Escondido Neighbors United

The long-awaited DTSC Oak Creek Response Plan Draft has been released for public comment by the Department of Toxic Substances Control.  A Public Meeting has been set for JULY 9 from 4-7 at the California Center for the Arts Escondido, 340 N. Escondido Blvd.

This purpose of this document is ‘to set forth in detail the Removal Action (RA) plan to address soil at the Site that is impacted with arsenic and total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH)”.   This is the plan that, once accomplished, DTSC will sign off on the site for the proposed use (housing).

ENU has consistently objected to this process.  The information in this document should have been disclosed as part of the environmental review process.  The evidence shows that other sources and constituents are present under the site.  We will be commenting and recommending additional actions to reduce any potential for human or ecological health risks at the site.  In addition, we have requested numerous times that a mitigation measure be added so that, in the event of any exceedences in dust or contamination off-site, impacted neighbors would be informed.  We do not see that that reasonable request has been honored yet.

We have note reviewed the entire document yet but will be commenting on this issue and urge others who are interested to do the same.  Please attend the Public Meeting on July 9th to learn more.

All comments should be addressed to:

Ms. Poonam Acharya
Remedial Program Manager
Department of Toxic Substances Control
5796 Corporate Avenue
Cypress, CA 90603
Or you can email at
poonam.acharya@dtsc.ca.gov

It’s baaack…Lilac Hills, defeated once and completely inconsistent with the County’s new General Plan, is back on the table.   Apparently, Newton’s Third Law guides us in organizing too–for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  As more unreasonable sprawl development is proposed, more people for organizations to respond.   Today the San Diego Union Tribune reported on the  New Opposition to backcountry development formed announced the creation of  our region’s newest community group  

Protect quality of life in San Diego County. Tell the Planning Commission to deny General Plan Amendments that urbanize working rural lands, starting with Lilac Hills Ranch.

As you know, we here at Escondido Neighbors United appreciate our native snakes!  Here’s a must listen PSA from an important neighbor.  Please listen.

 or Stripes..

For those of us who believe we need to be taking action to prevent the worst impacts of climate change, this has been a good week.
First, Pope Francis issued Laudato Si: On Care for our Common Home Pope Francis’s Teaching on Climate Change,  Pope Francis has written the first papal encyclical focused solely on the environment, attempting to reframe care of the earth as a moral and spiritual concern, and not just a matter of politics, science and economics. In the document, “Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home,” he argues that the environment is in crisis – cities to oceans, forests to farmland. He emphasizes that the poor are most affected by damage from what he describes as economic systems that favor the wealthy, and political systems that lack the courage to look beyond short-term rewards. But the encyclical is addressed to everyone on the planet. Its 184 pages are an urgent, accessible call to action, making a case that all is interconnected, including the solutions to the grave environmental crisis.

Next, led by the Mayor of Houston, a nationwide group of Mayors weighed in.
Mayors’ Letter to Obama on Climate Change

Following closely after the State EJ Screen maps, the US Environmental Protection Agency released their mapping of the most impacted communities in the country from a pollution burden perspective.  The LA Times reported today Los Angeles Times EJ article
Southern California doesn’t fare well and, sadly, some Escondido areas show up in the highest percentiles for many of the hazards.  You can take a look here. Federal EJ Screen
Our local areas with the worst indicators seem to line up, again, in areas in District 1.  There is funding from the state to address these hardest hit neighborhoods.  We have asked the Mayor and Council to pursue funding for projects to improve these impacted neighborhoods.  We hope the city will work with community groups to develop a plan that can help alleviate some of these health and pollution burdens.

The LAFCO Preliminary Staff report on Oak Creek has been issued.  Escondido Neighbors United has already registered our concerns about this in our April 2, 2015 ENU To LAFCO comment letter. The staff report does report on several of the issues that we are concerned but appears to support the annexation or ‘reorganization’.
In this time of drought, it seems meaningful that the new project will create a huge new water demand of at least 33,150 gallons a day in a time when Rincon del Diablo has been given a requirement to reduce water use by 32%.  A recent article in the San Diego Union Tribune showed that Rincon had only reduce by 12%.  We continue to ask the question, how will we meet water conservation reductions if agencies continue to permit new homes, especially in current open space areas.  
LAFCO also increased the annexation area to include more of Hamilton road, but does not remedy the two significant de-facto jurisdictional islands that this project creates.
More later but we wanted to be sure you had access to this report.
The LAFCO hearing date has not yet been set but their meetings are the first Monday of the month.


Escondido Neighbors United is opposed to this reorganization and will communicate our opposition to LAFCO.  

****UCAN ACTION
ALERT****HELP UCAN
PROTESTSDG&E’S $1.911 BILLIONREVENUE REQUEST

***** UCAN ACTION
ALERT *****

Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) has released their document about the community around the Oak Creek site. DTSC Oak Creek Community Profile 
Many of you may remember receiving a survey in March.  There were 58 logged responses even though the turn-around time was short.  There were many detailed concerns about the project provided to DTSC (see page 9-10 of the document). We remain disappointed that off-site neighbors will still not be notified if there is a contaminant concentration in the airborne dust at elevated levels. If the levels exceed 75% of the action levels, then workers will use personal protective equipment and then dust control measures will be used.  However, we have asked that neighbors be notified so they can take whatever measure they deem  necessary to protect themselves.  This remains unaddressed. DTSC has proposed a land use covenant that will not allow the use of groundwater under the site for any reason due to the presence of Chatham contamination. (P.6).  Fifty-three respondents had a high or moderate level of interest in the site and 41 said they would attend a meeting on the issue.  Most people (55) had heard about the site and the highest point of contact was ‘Neighbors’!!!!  YAY for neighborhood organizing. 🙂
The next steps will be as follows: DTSC will issue the cleanup plan for a 30-day comment period, issue a Fact Sheet, officially notice the comment period in the paper, and hold a community meeting.
We thank DTSC for including the community in their actions and we look forward to the opportunity to review and comment on the clean up plan.
Stay tuned.

Here is DTSC’s response DTSC to ENU response to Feb letter  to our comment letter filed in February included in the ENU Blog Post Feb 16 2015.  The timing is a little confusing as we received it just hours after we sent our most recent April 22, 2015 letter.  We hope in the future, DTSC can let us know if and when they will respond to issues so we can have more seamless coordination.
At any rate, based on this response, it appears some of our comments and concerns were not well understood  and some of the responses are disappointing.
We are especially frustrated that the September, 2014 promise to take additional action if the contamination went south of Via Rancho is, now, not being pursued.  We will have more to say in the future about this.
And, just to reiterate, ENU did not make up the claim that sampling was not allowed to two wells on the Oak Creek site, we merely quoted the PRP Group’s report that states ‘…property owners did not grant access..‘ (p. 6) and the results Table 5 which lists (No Access) as the status for the three wells on the Oak Creek site.  DTSC’s letter seems to miss one of our points that there is a regular plan for assessing the contamination and two of these wells were part of it and should have been sampled in October! Even if it is worked out for the April sampling, the data set is compromised.  This seems particularly important given all the comments about the ‘pulsing’ of the contamination elsewhere in DTSC’s response.

We will have more comments once our most recent letter and questions have been responded to but we wanted to be sure anyone interested had a chance to see this letter.