Endangered Habitat League Guides County Planning; Advocates Sustainable Frameworks

We've done numerous TPR interviews with you regarding EHL's comprehensive regional planning efforts. What projects and priorities is EHL focused on in 2007?

Our priorities remain the adoption and implementation of comprehensive habitat reserves across Southern California, largely but not exclusively through the Natural Community Conservation Planning (NCCP) process. We also remain very focused on general plans and trying to provide more sustainable patterns of land use in large, unincorporated areas, such as in San Diego County, Los Angeles County, and Riverside County.

What is the status of habitat plans for Riverside and San Bernardino Counties?

Western Riverside County has an adopted plan called the MSHCP. The Coachella Valley is moving toward adoption of a habitat plan in the eastern portion of Riverside County. The western plan is a good plan; its main challenge right now is acquisition funding. The Coachella Valley plan has had some obstacles, as one city has not joined yet, but they appear to be moving to a negotiated solution in that case.

Why do they need to participate? What is the compelling self-interest for regional collaboration?

In Riverside County, the main compelling interest for local governments has been the provision of infrastructure, such as new highways. Major highway infrastructure projects are "covered" under the MSHCP-meaning that they have obtained, in advance, permitting under state and federal endangered species acts, but also, very importantly, that the cumulative and growth-inducing impacts of those projects have been addressed through the implementation of the multiple species plan. So it significantly streamlines the new infrastructure.

Has that been enough of an incentive to draw the parties seriously into a regional planning process?

Yes. In fact, it's worked. There is an adopted plan in the western county in which every jurisdiction is participating.

What is the status of the Riverside County multiple species planning process?

The plan is adopted, and right now we're in the implementation phase.

What's involved in the implementation phase?

Local governments review projects for consistency with the plan. They may modify a proposed project. If a property needs to be acquired, there's a land-owner negotiation process set forward in the plan, which is working well to balance the property rights aspect.

The main obstacle right now is funding. While there is a funding stream through a per-unit mitigation fee that applies to every housing unit and commercial development in the western county, that source alone is not enough.

The headlines in the papers in August asserted that blame for state budget impasse should be assigned to a lawsuit by Attorney General Jerry Brown against the county of San Bernardino for the latter not considering global warming in its long-term general plan. Does that assertion make any sense to you? What are the implications for including global warming in CEQA reviews of general plans?

First of all, the global warming issue is a very legitimate one for an unincorporated area like San Bernardino, which does a lot of suburban development. The solution, really, is not in general-plan-by-general-plan litigation, nor is it in blocking the budget. The solution will come after we create a framework that addresses land-use planning, transportation planning, and greenhouse gas emission reductions, like the framework put forward in SB 375. If SB 375 were enacted, this issue would simply go away.

Much has been written this year about how, if California is to meet its climate change goals as enunciated by the governor and the Legislature, at least a third of those goals must be accomplished through land-use planning, siting and design. Do you subscribe to this view? If so, how does one incent, at the state level, such smart, regional, comprehensive, land-use planning? Are there mechanisms now in place to realize such objectives?

We need mechanisms. We're faced with an explosion in vehicle miles traveled, number of vehicles, numbers of trips, and the distances they're traveling. Unless we use improved land-use transportation planning, we're not going to get a handle on those problems. SB 375 sets emission reduction targets on a regional basis, and uses the existing "blueprint" planning process currently underway at the Councils of Government to craft a sustainable planning strategy that would use land use and transportation to achieve those reduction targets.

Local governments would have a number of incentives to amend their own general plans to be consistent with the sustainable strategy. Those incentives include CEQA streamlining for consistent projects, as well as the fact that the regional transportation plan will support the sustainable strategy.

Elaborate more on the two elected officials who have taken leadership at the state level: State Senator Darrell Steinberg, through SB 375, and Attorney General Jerry Brown, through his office and San Bernadino lawsuit. Are these appropriate means for our elected leaders to display leadership on climate change, and is opposition from the likes of the League of California Cities sufficient to block their efforts and agendas?

Jerry Brown has done a great public service by bringing CEQA to bear upon this enormous environmental impact-it's completely appropriate. Senator Steinberg has shown leadership in providing a framework where all of these goals (provisions for housing, improved transportation, sustainable planning, and the necessity of greenhouse gas reductions) are linked together-this is very forward-looking legislation.

What's happened now is that the League of Cities is sacrificing the public interest on a false altar of unfettered local discretion. That's wrong.

Hasn't the League of Cities always worshiped local discretion?

Absolute local discretion is actually a myth and may not always be good for the state. For example, the state supplies water quality and other standards. Where issues of statewide concern are involved, like global warming, local government needs a framework within which local discretion operates.

So you're asking the public, the electorate, to trust the state apparatuses to create a framework that would limit and constrain the choices of local elected officials?

No. Actually, that's not it. What SB 375 does is says to the local governments, "You develop your own sustainable strategy." The state doesn't develop it for them; the state simply gives them a greenhouse gas emissions target. The local governments get together through their own councils of government and develop the strategy, using sound principles and public input. There are habitat protections and agricultural protections built in, and incentives for infill, but the local governments themselves develop the strategy.

Then why is the League so resistant to SB 375?

While it is their option to "opt into" the strategy or not, they perceive the incentives to do so as being sticks.

The public interest. That's what this is all about. The League of Cities is exaggerating this in a knee-jerk reaction, which, at the end of the day, could be tragic for the future of the state as climate changes.

You wrote a piece years ago for TPR that called for a moratorium on general plan amendments in order to curb piecemeal regional and local planning. Is that still a need? Is this still your viewpoint?

People who are stuck in traffic need to realize some fundamental truths about planning in California. The first fundamental truth is that there is no planning. Instead, we have project-driven general plan amendments, developer-driven re-zonings-outside of a vision for the future, outside of a comprehensive, agreed-upon framework for a future pattern of growth. That's why there really is no planning in the state. One of the most important steps one could take is to do what Riverside County did in their last general plan update, which was to say that there will be no major general plan amendments outside of comprehensive five-year cycles. That's simple common sense, and so far, it's worked very well.

EHL has taken positions on some significant projects going on in the region. One is Tejon Ranch and the other is the Foothill Toll Road. What is EHL's position on these projects?

The Foothill Toll Road is an anachronism. It's a project that was conceived 20 years ago, and it no longer fits society's needs. The good news is that it looks like there is a viable win-win alternative: widening Interstate 5, thus averting the need to destroy San Onofre State Beach, which is an extremely important state park for Southern Californians, particularly for low-cost coastal recreation.

Tejon Ranch is a massive leapfrog development proposal that has not been conceived in the context of comprehensive regional planning. It would have very large impacts to wildlife habitat and would have a very large growth-inducing impact. But EHL, as always, is interested in any possible collaborative solutions, working with local governments, working with the private sector, and we're always open to those possibilities.

Who is the audience for your Tejon arguments?

I think the main argument in Los Angeles County on Tejon would be traffic. My impression is that Kern County is a very pro-growth, pro-development environment, and the arguments there might have to be orderly patterns of development and habitat protection. But this ranch is a cornerstone of the ecosystem of California because it connects the coast ranges to the Sierra Nevada. It's a foundation for continued ecological processes in the state. Whatever comes out of it, there needs to be a very high bar from the environmental perspective.

In a TPR roundtable discussion about smart growth in 2000, you said that the ULI definitions of smart growth were much too broad, that they allowed a combination of smart infill and dumb sprawl. Now, six and seven years later, the general media has picked up your argument, complaining that smart growth has lost its meaning and is used by any and all for whatever their purposes. Should we put smart growth to bed and come up with a new term?

I'm almost at that point, to be frank. Originally, smart growth was a package deal: there was agricultural protection, there was curtailment of sprawl, and there was improved use of existing urban areas. In real life, we have seen, in limited areas, infill and better use of urban areas, but not on nearly as wide a scale as we should. On the other hand, the sprawl at the fringe has continued unfettered. And even more importantly, the large-lot subdivision of the working landscapes and agricultural lands has continued unfettered. So, the whole paradigm as a complete package never took root. It has been cherry-picked-sometimes with good intentions-but unless there's a complete package, you don't have true smart growth.

What should we replace it with?

I think we simply need to agree upon a new planning framework. The one that works the best, in my opinion, is the urban growth boundary framework, which has had some success through the ballot box in the Bay Area. It's also had success in Ventura County, both on a preexisting policy basis where the unincorporated county, as a matter of policy, said, "We're not in the urban development business," and then later, through the ballot box. A different type of framework, as we discussed before, is one that uses greenhouse gas emissions reductions, and maybe that would be fruitful.

But the state needs a new framework that allows people to come together, create a vision for the future using some basic and agreed-upon principles, have some stability for that vision in a meaningful general plan, and then reassess it periodically. AB 857, which established priorities for state infrastructure spending, was a start, but the state never implemented it.

The most successful general plan process that I've seen to date is in San Diego County, which is now in draft form. It has very significant down-planning, from the estate lots to densities that are supportive of agriculture and natural resources. It focuses growth in some areas of new urban development, and it has the tentative buy-in of the local Farm Bureau, the building industry, and the environmental community. We hope that general plan will be adopted within a year or two.

You once said, "The monster eating California is actually the mini-mansion on the two-acre estate lot." A number of anti-mansionization ordinances have passed in the state and region recently. Is this still a challenge for California, and are the recent statutes the method for stopping it?

Let me give you some statistics that came out of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This is nationwide, but I think that the situation, if anything, is even worse in California. Nationwide, lots greater than one acre accounted for over 90 percent of the land consumed for new housing. That is astonishing. California's Sierra foothills in Placer County, the Central Coast, and San Diego County are all being decimated by the absolute dumbest pattern of development possible. It is a huge cost to local government for infrastructure and services, for police and fire. It magnifies the enormous risk we already have of fire hazard, because most of these estate lots are in high fire zones. It destroys wildlife habitat and farming. It has no redeeming features, but it's the default in most general plans. One of the biggest opponents of this type of land use should be the master plan development community, because once this land is prematurely parcelized, it can never be turned into a coherent community and used efficiently.

So, local government has really taken the easy way out by allowing this sort of zoning to predominate the landscape. They have avoided the use of techniques like down-planning, or transfer of development rights, or density transfer programs, all of which are completely feasible for the region.

Anti-mansionization ordinances are really a different thing. Those ordinances apply to existing neighborhoods where people don't like the scale of constuction on existing lots. What I'm talking about is not an architectural issue. What I'm talking about is a land consumption issue, and it's really an enormous tragedy.

The worst example of it is in Los Angeles County. Los Angeles County is doing a comprehensive general plan update as we speak. The draft plan designates 600,000 acres of "rural" land with a base density of one unit per acre, which goes down a little bit if there are slope constraints.

That's staggering. Six hundred thousand acres of estate lots: What does that do for affordable housing? What does it do for the environment? What does it do for traffic? Yet that is the county of Los Angeles' proposal.