SMMC's Joe Edmiston Continues Fight for Region's Open Space

President Bush recently signed legislation ordering the Interior Department to consider making massive additions to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. How is the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy (SMMC) approaching this legislation, and how significant is its impact on recreation in Southern California?

The legislation is called the Rim of the Valley Trail Corridor Study Act, which is a study prior to the new acquisition of land. The study will show what is typically obvious: that we want, and that we need, to expand the recreation area available in Southern California. The bill only creates a study; it doesn't actually authorize the acquisition of land.

What's the time line for the study and for potential action?

Probably two to five years, depending what happens with the next administration.

Let's turn now to the issues we've dealt with in our past interviews. You spoke about the Malibu Public Parks Enhancement Plan and its resultant controversy in Malibu when TPR last interviewed you in October of 2006. What is the status of that plan?

Throughout 2007, we thought we had a deal with the City Council of Malibu: we would greatly scale back our plans, but they would ultimately approve camping and additional trails. Last December the City Council turned that down and prohibited camping everywhere in Malibu. We ended up with a big, fat zero. The SMMC is now in front of the California Coastal Commission on a procedure called a Local Coastal Plan Override, where a public agency can take the issue directly to the Coastal Commission when a small jurisdiction has done what Malibu has done, which is to sort of walk all over the public good. We expect to be heard later this year by the Coastal Commission.

What is the precise issue that will come before the Coastal Commission?

The exact issue is whether the tens and millions of dollars spent to acquire public land in Malibu and significant donations of land, for example, from Barbara Streisand, can be used for the public in ways we would expect park land to be used. There should be no restrictions on appropriate overnight camping. We're saying that those uses ought to apply even in exclusive areas of Malibu, just as it applies up and down the coast.

What is the city of Malibu's legal argument and position in this matter?

Their position is that it's too dangerous-that the danger of fires to the adjoining residents makes camping too dangerous. We've said that we would have supervised camps. It would actually be safer to have people there in a supervised environment. There should be preventative measures.

It now seems that fire season in California lasts year round. With fires ablaze throughout the state this year, how is SMMC's work impacted? Are there planning lessons to be learned from the fires we have experienced?

Well every year, it seems like we predict that it's going to be the worst fire season ever. We definitely have a problem. We've built too many homes into an area that's certain to burn. There is virtually no way to bulldoze all the native Chaparral around these houses; we wouldn't even want to. We've put homes in harms way; that's a fact of life. As long as that continues to happen, we're going to have the threat of massive loss of property because of the inherency of fire in Southern California.

A number of bills and legislation are pending in Sacramento; they deal with the regulation of development in fire-prone areas as well as funding for firefighting. What are your thoughts on the legislative actions currently being considered in Sacramento?

You can't have it both ways. You cannot build in fire prone areas and then say, "No, we don't want to have a part in that." It's a credit to the administration that they are saying that folks who have built there should be participating in the solutions to the problem. That only stands to reason.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently declared the L.A. River as non-navigable. The June issue of TPR featured an interview with the L.A. Public Works Commissioner Paula Daniels, who said that, "In looking at the L.A. River and making a determination about which sections of the river are ‘traditionally navigable waters,' the Army Corps of Engineers is setting the stage for later determinations as to whether or not the tributaries and streams in the river watershed are subject to their jurisdiction." What are your thoughts on this ruling by the Army Corps of Engineers?

Conceptually there is a problem because the pest is "navigability" in fact. As many members of the Friends of the Los Angeles River have shown, you can take conveyances-kayaks or whatever-down the river. Because most of the river is, in fact, channelized, and most of the tributaries are channelized, the impact in terms of the L.A. River is not that great. More significant are the impacts for tributaries. Congress has to address what is an incorrect interpretation by the Supreme Court-that the water in the United States has to in fact be navigable by some private conveyance. The Constitution allows Congress to regulate waters of the United States whether or not you can put a sailboat on the waterway. The next administration and Congress will have to address those kinds of protections, which could also affect wetlands. This decision, in and of itself, isn't going to affect the Los Angeles River as much as it will the tributaries in the mountains.

During TPR's last interview with you, in 2006, you said one of the most important priorities for the SMMC was the passage of Prop 84-a $5 billion bond issue. You asserted: "If Prop 84 passes, then there's a whole other watershed program focused on both the coastal watersheds and the Los Angeles River watershed." Has this $5 billion bond issue, which was approved, lived up to its promise?

It's still living up to its promise. We're now in the second year of its appropriation, so we will get another budget. The thing we're most proud of, which came right out of the starting gate, is the Vista Hermosa Park in Downtown L.A., which is the site of the former proposed Belmont Learning Complex. They have scaled that down. It's still a learning complex, but the other half of the property is a spectacularly beautiful park that demonstrates all the elements of sustainability that we talked about with Prop 84. It combines recreation with sustainability. There's a cistern for the use and recirculation of water and green roofs on the restroom building. Everything there is sustainable, but it's not "in-your-face" sustainable. Kids playing on the soccer field while their parents enjoy water cascading down the water fixture are aware only of the enjoyment of that, not necessarily its sustainability features. We're really proud of that, and that's one example of what the people have received from Prop 84, just one year into it.

In our last interview you also mentioned the connection of Prop 84 to the funding and paradigms established by Prop 50-an earlier state water bond. Have the two bonds been invested as you hoped?

One of the advantages of the California initiative process is that you don't have to wait for the Legislature. Prop 50 was an initiative by the people, and Prop 84 was an initiative of the people-to continue those same programs. We need to continue to respond. Governor Schwarzenegger and Senator Feinstein have put together a successor water bond that we hope is going to pass and give additional funding.

We need more funding for L.A., however. The Legislature really needs to address the fact that there's a gross disproportion between the funding for Northern California and the funding for Southern California. The folks in Northern California say, "Well, that's where the water is." However, the people live in Southern California, and we have to address the fact that you can't spend $9.5 billion, which is what the proposal is in the Feinstein-Schwarzenegger measure, and then say that the L.A. River watershed should share $500 million with seventeen other watersheds in the state that might be eligible. That's just grossly disproportional; the Legislature needs to address that.

The L.A. Weekly ran a story in July entitled "Parks and Wreck: L.A.'s Fight for Public Green Space," in which the author laments L.A.'s status as the most park-impoverished city in the U.S. and suggested some models to make over the city's green spaces, including the city of Paris. Did you agree with the diagnosis at all, or was it just more complaining without a solution?

Everyone who plans parks has the secret dream of playing Hausman and having an Emperor Napoleon III who can make it happen. But in a cash strapped city, do we have the executive leadership to make it happen? The issue has been blatantly clear for a long time. The people elected the Mayor to make it happen. If we had a better fiscal situation his leadership would be able to manifest itself.

The depressing issue has to do with the allocation of funds in the Quimby Act. That's something that the city council can address. We have a gross disproportion between the amounts of money stacking up in the affluent areas due to development and the needs stacking up in the less affluent areas. There has to be some way that this can be equalized in the city. The 15 little kingdoms that we have in our council districts do not want to give up anything for the greater good. That's a problem that we must address.

Lastly, what are SMMC's current priorities?

Our focus is on water-how people relate to it, and how we can turn the L.A. River and tributaries, such as Ballona Creek and Malibu Creek, into clearer and more usable recreation areas. Our focus is going to be on streamside and riverside projects. You're going to see more projects like the wash restoration above Grant High School in the Valley, Vista Hermosa, and Malibu Canyon. We're going to be aggressively pushing the agenda of clean water and bringing parks closer to the people.