 A still from a "No On Measure E for the Midway District" video clip. Note: This piece does not reflect an official position of the San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action board, though many of our board members share the sentiment expressed here by club president Cody Petterson.
By Cody Petterson Measure E is a classic "San Diego Special," i.e. a pure giveaway to land speculators, wealthy landowners, and developers, with none of the billions of dollars of upzoning windfall captured by the public. Bring it back with equity upfront, with a significant portion of the increase in land value captured by the public, and you'll earn my vote in spite of my modest concerns about the precedent set by the modification to the 30 ft. coastal height limit. Vote No on Measure E. Measure E proposes to remove the 30 ft. coastal height limit from San Diego's 1,324 acre Midway-Pacific Highway Community Plan Area. Height limits on the affected parcels would revert to those stipulated in the community and general plans. While in principle I don't object to the removal of the 30 ft. height limit in the Midway-Pacific Highway Zone, I oppose any upzoning that doesn't capture for the public a significant portion of the land value windfall thus provided to property owners. This is not a partisan issue. It's a public interest issue. I encourage San Diegans to vote No on Measure E because it violates a principle that I consider fundamental: the equity must come up front. The promise to circle back later to make an inequity right is a false promise. The public benefit must come as a condition of private benefit, not an afterthought. The many should guarantee their collective benefits prior to agreeing to provide extravagant benefits to the wealthy few. An Old Story The idea that the first step to solving our affordable housing crisis — which is, above all else, the inability of wage-earners to afford the price of the assets in which they must live — is to give asset owners, land speculators, and developers a titanic upzoning windfall and then try, on a project-by-project basis, to claw back at some later date a meager public benefit, is so preposterous that it wouldn't deserve rejoinder, except for the fact that it is the prevailing faux solution to our affordable housing crisis. This is not, of course, a modern exception. Giving large land owners and speculators enormous windfalls at the public expense has been the dominant feature of San Diego's development history since the city's inception (for an excellent detailing of that history and dynamic, read "Under the Perfect Sun"). Measure E blends seamlessly with two centuries of land speculation, rent-seeking, and "civic-minded" swindles. What Are People Saying Let's start by conceding what ought to be conceded. Interstate 5 was a simple, albeit imperfect way of delineating the city's coastal zone, and the Midway-Pacific Highway area would arguably not have been included had a more careful line been drawn. Preserving the 30 ft. height limit in the Midway district zone is not, per se, a hill I would care to die on. Many of the opponents of Measure E argue, however, that removing the limit in the Midway would set a precedent that could threaten its removal in other areas within the coastal zone, or the elimination of the height limit altogether. Despite the dismissal of these concerns by supporters of E, it's difficult to imagine that a vote to strike down the 30 ft. height limit in the Midway wouldn’t disinhibit to some degree future amendments to the limit. How significant would this disinhibiting effect be? It's impossible to say, but I believe the effect could easily shave a few percentage points off the opposition to subsequent amendments. Is that enough to disqualify it in my eyes? Well, it depends on how significant, or negligible, the countervailing public benefits might be. Proponents have made several interrelated claims about the measure's purported public benefits, including that it will 1.) ease our housing crisis, 2.) provide desperately needed additional residential capacity in our general plan, and 3.) reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Of these, I believe only the third has genuine merit. Not a Housing Crisis, But an Affordable Housing Crisis With regard to the first point, and this can't be emphasized enough, we don't have a housing crisis in San Diego, we have an AFFORDABLE HOUSING crisis, which Measure E does nothing to address. The city of San Diego has exceeded its Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) target for "above moderate" housing for decades running at 120 percent of Area Median Income (AMI) and above. Through 2019, construction starts for above moderate housing in San Diego had already exceeded (107 percent) the 2010-2020 RHNA allocation, with a year remaining in the cycle. "Very low and "low" income starts, however, were at 13 percent and 17 percent of RHNA targets respectively. Most alarming of all, however, was the failure to produce "moderate" income housing, which came in at jaw-dropping .2 percent of the RHNA target (just 34 of 15,462 units allotted). And the only reason why "very low" and "low" aren't similarly abysmal is because the taxpaying public covers nearly the entire cost of the affordability gap with subsidies like the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). Which is to say, the market can't produce housing that is affordable to any family making less than 120 percent AMI. To the extent that it is produced, WE, the taxpaying public, produce it. Certainly, without substantial changes to our city's meager 10 percent inclusionary housing policy, the Midway district redevelopment promises to be at best another vibrant, upper-middle class utopia. And Measure E includes no provisions whatsoever to tie resulting increases in land value to equity for the public. No Shortage of Residential Capacity in the Plan Now let's talk about the second claim, that Measure E and the Midway redevelopment will provide desperately needed additional residential capacity. Contrary to the claims of developers and their paid mouthpieces, San Diego has more than enough additional capacity in our community plans to sustain infill residential growth for the foreseeable future. In fact, the city's own Housing Element estimates that we have nearly 175,000 units of additional capacity in our plan, roughly 72,000 of it at planned densities of 30+ units per acre, much of it around transit or along arterials. Unfortunately, many of these parcels are in areas of the city in which it has been difficult for developers to make residential and vertical mixed-use projects pencil out without public subsidy, and upzoning these areas has thus largely failed to produce substantial additional residential density. To understand why this is, it's useful to reflect on what makes properties valuable. First off, it's a bit of a gloss to say that zoning "gives" value to properties. Properties are given value by the access they provide to desirable natural (beaches, lakes, rivers, forests, uranium deposits), private (restaurants, stores, office complexes, hospitals), and public (roads, parks, schools, libraries, train stations) amenities (or, put another way, by the effective demand for these amenities). America is covered with vast tracts of land made nearly worthless by their lack of amenities desirable to housing consumers. It doesn't matter if these parcels in the middle of nowhere are zoned for residential, commercial, or industrial uses, or if they have 30 ft. or 3,000 ft. height limits; there just aren't sufficient nearby amenities to attract buyers or renters at prices that would generate returns adequate to justify investment. In a location like Midway-Pacific Highway, however, there are more than enough natural, private, and public amenities nearby to provide ample returns on mid- and high-rise residential and commercial development. This particular circumstance — in which restrictive zoning in amenities-rich areas creates vast sums of pent-up land value — is precisely what motivates measures like E. The goal of upzoning efforts like Measure E is specifically to "crack" zoning regulations to get at the amenities-value pent up in the affected parcels. Now, to be clear — so long as the community, equity, and ecological co-benefits are substantial, I'm not opposed in principle to efforts to realize these pent-up amenities values. Measure E, however, doesn't even make a show of balancing private profit and public good. Environmental Co-Benefits In relation to the purported environmental benefits of Measure E, there's some reason to give it the benefit of the doubt. Some friends in the environmental movement have expressed support for the measure because it may facilitate transit-supportive infill development. Certainly, one can imagine that removal of the limit might foster the transition to a vibrant mixed-use neighborhood within walkable or bikeable proximity to the Old Town Station and, to a lesser extent, the Washington Street and Middle Town stops. Honestly, a walkable, transit-supportive vertical mixed-use neighborhood in the amenities-rich heart of the City is probably enough to outweigh my concerns about the disinhibiting effect such a vote would have on the 30 ft. limit more broadly, provided the public obtained a substantial portion of the land value released by its upzoning, which, again, in the case of Measure E, it does not. Nothing from the Delta And this is the core of my objection to Measure E, and to all similar attempts to deregulate real estate development: I fiercely oppose any measure or ordinance that would give massive upzoning windfalls to large property owners, land speculators, and developers, while obtaining nothing for the public in return. This is not a difficult concept. I could explain it to my four-year-old son without difficulty. An elected official who acts as though they can't understand this is either uncommonly stupid, extraordinarily lazy, or willfully betraying the public good. Go ahead and Google "land value capture." First hit: "Land value capture enables communities to recover and reinvest land value increases that result from public investment and other government actions. Also known as land value return, it's rooted in the notion that public action should generate public benefit." Measure E would dramatically increase the market values of the affected parcels. This is well-understood by the proponents of the measure. Because, however, their objective is not to obtain for the public a significant portion of the value thus created — because the interests they serve are those of the wealthy few rather than San Diego's working majority — their measure fails to capture any of that value for the public in the form of affordable housing, revenue, infrastructure, parks, etc. When I pointed this out in a community forum, Councilmember Campbell, who brought the proposed measure before council, countered feebly and disingenuously that the public would obtain benefit through the development process itself, presumably through things like impact fees and inclusionary policy (the latter of which she has, in the past, characterized as robust, but which is in fact extremely meager here in San Diego). While it's true that future projects would be governed by existing development policy, which obtains some public benefits, and that we might be able to claw some additional public value if a project requires discretionary approval for some other reason, this misses the entire point of my critique: the value that is lost to the public through Measure E is the change in land value that accrues to the owner at the time of the zoning change. What is lost is the potential for the public to benefit from the delta between the value under the current height limit and the value once the height limit is removed. The best way to grasp this distinction is to recognize that the public could easily gain both a significant portion of the change in land value and a portion of any resulting development profits. Market-rate development advocates will counter that developers need these windfalls to make their projects sufficiently profitable to warrant investment. But here's the problem with that argument: the developer undoubtedly "needs" the increase in zoned capacity (floor-area ratio, height, setbacks, etc.) to make projects pencil out, but unless they're lucky enough to own the property prior to the passage of this measure, or to have acquired the property in anticipation of compelling the public to cough up an upzoning windfall, they will have to pay the current owner a land price that reflects the new height limit. It is the landowner — the relatively unproductive rent farmer, the rentier much hated by classical economists — who will derive the lion's share of the billions of dollars of upzoning windfall. The property owner may "need" a portion of that windfall to motivate them to sell to a developer rather than continue merely performing routine maintenance and extracting exorbitant rents. Which is why the public should demand less than the entirety of the value it is liberating; say, in a spirit of extravagant generosity, 50 percent, which would leave the landowners with a hefty reward for their total lack of investment and labor in acquiring the zoning windfall. Who Benefits? It's not quite fair to say "total lack of investment and labor," since some landowners have played active roles in obtaining the windfall. Rent-seeking and regulatory capture do require some investment and labor, after all. Our government is not going to sell itself. I'm sure folks have already glanced at the Form 460s to get an idea of who is funding the measure and who might therefore be presumed to benefit most directly from it. Roughly 80 percent ($402,000) of the total for the Yes on Measure E campaign was donated by Brookfield Properties. This is a complete mystery, unless one expends the effort to type "Brookfield Properties San Diego" into a Google search field, and scroll down to this: "A City of San Diego selection committee has picked a proposal by Brookfield Properties and ASM Global to redevelop the Sports Arena property into a mix of entertainment, housing, parks, and office and retail." Hmm, didn't see that one coming. But surely the other campaign donors are disinterested, civic-minded folk. Let's see, $9,999 from Orchard I and Orchard II. Orchard, what's that? Orchard Active Senior Living — oh, that's interesting — located at Hancock and Spor…ahhh, there it is. Alright, let's check out another. Kiffman Properties, $10,000. Helmut Kiffman, San Diego investor, owner of Rosecrans Plaza, 3146-3156 Sports Arena Blvd. Purchased for $24 million in 2012. Looks like its zoning designation is Commercial Community-3-6, which gives a 60 ft. underlying height limit. What do you think the return on investment is on a $10,000 campaign contribution that raises the height limit from 30 to 60 ft. on a parcel at the intersection of Rosecrans, Sports Arena, and the Camino del Rio off-ramp? As they say, not bad work if you can get it. Even this extravagant windfall, however, dramatically underestimates the pent-up land value that the measure will unlock. One of the central canards of the Measure E proponents is that the measure will not alter the underlying zoning and that height limits will simply revert to those currently in the community plan. While this is technically true, it is a bald-faced lie at the level of intention. The reason this measure is coming before voters at all is because the 1972 height limit was established by voters, and therefore can only be removed by voters. But the corollary is rarely mentioned: the coastal height limit is the only element of the zoning that can't be altered by the Miday planning group and city council. So while it is true that this measure doesn't alter the underlying zoning, it would remove the only impediment to the city council altering the underlying zoning at their sole discretion. Yes, the removal of the coastal height limit on a parcel with a planned zoning designation of CC-1-3 (1 DU per 1,500 square feet, .75 floor area ration, 45 ft. height limit) would not dramatically increase density. But it would give the community planning group, city council, and the mayor a free hand to alter the zoning designations (including the height limit) and thus radically increase the planned density. To reiterate, I'm not personally opposed in principle to the transformation of the Midway district, but I consider the municipal government a representative of my interests and, more to the point, of the interests of all working San Diegans, and I'll be damned if I let wealthy commercial property owners steal billions of dollars of land value to which the public is entitled. Or, worse, if we the public are forced to backfill the revenue thus lost in order to fund the city's provision of basic services. Rent-Seeking and Regulatory Capture Now, anyone with any knowledge of municipal shenanigans can identify this as rent-seeking and regulatory capture, pure and simple. But it's useful to ask, who are the regulators these rent-seekers are attempting to capture? Well, councilmembers Campbell and Cate, of course, who brought the measure before council (thank you to councilmembers Gómez and Bry for their No votes). A councilmember who cared about their community would never have carried this measure without ensuring that the public — their constituents, the people who pay their salary and whom they purport to serve — obtained a significant portion of the value thus created. But, more importantly, the captured regulators are us, the voters. These developers and large owners put $5,000, $10,000, $400,000 into blowing sunshine up the public posterior, and we give them a land value windfall of 100 to 1,000 times their investment. And we the public demand nothing in return. We don't even recognize what we’ve given them, or what we've lost, or what we could have — should have — demanded in return, or what WE will have to pay to backfill the revenue hole that is left by demanding no equity, no public benefit, no land value capture. Or that we will have to go without the services that we could have obtained with that revenue. WE are the regulators that these developers and large landowners are attempting to capture. Vote NO on Measure E San Diegans have the opportunity to remedy this impending inequity, to rescue themselves from this humiliating failure of fiduciary responsibility to themselves, their families, and their communities. They can vote No on E. They can tell councilmembers Campbell and Cate, the real estate industry, the large landowners, the developers, the Building Industry Association, the Chamber of Commerce, and all their mercenaries: "Come back with a deal that gives the public the portion to which it is entitled." That's not a radical message. The public liberates value with its zoning decisions, it is in a position to demand a fair portion of that value, and the failure to obtain that portion forces it to backfill the city's budget with other revenue or to forego services. This is not a difficult or revolutionary concept. It's the commonest of sense. "Give us our cut or pound sand." Vote NO on Measure E.
0 Comments
 Just a reminder to join us this Saturday morning, Oct. 10, at 9 a.m. as our club co-hosts a "no knock" lit. drop for Stephen Whitburn for San Diego City Council, whose campaign for the District 3 seat being vacated by Chris Ward was one of the first races our club considered in this election cycle.
We'll meet at 9 a.m. at Bird Park Playground in Morley Field near North Park at 2705 Upas St. (San Diego, 92104). Can we count on you to join us? Stephen understands our concerns about wildfire, sprawl, transit, clean air, clean water, and pushing our city to reach its Climate Action Plan goals. Stephen also sees the opportunity with ReWild Mission Bay, the concern of residents over ongoing lead fuel pollution from light aircraft at our regional airports, and he understands Balboa Park needs to be restored and its historic structures and qualities left intact. We hope you'll join us for our club's lit. drop for Stephen on Saturday morning, Oct. 10. If you'd like to do so, please RSVP on our Facebook page.   This piece originally appeared in the Sept. 21, 2020, edition of the O.B. Rag.
By Colleen Cochran Over the past few decades, natural open spaces within 20 miles of the San Diego County coast have been largely devoured by development. The city of Santee's majestic northern Fanita Hills, a 2,600-acre region, has remained intact, although it has been under a land-use siege throughout this period. Santee's city council seats, which hold the authority to control the destiny of Fanita Hills, have been magnets for building industry contributions, and the windfall of political dollars has created sharp division between Santee residents and their elected officials on the question of whether to develop or conserve the region. While Santee City Council members might have enabled citizens to weigh in on potential building projects, most of them deviously plotted to squash citizens' participation. Their goal, in particular, has been to prevent citizens from attaining the power to oppose Fanita Ranch, a massive 3,000-unit housing development slated to be built in the Fanita Hills. The development will encompass an area a quarter of the size of existent Santee. Only Councilman Stephen Houlahan has not worked to quell citizens' voices. In fact, he sponsored an initiative that would grant them a say in Santee's development processes. On Sept. 23, 2020, the majority of Santee City Council members will likely vote to approve an amendment to the city's general plan that will enable Fanita Ranch to be built, despite the fact that many of their citizens oppose the project. Approval of Fanita Ranch will prove disastrous not only for Santee but for all of San Diego County. Construction of the behemoth development will annihilate endangered species, ravage the environment, create a deadly fire trap, ensnarl traffic within Santee and on its connected highways, and it will forever deplete the tenor and quality of life throughout San Diego County. In hopes of wooing citizens, HomeFed Corporation, the developer, has touted the project's flaccid benefits. Namely, the company has claimed it will, out of sheer benevolence, tack on improvements to Highway 52, it will set up the city for receipt of future tax revenue, and as it cheerily noted on its Facebook page, it will provide a "town green" that will be "the perfect spot to grab a cup of coffee or a bite to eat." The company that plans to add 8,000 residents, 15 percent of Santee's present population, to the virgin Fanita Hills, asserts environmental stewardship has been at the forefront of its considerations. To prove it, Jeff O'Connor, HomeFed Vice President of Community Development, has been handing out bottled waters to bikers and hikers on the Stowe Trail and reminding them that if Fanita Ranch is not built, the company has every right to close off the section of trail that crosses into HomeFed's property. Few Santee residents have been swayed by HomeFed's arguments. They have raised their voices at city council meetings, they submitted numerous opposition letters, and many of them posted "More Houses More Traffic" signs on their front lawns. In addition to Santee residents, environmentalists, fire experts, and citizens throughout the county have added their voices in opposition to the development project. Santee Residents Have Been Fighting Fanita Ranch Development Projects for Decades Residents of Santee have been fighting, and defeating, proposed Fanita Ranch construction projects for nearly three decades. In 1999, they stopped a 2,988-unit project through a referendum sponsored by the local environmental organization Preserve Wild Santee. Two-thirds of the electorate voted against that project. In 2007, after a 1,395-unit project had been proposed and the city council had certified the Final Environmental Impact Report (EIR), Preserve Wild Santee and others brought suit against the project applicant Barratt American and the city. The California Superior Court ruled against the project on fire safety issues. When the EIR was revised, the San Diego Superior Court again struck down the council's certification based on fire safety issues. The city and a new developer appealed. The California Court of Appeal confirmed the Superior Court ruling on fire safety, and it determined the project EIR was also deficient on biological resource and water supply issues. The real estate crash and recession of 2008 changed the political landscape as the courts considered the case against Barratt American. This homebuilder was highly leveraged to the point of bankruptcy and it soon became a willing seller. Environmentalists then initiated the process of acquiring Fanita Ranch so as to retain it as open space linking Mission Trails Regional Park to Sycamore Canyon. Funding was to come from public conservation sources and the U.S. Department of Defense. The Department of Defense would cover 50 percent of acquisition costs through its REPI "Buffer Program," a program available to protect the open space surrounding the western boundary of the 20,000-acre Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Miramar from encroachment. The city of Santee, however, effectively vetoed the environmentalists' bacquisition, which left Barratt American bankrupt and all of its lien holders, including Santee, which had outstanding liens against Barratt American totaling over $1 million, wiped out in a foreclosure auction. In 2011, through the auction process, noteholder Westbrook cleaned the title of the liens. Westbrook had offered the land to environmentalists for $20 million, but it offered the land to fellow developer HomeFed Corporation at a discounted rate. HomeFed acquired the 2,600-acre Fanita Hills region for about $12 million. HomeFed's Formula for Hooking the Santee City Council The citizens' history of opposition to decimation of their northern hills might have dissuaded HomeFed from the purchase, had the company not held confidence in its ability to cultivate a cozy relationship with the Santee City Council. To maintain that relationship and to ensure a steady team of allies, HomeFed, and other developers and Political Action Committees (PACs) related to the building industry, funded the campaigns of city council candidates. In short, they purchased amendments to the Santee General Plan. Santee code does not permit PACs to contribute directly to candidates. A research team of Santee citizens recently charted a money laundering web that shows how some political contributions went directly from developers to city council member committee accounts. More contributions went through a number of PAC accounts before benefiting council member campaigns. Only Councilman Stephen Houlahan has not accepted developer funding. The research teams' web chart shows, for instance, that in 2018, the Building Industry Association of San Diego gave $20,000 to the San Diego County Deputy Sheriffs' Association. That same year, the Deputy Sheriffs' Association directly spent $2,000 to elect incumbent Councilman Ronn Hall and spent over $2,000 on the elections of incumbent Councilman Rob McNelis and the winner of an open seat race, Laura Koval. In 2020, HomeFed's Jeff O'Connor made several contributions to Santee City Council candidate Dustin Trotter, a candidate whose opposition, Samm Hurst, has refused developer contributions. PAC organizations have funded other PACs. For instance, the Building Industry Association directly funded Public Safety Advocates. It funded, as well, the Deputy Sheriffs' Association, which, in turn, funded Public Safety Advocates. Public Safety Advocates is the organization that was outed for creating deceptive campaign slate mailers directed toward voters on each side of Santee’s partisan aisle. These campaign materials sufficiently veiled candidates' pro-developer positions so that many Santee voters were tricked into believing the candidates supported their interests. Some contributions to PACs cannot, without investigation by an enforcement authority, be proven to have directly flowed from developers, but the contributions certainly smell fishy. For instance, the Deputy Sheriffs' Association has, without disclosure of funding sources, unitemized receipts amounting to over $700,000 since June of 2016. Interestingly, HomeFed has had nothing to say about the fact that council members who were likely to vote to amend the general plan to allow for Fanita Ranch were the very same ones who had been accepting developer campaign dollars. The company did, however, find it egregious that Councilman Houlahan might vote "no" on the amendment. The company asserted that because he rejected developer contributions and was outspoken in his support for the idea that citizens should be entitled to vote on whether Fanita Ranch is built, he must have planned to vote "no" on the construction project ahead of having reviewed the project documents. Based on this speculation, HomeFed looked into how it could legally exclude Houlahan from voting. Throttling the Citizens' Vote on Fanita Ranch Citizens’ best plan for protecting their city from Fanita Ranch sprawl was initiated months after HomeFed submitted its application to build the gargantuan development. Van Collinsworth, Director of Preserve Wild Santee, and Councilman Houlahan sponsored a Santee General Plan Protection Initiative that would require a citizen vote if the Santee City Council amended the general plan to allow for larger development projects outside that plan’s stated zoning parameters. The citizens quickly gathered enough signatures to get the protection initiative on the 2018 ballot. The city council could have then outright adopted the initiative or it could have put the measure on the 2018 ballot, which would have likely resulted in a citizen majority voting "yes" on the initiative. Instead, the city council, under the guise of needing to study the initiative issue more, avoided the constituents’ request, and in the meantime, it processed HomeFed's application to build Fanita Ranch. Said Van Collinsworth who attended the city council meeting in which the study was determined to be the best plan of action, "These people try to portray themselves as being fiscally conservative, but during that hearing there wasn’t even a word mentioned about the cost of the study. There was no question they were going to move that thing off the ballot by having a study, no matter what it cost." The council hired London Moeder Advisors for $40,000, a firm which unsurprisingly determined that Fanita Ranch was necessary to the economic health of Santee. The real estate advisors made this decision, despite the fact that the city of Santee, under current zoning guidelines, already has an annual recurring surplus of $3.76 million. It also concluded that Santee will likely have a shortage of 1,820 residential units by 2050, and of course, building Fanita Ranch would be best way to prevent that future occurrence. HomeFed, commenting after London Moeder’s economic impact report was released, stated, "If the initiative is passed, it will be much more difficult to amend the city's general plan to address shifts in the economy or meet the community’s pressing needs." In other words, only the developers' bedfellows on the city council, and not the citizens themselves, could be trusted to make decisions for Santee. The study proved to be the perfect stall tactic causing the general plan protection initiative, Measure N, to be moved to the November 2020 ballot. HomeFed consultants then worked feverishly with city staff in an attempt to bullet proof a Revised Environmental Impact Report for the Fanita Ranch project so that Santee City Council members could approve the general plan amendment prior to the citizens' November vote. Fanita Ranch Spells Fire, Traffic, and Wildlife Extinction HomeFed has painted Fanita Ranch as the project that will save Santee. Only, Santee has never needed saving, and Fanita Ranch will likely be its downfall. One of the biggest dangers of the project relates to fire safety. The development will be built in hills that CAL FIRE designated a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone, in the precise area that was incinerated by the 2003 Cedar Fire. The complex will provide only two routes by which residents can arrive at or depart from their homes, via Fanita Parkway or Cuyamaca Street. Both of these thoroughfares lead to Mast Boulevard, a street that will become gridlocked should residents throughout Santee need to flee an inferno. HomeFed had planned to create a Magnolia Avenue extension that would curve to meet Cuyamaca Street and thus would provide residents with an additional route for evacuation during fire, albeit residents would still end up logjammed on Mast Boulevard. HomeFed states it nixed the Magnolia Street extension, ostensibly because the company decided that funds set aside for it would be put to better use if added to the Highway 52 improvement fund. The more pressing reason the extension was scrapped was because the company discovered the extension presented a potential conflict of interest for Councilman Rob McNelis which would preclude him from voting for Fanita Ranch. The precise nature of the conflict has not been revealed. Fanita Ranch will also introduce more traffic. HomeFed has been cosplaying as Santee’s super hero by offering to add lanes to the on-ramp of SR-52 and to streets within Santee. HomeFed, in reality, is like a villain who swoops in to save the day. Because the company will be adding 8,000 new residents to Santee, who en masse will generate over 25,000 vehicle trips per day, the road enhancements simply provide an ineffective fix for a problem HomeFed will create. Fanita Ranch will destroy the home of 21 species of mammals, 21 types of reptiles and amphibians, and over 100 bird species. The expanse of terrain ranges from heights of 400 to 1,200 feet and, thus, contains a variety of specialized habitats, including chaparral and vernal ponds, that many animals depend upon in order to survive. The Fanita Hills are one of the last remaining havens for Quino checkerspot butterflies, San Diego fairy shrimp, and the least Bell’s vireo songbird. These three creatures are listed as endangered under the Federal Endangered Species Act. Fanita Ranch Vote Takes Place Wednesday, Sept. 23 On Sept. 23, 2020, the Santee City Council is set to win its battle against its own citizens. Most of its members will likely vote to approve Fanita Ranch, ahead of the citizens' November vote on the general plan protection initiative. Unless, the citizens can pull off a hat trick of upset victories, the plan is for a parade of bull dozers to start rolling into the city. For the next 15 years, which is the amount of time it will take to complete the monstrous building project, residents will endure construction noise, dusty air, and watch their lovely hills get graded and turned into a master-planned atrocity. To sign up to observe the meeting or to submit a live public comment, go to the City of Santee website and click on the Agendas/Minutes tab. Colleen Cochran, JD, is a legal editor, nature enthusiast, San Diego County resident, and warrior against climate change.  Healthy, mature forest in the high country of the Los Padres National Forest.  By Mia Taylor As California finds itself amid another devastating and tragic wildfire season, there's perhaps no more timely or critical environmental topic than the logging of our National Forests, which the Trump administration has been actively encouraging and fast-tracking past long-standing environmental review, and all under the discredited guise of wildfire suppression. Earlier this month our club hosted an Environmental Report featuring presentations from the staff of the Central Coast-based Los Padres Forest Watch (LPFW), an organization quite literally on the front lines of this issue in California. The evening's program featured a particularly powerful and enlightening presentation from LPFW conservation director Bryant Baker, who revealed that logging practices occurring on National Forest lands are often far more environmentally destructive than helpful, with the work being done primarily for the benefit of the commercial timber business, not the public or the environment. What's more, in the wake of such logging, forests are often left more vulnerable to wildfire than they were before. This scenario just played itself out, again, with the catastrophic wildfires to the north in Oregon. And in what should come as no surprise, such corrupt, misguided and environmentally devastating practices are occurring more frequently under the Trump administration and their appointees. While large-scale logging of old-growth and mature forest was largely discontinued in National Forests in the Pacific Northwest following the science-guided and Clinton administration-brokered Northwest Forest Plan in 1994, the four Southern California National Forests (Angeles, Cleveland, Los Padres, San Bernardino) were generally left out of the those considerations due to their lack of overwhelming stands of marketable timber. Unfortunately, under Trump, large diameter trees are once again being cut en masse by the Forest Service throughout the west, and with the least amount of environmental oversight and review since the "bad old days" of the federal timber-cutting frenzy of the late 1980s. "We're seeing this a lot. It's only getting more intense under the Trump administration, and it's getting more brazen," Bryant Baker explained. The Forest Service's current "forest thinning" proposal in the Pine Mountain area in the Los Padres National Forest is just one example of the devastation and corruption wrought by increased logging efforts, fueled by the breathless urgency to pointlessly destroy habitat and cut the most mature, fire-resistant trees "before the next wildfire occurs." At Pine Mountain, the Forest Service is proposing logging and chaparral removal on some 755 acres of land made up of a mixture of old-growth conifer stands of Jeffrey and Coulter pine and ancient White fir. Located near Mount Pinos and the recreation sites and trails of the popular Frazier Park area, Pine Mountain includes a diverse array of Southern California ecosystems in which both healthy and dead trees, called snags, would be cut as part of this proposed project using heavy equipment ranging from masticators to chainsaws. The agency has made it clear a commercial logging or timber sale is likely. "The Forest Service has acknowledged they're looking at a commercial timber sale to do this," said Baker. "This is what we're increasingly concerned with on these types of projects. They're really aimed at trying to remove certain size trees that are marketable and can be a source of revenue either for a private company that comes in and does the work, or as a direct timber sale where the Forest Service would sell the timber and keep the money for revenue." The Forest Service has established a handful of limits for the project with regard to tree cutting at Pine Mountain, based upon tree diameter. The first is it will remove trees less than "24 inches" in diameter. In other words, the Forest Service will allow, without any questions asked, the removal of any trees that are less than two feet in diameter. In selecting that measurement, the Forest Service is relegating to an old public relations trick of making trees seem smaller than they actually are, and that these removals are inconsequential. But that couldn't be further from reality. Even to a casual observer the 23½ inch tree seen here is hardly small or inconsequential. "This is what the agency is calling a small tree," explained Baker. "We disagree. We do not believe this is something that can be categorized as a small tree, but the agency is essentially telling the public they're only going to be removing small trees." What's more, a 24-inch tree, as Baker explained, just happens to be a size that commercial timber mills welcome because they tend to be very straight, non-damaged trees. For a timber warrior like club co-founder Tommy Hough, who worked on logging issues with the National Forest Protection Alliance in Seattle in 2001 and as a staff member with Oregon Wild from 2012 to 2014, the similarities to arguments the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Managment (BLM), and Big Timber use to justify logging in the Pacific Northwest are all too familiar. "The Forest Service still operates on the antiquated 1930s concept of 'multiple use,' and sawmills are still largely equipped to work with large diameter trees," said Tommy. "The timber industry never really bit at the idea of selectively removing smaller-diameter trees out of plantation forests because their mills simply aren't equipped to work with them other than grinding them into mulch."  The second parameter for the Pine Mountain project is that the Forest Service will remove trees up to 64 inches in diameter. Again, the brutal reality of what this means needs to be put in perspective visually for it to be truly understood. The photo here is merely of a 53-inch tree, not even the full 64 inches being proposed. "The Forest Service is saying it can remove trees up to 64 inches for very vague reasons," said Bryant. "For safety reasons or if the tree is impacted by any dwarf mistletoe. But safety is undefined. They don't really talk about what that means. We've seen this before in other National Forests and other projects and these types of stipulations get abused because they're so vague." According to Tommy, "Big Timber wants to sell 2 x 4s to China, and both Republican and Democratic administrations typically want to enable that. So they look for reasons to go cut big trees, wherever they may be accessible, even though the older the tree the more fire-resistant it is because of its thicker bark. Go walk in any mature forest and you'll see plenty of burn scars on older trees." Lastly, the Forest Service will allow trees impacted by dwarf mistletoe to be removed. The devastation of this stipulation truly needs to be put into perspective. Dwarf mistletoe, as Bryant explained, is an important native plant species that occurs in these forests naturally. It’s an important component of mixed conifer forests, Ponderosa and Pine forests. It serves a vital ecological function and increases avian diversity. Furthermore, most trees in the Pine Mountain area have some amount of dwarf mistletoe. Translation: When you also include the stipulation that trees with dwarf mistletoe growth can be removed, the Forest Service is allowing the cutting of all trees that are present in the project area – with no real or substantial limits at all. Perhaps the most egregious aspect of these so-called fire suppression projects is the way the U.S. Forest Service has been directed to circumvent the typical review process. Using the cover of what's known as a Categorical Exclusion, the Forest Service can proceed on a project without even providing an Environmental Impact Statement or an Environmental Review. Past examples of Categorical Exclusion logging projects are disturbing at best. The before and after images below are of a similar project in Plumas National Forest in Northern California, which was conducted using the same justifications and language as the Pine Mountain project, demonstrate the vast devastation.   The first image is an area the Forest Service claimed was too dense. The agency suggested that if a fire came through it would destroy the forest and put communities at risk. The removal of biomass, the agency said, was essential and would be ecologically beneficial. The second photo, which shows the heartbreaking aftermath of such efforts. It speaks volumes about the environmental destruction that took place. "This is not a low impact activity," said Bryant. "This is extremely soil disturbing. This was all done for commercial timber sale. They said this was for forest health and to protect communities. This was a backcountry project that was nowhere near communities and we're seeing this all over California." Finally, it must be understood that these projects do not necessarily aid in wildfire suppression. In fact, they have the exact opposite result. According to Bryant, "You'll find a lot of non-native grasses in these really disturbed areas, which only make fire more likely and make fire spread more quickly. What we're finding is that often in these really heavily managed areas where they're doing a lot of this logging under the guise of fire mitigation it may actually be making fires worse." According to Tommy, "Caifornia does a great deal to protect communities from earthquakes, but we need to approach wildfire and climate change with the same level of science-based seriousness." Given the pressing need for action on this issue, we've provided some immediate resources and further action opportunities.
Because of the importance of the issue and the devastation that's occurring, we will also announce the date of a workshop where you can learn more about how to get involved and make a difference on this critical environmental challenge.  Areas that appear to be "destroyed" by wildfire still serve as habitat for thousands of species. Photos and graphics courtesy of Bryant Baker and Los Padres Forest Watch
Banner photo by Tommy Hough  By Mia Taylor and Tommy Hough Click here for the Zoom link for Wednesday's meeting. As we head into the final weeks of the 2020 campaign, we realize it may be difficult to think about anything other than the November election and the threat of Trump, the GOP, and foreign powers manipulating the outcome of the most critical presidential race in our nation's history. It's a nervous, stressful time. Keep calm by volunteering and making phone calls for your candidates and campaigns of choice as we notice several items, including bylaw changes and endorsements for our September Club Meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 16, beginning at 6:30 p.m. via Zoom (we'll post the Zoom link shortly). Also, be sure to check out the video from our Environmental Report on Sept. 10th with Los Padres Forest Watch on logging at Pine Mountain. One of the most pressing items our club will address on Wednesday involves two proposed changes to our bylaws, both of which are key components to members' eligibility to vote on club matters. We'll vote on both of the proposed language changes outlined below at our meeting on the 16th, including: Article IV – Section (v) – Voting "A member in good standing who has attended at least one prior meeting two prior general membership meetings over the previous twelve (12) months or and has paid dues at least 34 days prior to the meeting or at the previous general membership meeting, shall be eligible to vote for club officer elections and club endorsements." Appendix A: – Section (i) "To be eligible to vote for an endorsement of a candidate or a ballot measure a member must be a member in good standing, must have paid their dues at least 34 days prior to the endorsement meeting, or have at least attended one previous scheduled club meeting and have attended at least two prior general membership meetings over the previous twelve (12) months." Also at our Sept. 16 club meeting, four candidates for office will be considered for our club's endorsement. In alphabetical order:
In addition, we're pleased to welcome San Diego Coastkeeper executive director Matt O'Malley as our special guest for the evening, as we discuss our region's relationship with water, including the potential for new concrete channel infrastructure near our coast to collect stormwater runoff before it reaches the beach in a toxified state. We'll discuss with Matt the San Diego County Water Authority's megalomaniacal, fossil fuel-heavy proposal to build a pipeline across the Cleveland National Forest (!) and beneath the Cuyamaca Mountains (!!) in a project that would take over 120 years to pay for because the water authority can't come to a deal with the Metropolitan Water District. According to Voice of San Diego, "It could be the most expensive public works project in San Diego history." Click here for the Zoom link. We'll begin checking in and credentialing club members at 6 p.m. The meeting will come to order at 6:30 p.m.  Any suggestion to lay a pipeline over, under, or across the Cuyamaca Mountains is a non-starter.  Landscapes like Priest Valley in Monterey County may become the site of new oil and gas wells. By Tommy Hough Register now for Thursday's Environmental Report with our guests from Los Padres Forest Watch via this Zoom link. When Donald Trump won the presidency on an electoral college misfire after losing the popular vote in 2016, his administration rolled into office with a breathtaking lack of self-consciousness, and immediately set about behaving as though it had won a mandate in a landslide win by dismantling not only the Obama legacy, but the nation's environmental legacy too. Despite California having a reputation for being a "bastion" against the Trump administration's destructive agenda, Trump has a clear pathway into California via our federal public lands, which are imperiled today like no other time in our state's history. Environmental Report Fracking and Logging on Federal Public Lands on the Central Coast Thursday, Sept. 10, 6:30 p.m. Click here for the Zoom meeting link Oil exploration notoriously expanded in the state under Gov. Jerry Brown, even as he led the fight against climate change, but fracking has increased under the watch of Gov. Gavin Newsom since his administration signed new regulations on the practice into law, and despite calls from environmental advocates in San Diego and around the state to ban fracking and phase out fossil fuels altogether. One would think this wouldn't be the heavy lift it is for our Democratic supermajority in Sacramento. While Newsom enforced a brief pause in issuing new fracking permits late last year, permitting resumed this summer, and the governor's willingness to increase the number of fracking leases may have emboldened the Trump administration to move forward with a terrible plan to open federal public lands in the Central Valley and Central Coast to more oil and gas drilling, including fracking, with 37 new wells announced by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in 2019. This was followed by administration's unprecedented move this spring to open Carrizo Plain National Monument to oil and gas exploration – thereby undoing the very purpose of establishing the monument in 2001. I previously wrote about this desecration of Carrizo Plain in June. Similarly, the Trump administration has called on western states to log more acres of National Forests under the discredited guise of fire suppression, including the current proposal to log the mature forest along Pine Mountain ridge near Mount Pinos in the San Emigdio Mountains west of the Grapevine in the Los Padres National Forest. Federal officials have similarly threatened logging at Giant Sequoia National Monument across the San Joauquin Valley in the Sierra Nevada, in a move amazingly supported by the monument's own hometown Tulare County Board of Supervisors. While we may have beaten the Trump administration on the Cadiz water project and the attempt to subvert Mojave Trails National Monument, there are dozens of other fronts in the state where Trump's anti-environmental agenda is quickly advancing, and will only become worse should the president be re-elected in November. We'll discuss the Trump administration's specific anti-environmental intrusions into California's federal public lands at Carrizo Plain and Pine Mountain in the form of fracking, oil exploration, and logging at our next Environmental Report on Wednesday, Sept. 10, at 6:30 p.m., featuring our special guests from Los Padres ForestWatch, including executive director Jeff Kuyper and conservation director Bryant Baker. Access the Zoom link for the meeting here, and at our Facebook event page.  The Elkhorn Scarp marks the trace of the San Andreas Fault through Carrizo Plain.  San Diego has some of the busiest skies and greatest volume of air traffic in the U.S. By Gary Keller
According to data from the EPA's National Emissions Inventory (NEI), general aviation (GA) piston-driven aircraft are responsible for 63 percent of all new lead emissions in the U.S. each year, amounting to an annual amount of 450 tons of discharged lead. From that same database, it's reported that California has by far the most discharged lead of any state with 50 tons per year. Of 3,143 counties and county equivalents in the U.S., San Diego County is the third most lead-polluted county in the nation, just behind L.A. County at number two, with lead emissions from general aviation aircraft at 2.25 tons. Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport and Gillespie Field account for over half of San Diego County's lead emissions. Until last year, there wasn't a single public health department in the nation that recognized piston-driven general aviation aircraft as a source of lead emissions, but that recently changed when the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which has long maintained there is no "safe" level of lead in the body, added general aviation aircraft as a source of lead in the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention section of their website. Also in 2019 the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) updated its standard care guidelines on childhood lead poisoning to include not only general aviation aircraft as sources of lead, but to advise parents and schools that children "not play near or spend time near these facilities." Nevertheless, despite the slow, bureaucratic reaction of public health outlets, safer and more effective unleaded aviation fuel that can be used by two-thirds of general aviation airplanes has been on the market for several years, but many municipal airports won't supply it, and many pilots refuse to use it. Particularly galling to California's lead poisoning prevention component of the CDPH is a Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention fee that businesses and polluters responsible for lead emissions pay into. Aircraft operators are expect from it. Established in 1993, the fund is intended to support "health care referrals, environmental assessments, and educational activities necessary to reduce a child's exposure to lead and the consequences of the exposure." While lead smelting plants are responsible for one ton of lead emissions per year in California, general aviation accounts for 50 times that number. All of these aircraft are exempt from paying into the fund because they are federally regulated. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has said there is nothing that they can do about it. Other states that have initiated a similar fee structure have found themselves stymied from the collection of funds from general aviation aircraf. In essence, the federal government gives local governments money via the EPA to eradicate old paint from pre-1978 housing, even as they give a "pass" to the 450 tons of NEW emissions from GA aircraft. This creates an exercise in futility. At last count, San Diego County is home to 50 flight schools. All of these schools utilize aircraft that are powered by leaded AvGas, and they are also almost entirely attended by students who come to San Diego to take advantage of the region's abundant flight school opportunities in our flight-friendly climate. While these students may only live in San Diego for the short time they're attending flight school, they are forever polluting our region with lead emissions sanctioned by the federal government. Thus far, only the CDC and the California Department of Public Health are willing to warn residents and the public about it. And then there's the environmental noise pollution that goes with it. Gary Keller is a retired Chula Vista firefighter and long-time citizen activist on the negative impacts of general aviation in communities, and specifically the effects of lead pollution from aircraft. Photo by Akihito Kato © 2010  The opportunity for public control of our region's energy future is now. By Mia Taylor As a member of the San Diego Public Power Coalition, San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action will participate in a press conference at 12 noon today to kick off the coalition's campaign for a public alternative to an investor-owned utility franchise in the city of San Diego. For those who may not be familiar with the story, San Diego's utility franchise agreement with San Diego Gas and Electric (SDGE) expires this January. The next agreement the city signs with a provider will have broad and lasting ramifications, including exclusive rights to use San Diego's public roads, streets, and right-of-ways for transmission and distribution, as well as to install wires, poles, power lines, and underground gas and electric lines. This is the first time in 50 years the city is renegotiating this important agreement, which means residents have a historic opportunity at this moment to set the terms of our energy future. And we need to do so before city leaders simply give it away in a manner far short of the true value of the franchise. Public Power San Diego, an organization committed to promoting San Diego's transition to a publicly-owned, climate-aggressive, fully unionized, equitable electric and gas utility will host a press conference today (Friday, Aug. 21) at 12 noon in front of 101 Ash Street in Downtown, the notoriously uninhabitable building purchased by the city from Sempra Energy, the parent company of San Diego Gas and Electric. Club president Cody Petterson will be among the speakers, and other board members will be in attendance. We encourage our members to join club leadership for a fully-masked, responsible, socially-distanced press conference to advance an environmentally and fiscally sound energy future for San Diego Join us today (Friday) at 12 noon Downtown at 101 Ash Street. Photo by Tommy Hough    By Cody Petterson
The California legislature has sat on AB-345 (fracking setbacks) long enough. Are we seriously still arguing about whether to physically separate oil and gas production from child-raising activities? Is that what we’re doing? Does anyone think if it were white kids living, playing, going to school next to oil wells, refineries, etc., we wouldn't have sorted it out on day one? If it were affluent white families like mine who were suffering from elevated rates of birth defects, preterm births, fetal deaths, asthma, cancer, cardiovascular disease – all associated with residential proximity to oil and gas development – do you believe we wouldn't have imposed draconian setbacks long ago? Come on now. Pass AB 345 already. Establish "a minimum setback distance between oil and gas activities and sensitive receptors such as schools, childcare facilities, playgrounds, residences, hospitals, and health clinics based on health, scientific, and other data." How is this even a debate? Thank you to San Diego's Democratic assemblymembers for voting AB 345 off the floor of the Assembly. Thank you Assemblymembers Tasha Boerner Horvath (AD-76), Brian Maienschein (AD-77), Todd Gloria (AD-78), Shirley Weber (AD-79), Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher (AD-80). Finally, I ask Senator Ben Hueso (SD-40) to vote the bill out of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water today and bring a measure of environmental justice to California's disproportionately burdened communities of color. If you live in California's 40th Senate District, I encourage you to call Senator Hueso's Sacramento office at (916) 651-4040 and ask him to do the same.  By Cody Petterson We're still stunned, angry, and, frankly, disgusted that the franchise process is moving so quickly with no effort at, or opportunity for, public engagement. A mere seven days elapsed from when the JVJ Pacific Consultings report and proposal was released to the public to when it was voted on by the Environment Committee, and another brisk three weeks from the Environment Committee to the full council. And this is all occurring in the midst of a global pandemic which already inhibits significant public participation. A mere four weeks to debate how to give away our city's most valuable asset, an asset that provides San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) with a million dollars of profit per day, straight from the budgets of working families to the cash-choked pockets of SDG&E shareholders. It's insane. Who is representing San Diegans? And if our representatives aren't representing San Diego's 1.4 million residents and ratepayers, who are they representing? Who's sitting at the table in the community's seat? We now have a week to let the mayor, council, and those who have taken the community's seat at the table know we won't accept another "San Diego Special," i.e. four weeks of backroom deals and you're good to go. Please call your councilmember today and ask them to send the franchise resolution back to Environment Committee for the public process it deserves. Ask them to take the proposed agreement back to the communities they represent. Ask them to give meaningful consideration to the formation of a city-owned public utility, which promises democratic oversight, greater control over our transition to 100 percent renewable energy, and significant savings for ratepayers. And beyond asking, call your councilmember today and TELL them two specific things:
District 1: Barbara Bry (619) 236-6611 barbarabry@sandiego.gov District 2: Jennifer Campbell (619) 236-6622 jennifercampbell@sandiego.gov District 3: Chris Ward (619) 236-6633 christopherward@sandiego.gov District 4: Monica Montgomery (619) 236-6644 monicamontgomery@sandiego.gov District 5: Mark Kersey (619) 236-6655 markkersey@sandiego.gov District 6: Chris Cate (619) 236-6616 chriscate@sandiego.gov District 7: Scott Sherman (619) 236-6677 scottsherman@sandiego.gov District 8: Vivian Moreno (619) 236-6688 vivianmoreno@sandiego.gov District 9: Georgette Gómez (619) 236-6699 georgettegomez@sandiego.gov Click here to examine the city's current 50-year franchise agreement with San Diego Gas and Electric, dated Dec. 17, 1970.  Sempra Energy power lines cut across a neighborhood in Mira Mesa.  |
Green Thoughts
The blog component of San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action welcomes content from SDCDEA members, guests and leadership. Archives
January 2021
Categories |
RSS Feed
