By Ethan Stewart, August 3, 2006
by Ethan Stewart
There was standing room only for the last of
the 200 people to turn out for a public comment hearing hosted by Santa Barbara
County on the proposed luxury home development at the Santa Barbara Ranch. For
more than four hours last Thursday night, the county’s Planning and Development
staff heard from student activists, eighth-generation Chumash elders,
environmental lawyers, UCSB professors, and former state park rangers, all
taking the mike to address the county’s 1,084-page draft Environmental Impact
Report (EIR) on proposed Naples development. After nearly one year of research,
the draft EIR was released late last month and identified several Class
I — or significant — environmental impacts in Orange
County developer Matt Osgood’s plans for the southernmost gateway of the
Gaviota Coast. Osgood hopes to put between 54 and 72 houses — ranging
in size from 3,700- to 13,300-square-feet — on the historic
several-hundred-acre Santa Barbara Ranch and the adjacent Dos Pueblos Ranch.
“For the most part, what I have heard tonight, I take dead serious,” concluded
Steve Chase, the county’s deputy director of the Planning and Development
Department, shortly after the last public comment.
With Osgood in attendance, 50-plus public
speakers — all of them in opposition to the
project — levied a number of charges against the draft EIR, ranging
from standard concerns about viewshed impacts, public access, and the
“mega-mansion” size of the proposed structures to more technical cries of foul
about allowing phased approval, the allegation that the report didn’t follow
the county’s usual threshold of significance standards, and the fact that it
failed to map native grasslands or address the possible impacts of previous
petroleum extraction on the property. Additionally, several members of the
Barbareño and Coastal bands of Chumash raised the issue that the land at Naples
was once the site of two villages and several burial grounds and sacred places;
therefore, they argued, the removal of a reported 13 tons of archeological
matter from the area during the draft EIR process without consultation from
members of the local tribe constituted a violation of recent county law SB-18.
But perhaps the biggest and most frequent
gripe concerned transfer of development rights (TDR) and their role in the
approval process. As specifically outlined in Local Coastal Plan 218, the land
rezone that would jumpstart the project can only occur if the county finds TDRs
to be infeasible at the Naples site. The TDR option was soundly rebuked by
county supervisors this spring, despite a Naples-specific feasibility study
earlier this year that found TDRs could help offset a portion of the proposed
development. In response to several speakers’ requests for additional and more
specific examination of this issue, Chase offered, “It would be nice if we [the
county] had an actual TDR process in place.” According to Chase, County
Supervisors Salud Carbajal and Brooks Firestone are working on a proposal to
get the issue before the board again in the near future.
Osgood concurred that TDRs are a possibility
he is “more than willing to listen to.” But after sitting through the entire
hearing last week, he said that his optimism is waning. “Most of the people who
go to these meetings don’t realize that there is an official map on this thing
that I could start selling lots off of tomorrow,” he explained. He then added,
“I didn’t hear any good or new information. … It sure would be nice if these
meetings could be an exchange of ideas and higher thinking, rather than just a
battle.” Unfortunately for Osgood and company, if last week’s hearing was any indication,
the battle is far from over. As Santa Barbara Archeological Society President
Keith Zandona observed last week — much to the delight and applause
of the audience — “This land has spirits and they have filled this
room tonight!”