City Sends Concerns About Lagoon Project to Coastal Commission

The city of Malibu sent a letter to the California Coastal Commission on Monday expressing some last-minute concerns about the Malibu Lagoon project.

In the letter, the city outlined its objections to a monitoring and final dewatering plan that the California State Parks submitted to the commission as part of the process to obtain a final permit, Malibu City Manager Jim Thorsen said. State Parks is the lead agency on the project, which is slated to begin June 1.

“The Coastal Commission is the governing board that issues the permit. We wanted them to have all the details of our concerns with the dewatering plan and the monitoring plan,” Thorsen told the Malibu City Council at its Monday night meeting.

Thorsen said the city found several inconsistencies in a three-day dewatering plan that calls for the collection and discharge of about 11,000 gallons of water per minute.

“They have a treatment plant that treats at about a 1,000 gallons a minute being proposed. That means they have a deficiency of about 10,000 gallons a minute,” Thorsen estimated.

He added that the plan calls for the storage of 45 million gallons of water somewhere on site.

“We found it very problematic that they didn’t identify that nor do I see it discussed in their monitoring plan at all,” Thorsen said.

A copy of the letter is expected to be posted on the city of Malibu’s website on Tuesday.

Thorsen said a plan by the city to hire the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to perform an independent study on the Malibu Lagoon project has hit a snag.

“The USGS decided that based on the decision that the council took on the , that the USGS, who likes to do independent reviews of these types of items, decided because the city council did take a position on this, there might be perceived bias on behalf of the USGS, so they opted not to go forward with any review,” Thorsen said.

“We’re still looking for a third party reviewer, but we haven’t closed it out yet,” he said.

The council also has to Gov. Jerry Brown and California State Parks expressing the city’s opposition to the project in its current form. The city also filed an amicus brief in a lawsuit seeking to delay the planned June 1 start of the project. Last week, three environmental groups to halt the project.

The project includes the replacement of nonnative vegetation with native vegetation and adjustments to slopes and channels in a 12-acre portion of the lagoon. Existing access bridges will be removed.

Proponents say the project will improve oxygen circulation and the general health of the lagoon. Opponents say it will harm the lagoon and that species will die. They object to the use of bulldozers, the removal of the bridges and other features.

Malibu Patch will have more on this story soon.