a grant application, and writes itself a big, juicy check for what can only be considered a pet project.

It all reminds me of a line from another movie:

"It's good to be the king."

Agency ignores community, ok's unpopular project

Ignoring the growing chorus of opposition to the proposed Discovery Center, the Rivers and Mountains Conservancy and its partners voted to bulldoze wildlife habitat and an existing nature center and replace them with a project few people actually want.

But the project still needs county board of supervisors approval and -- the real challenge -- to scrape together $30 million for construction.

The project has about $10 million committed to it, and authority board member Sam Pedroza said at last week's meeting that fundraising difficulties could derail the project. Of course, he said the same thing to the Los Angeles Times a year and a half ago when the authority had raised only -- $10 million.

"Was the center planned to be built 'regardless' of what the actual citizens in the region want? Was the request for public comment simply (and cynically) an effort to make people believe they actually have a say-so about such things?"

If you're interested in a recap of the meeting at which this took place, please see the Pasadena Star-News story, "Officials OK new river center at Whittier Narrows site."

The story gives a good sense of the opposition that was expressed at the Jan. 21 meeting, but it doesn't place it into the context of the opposition that's been building for some time. (Have a look at the reader comments for an idea of the growing anger over the waste of the public's money.)

If you take last week's meeting and the public hearings on the project's draft environmental impact report last summer, this is who you see lining up against the project:

- Numerous residents of the local communities that are the ostensible beneficiaries of the project
- Local members of environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club and Aububon Society
- Latinos ranging from high school and college students to professionals and retirees
- Numerous educators, including a past vice-president of Rio Hondo College

But who supports the project? you ask. A very small, very narrow slice of society, to judge from the handful of voices speaking in favor of the project at the same hearings and meeting. And few, if any, of these drawn from the communities of the Whittier Narrows area.

But none of this seems to matter to the RMC and the water districts that apparently can't wait to take advantage of the marketing and meeting-space opportunities the outsized building promises.

It makes one wonder if the environmental review process was undertaken in good faith, or as one observer of this matter asked: "Was the center planned to be built 'regardless' of what the actual citizens in the region want? Was the request for public comment simply (and cynically) an effort to make people believe they actually have a say-so about such things?"

The project must be serving someone's interests. But whoever that someone is, it's clearly not the community.