(UN)SAFE HARBOR
By Michael Collins
Ventura County Reporter – January 30, 2003
Lee Quaintance walks through a fertile field off of Victoria Avenue in Oxnard on an unseasonably warm January day. The rich brown dirt, used to grow lima beans, celery and a cornucopia agricultural products, gives off a pleasant smell in the heat. This 135 acre field is now slated to become Seabridge, a water-oriented, mixed use development of 708 dwellings, 169,000 square feet of commercial space, 32.5 acres of new canals and 16.5 acres of parks, beaches and recreational paths. But while the developer, Oly-Mandalay General Partnership, envisions greenbacks in this verdant swath of brown soil, Quaintance sees only red. “The developer plans to construct two beaches that will could make Kiddie Beach seem pristine in comparison and they pushed this scheme through the development process without any public participation in the project’s lay out. It’s a potential disaster that will come back to haunt the City and County if this enterprise is built the way it is currently designed.”
Kiddie Beach is the notoriously polluted beach close to the mouth of Channel Islands Harbor and will undergo a $1.5 million cleanup (see related article). The Seabridge plan calls for dredging canals to accommodate a new marina with nearly 500 boat slips. Quaintance, a 63 year old native of Oxnard and member of the environmental watchdog non-profit group the Beacon Foundation, is most troubled by the development’s plan to construct two beaches at the end of what will be called Shallow Bay. “With all the problems we’ve had with pollution at Kiddie Beach, you would think these folks would know better than to build two beaches up at the north end of the harbor.
Oddly, the Ventura County Star reported on Monday that the developer’s spokesman, Bill Wynne, stated that there are no plans to add any kiddie beaches at Seabridge. This doesn’t jive with the Supplemental Environmental Impact Report for the project which states that “A shallow bay will be created in the northeast portion of the project site for activities such as wading, swimming, wind surfing, or paddleboats.” And his comment to the paper contradicts the November 21, 2002 staff report to Oxnard’s Planning Commission by the city’s Planning and Environmental Service Department. The report states “Recreational areas also include several park sites throughout the development, two public beaches on either side of the bay…” Indeed, in a mailer Wynne sent out June 21, 2002, he writes that “The ‘Little Fin’ shallow bay for small sailboats and kayaks, the sandy wading pool, as well as open channels and parks provide ample opportunities to participate in social waterfront activities.”
John Flynn, the Chair of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors thinks the beaches are ill-conceived. “That’s a big mistake and they ought to drop that,” Flynn told the Reporter. “That just doesn’t make any sense to me. I think we said in closed session ‘don’t they realize that is not going to work?’ They ought to be smart enough to figure that out for themselves. It’s just obvious to anyone following Kiddie Beach, beaches in marinas don’t work. You just don’t put a beach in a harbor. There are too many things that go on that you have a hard time controlling. There are live-aboards and I’m not saying that live-aboards aren’t careful but that could be a source (of pollution). And then you have feral cats, wild cats and people feed them. You have rats. There are too many sources for contaminating the water. It’s a relatively small area. It’s not huge. Even Channel Islands Harbor is not huge. You get into circulation problems. And you especially get into circulation problems where this project will go.”
Supervisor Steve Bennett, whose district includes the land being developed for the Seabridge development, concurs with Flynn. “Kiddie Beach has demonstrated to us the problem of locating beaches with poor circulation,” Bennett told the Reporter. “Circulation will be even worse back there than at Kiddie Beach. They are just creating a long term problem there.”
Bennett has objected to the project’s beach plans and has tried to get Oxnard to reconsider this part of the development. The Supervisor pointed out that the adjacent Westport development is currently being built and it too will have newly created canals. “I have concerns about the (Seabridge) project. I’ve tried to encourage the Oxnard City Council to slow the project down. I think we ought to see what the impacts are of the (Westport) project that is already under construction that is going to expand the canal system. We need to see what the impacts of that will be on the water quality before we do any additional expansion. Now we as the Board, if I remember, we didn’t actually vote yes or no on the project. Our question was what do we do as a result of the fact that Oxnard is going forward. Do we sue them? Do we do this or do we do that? We have actually not had a presentation of this project where we said ‘we approve of this project.’ That would be a very inaccurate portrayal of where the County is at. In fact, I met with Oxnard city trying to get them to dramatically slow this down so we can find out what the impacts are on the water quality are. They have chose not to do that and instead decided to move forward.”
Despite the mounting concerns over Seabridge, the Oxnard City Council decided Tuesday night to endorse the project.
“The recourse is anybody could appeal their decision to the Coastal Commission,” said Supervisor Bennett. “Those are the kind of options that anybody has. The County of Ventura doesn’t get to approve or not approve. It’s a funny thing – it’s the County’s harbor and (the developers) want to get extra real estate value by expanding our harbor but we don’t get to decide whether they get to do that or not. It’s a very bizarre setup in my mind. The question I asked was ‘so people can just keep expanding our harbor?’ So we have the whole issue of maintenance of our harbor so the only thing we could do is enter into contracts to try to protect us in terms of maintenance costs. But in terms of if the project goes or doesn’t go we don’t even get to say that even though we have to maintain the expansion of the harbor and that kind of stuff.”
