L.A. County seeks to increase the number of significant ecological areas in unincorporated areas of the county to four times the current acreage. SEAs, as they are known, identify ecologically important land and water systems that support valuable habitat for plants and animals. They aren’t set aside as preserves or reserves, but they protect land by requiring special use permits and a special review of any proposed development.
Call for volunteers!
Want to help assess the General Plan 2035? Contact Conservation Coordinator Jennifer Robinson at jennifer.robinson@
sierraclub.org.
The county’s current plan pinpoints 61 different SEAs that total 125,787 acres. But the newly proposed General Plan 2035 increases that number to 645,517 acres, which would include most of the privately owned, undeveloped land in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Sierra Club is forming a task force to evaluate the 2035 plan that includes designation of SEAs as well as the outlook for transportation, greenways and parklands.
The new plan consist of two parts: the North Area Plan, which will govern land use and zoning north of the Coastal Zone boundary (generally north of Mulholland), while the Santa Monica Mountains Local Coastal Plan will govern land use and zoning issues within five miles of the ocean (generally
the area south of Mulholland).
The North Area Plan was originally approved by the Board of Supervisors 12 years ago, but the board has not yet enacted most of the ordinances and community standards that districts need to enforce it.
The Santa Monica Mountains Local Coastal Plan, based on the requirements of the Coastal Act, has been approved in concept by supervisors. But it still needs additional work and cannot take effect until it has been certified by the Coastal Commission.
The history of SEASs
In 1976, the late Jill Swift, then chair of the Santa Monica Mountains Task Force of the Sierra Club, received a form letter from the Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning
that said the county was compiling a database of “significant ecological areas” for use in a new “countywide general plan.”
“However”, the letter went on, “in order to provide maximum professional input, and due to severe budgetary restrictions, we are asking for your help.” We had no idea what this all meant, but Jill passed the letter on to me, and I decided we should grab it and run with it. It turned out the “help” the county was seeking would consist of identifying “selected groups
and individuals that are recognized as experts” (including the Sierra Club) to nominate areas they thought were worthy ecological areas” in the new County General Plan.
We went ahead and nominated seven areas for designation – Malibu Canyon, Malibu Lagoon, Cold Creek, the wooded hillsides along the 101 Freeway, watersheds draining into Malibu Creek State Park, Zuma Canyon, and Upper La Sierra Canyon above Seminole Hot Springs.
A total of 115 potential SEAs countywide were nominated, and 62 were subsequently designated as such in the County’s 1980 General Plan.
Why were notoriously pro-development L.A. County supervisors trying to persuade scientists and environmentalists to nominate areas they felt should be designated as significant ecological areas? Here‘s why.
Open Space Lands Act of 1970
A product of the original Earth Day, the Open Space Lands Act of 1970 requires every city and county in California to adopt an Open Space Element in its General Plan and to, “take positive action to carry out such plans … “. The Open Space Lands Act goes on to say, “no building permit may be issued, no subdivision map approved, and no open space ordinance adopted unless the proposed construction, subdivision, or ordinance is consistent with the local open space plan.”
However, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors maintained its customary practice of zoning large areas for “open space” and then later approving high-density urban developments in those same areas. Before long, the media were trumpeting plans for large-scale urban developments in Lower Malibu Canyon, Upper Topanga, Brentwood, and in the heart of the Las Virgenes Valley in the area then known as “Century Ranch”.
In 1975, the Center for Law in the Public Interest joined by the Sierra Club and then task force co-chair, Margot Feuer filed suit against the county for violating the Open Space Lands Act, and in 1975 won an injunction that effectively overturned the County’s 1973 General Plan and blocked approval of any further urban developments in rural-zoned areas of the Santa Monica Mountains.
In response, the county hired the consulting firm of England and Nelson and began to draw up a new General Plan that would satisfy the court and at least pay lip service to the Open Space Lands Act and the protection of SEAs.
In addition to the 62 proposed SEAs, England and Nelson, recommended that, “riparian woodland habitat … should be regarded as important wildlife habitat and preserved,” describing it as the best wildlife habitat remaining in the state.
Development proposals within any of these SEAs would now be required to obtain a Conditional Use Permit and the development would have to be reviewed by the Technical Advisory Committee, a committee of independent experts appointed by the County Planning Director.
But, the “bad old days” were not yet over. In the 1980 election, pro-development candidates for supervisor swept four of the five seats on the board and set out to undo the environmental gains of the 1970s.
SEAs under attack
During the 1980s, developers urged the Board of Supervisors to allow them to build more than 6,000 homes in the Palo Comado Significant Ecological Area alone. One developer sought county approval to build 1,700 condominiums, a shopping center, and an industrial park, along with a highway that would be carved through well over a mile of oak savannas on National Park Service land. The Baldwin development, known today as “The Oaks”, proposed to remove over 1,800 native oaks to make room for 1,500 to 2,000 mansions and a four-lane boulevard, also entirely within the Palo Comado SEA.
One Planning Commissioner seriously proposed building a four-lane boulevard along the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains, which would intersect a second boulevard through the Malibu Canyon SEA.
Since most SEAs are on private property zoned for some sort of development, the courts cannot constitutionally allow them to be treated as if they were undeveloped wilderness preserves. Unless park agencies are able to come up with enough money to buy the land – an increasingly difficult challenge today - the only hope of saving these special places may be to find a way to constitutionally regulate the development of the property that will ensure the natural resources.
This could mean trying to persuade the owner to sell or donate the most sensitive parts of the property or allowing him to develop part of the property and donate the rest to a park agency or to a non-profit.
A combination of purchase in fee, partial development and dedication of the remainder, has been used to date to permanently preserve 2,000 acres – more than 60% of the Palo Comado SEA.
Photo of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area by Tom Politeo.