Escondido Neighbors United

Oak Creek-– never was there a more wrongly named development. The decimation of the Oak Trees is in full swing as you can see if you drive on Felicita Road near the Park. The chainsaws and bulldozers are hard at work, indiscriminately destroying hundreds of oak trees on site.
It is too late to save them.

The former Mayor and Council majority (Thank you Olga Diaz for voting no) refused to even examine modest changes to the plan that could have saved many of these trees. This is happening in Escondido in Mike Morasco’s district, who supported it.

Even the staff agreed with us that a bike path alignment that reduced the tree cutting was possible.  But Abed and his supporters Morasco, Gallo, and Masson ignored it all.

So, while (under new leadership) we develop a new climate plan that calls for planting of new trees, Oak Creek developers are busy cutting down established, threatened, and healthy oaks on their site and in the park. Neighbors downstream are concerned about flooding with good reason. It is a terrible result from a bad process to facilitate an ill-advised development.

So, please take a moment to say good bye to these beautiful trees who have offered their air, beauty, greenery, and carbon sequestration for us for so long. Our neighborhood will be forever degraded as a result.

All we can do is bear witness and remember this legacy of Mike Morasco and John Masson and former elected officials Sam Abed and Ed Gallo.

Please send your photos and videos to us.  We may need them in the future.
esconeighborsunited@gmail.com    Video below

• the city to require the developer of Oak Creek Development to reexamine the stormwater and transportation aspects of the project to reduce oak tree loss and stormwater flooding!
• city should stop annexations that increase fire risks, worsen traffic, impact the climate, cause habitat losses.
• city should partner with state and County to take more action on the Chatham Barrel Yard remediation!

• The meeting on June 3 will be at the Escondido City Library, Turrentine Room, at 6 p.m. and will provide an overview of the preliminary budget documents for fiscal year 2019/2020.

DTSC responded to our comment letter.   DTSC_response_ENU_28NOV2018. As usual, we have disagreements with many of their comments.  However, we think it is important that the letter states, “DTSC acknowledges that this remedy has not reached the offsite RAPs sent in the RAP.  We are not there yet.”  On this we agree.

Escondido Neighbors United encourages everyone to attend the DTSC Public Workshop on Chatham Wednesday, December 12, 2018 from 4:00 p.m. to 8 p.m., located at: California Center for the Arts Escondido (Theater Lobby) 340 N. Escondido Blvd., Escondido

ENU will, again, be raising concerns about the failure to monitor all of the required wells, the lack of action on the toe of the plume, and other issues we have raised before.

Further, per this new letter, which states “Before site certification, a final allowable level will be established [for 1,4-dioxane] to ensure that an appropriate risk-based health protectiveness level is achieved.” (DTSC at 5)  We will want to know how that will be done.

Again, we will ask for more appropriate posting of the worst part of the creek and more action to address the releases into the creek.

Last, it states that, “DTSC has not found a ‘silver bullet’ that would have allowed us to reach the RAOs by today”. (DTSC at 2)   To this comment we want to reassure that we are not so unsophisticated to think that a highly complex situation such as this would respond to a simplistic, single action ‘silver bullet’. It will take many actions. Further, we do not see the finding of  these strategies, as DTSC’s job.  It is the job of the PRPs to propose additional actions needed to get us to the RAOs to be reviewed by DTSC.  We will be asking what new and innovative technologies they have proposed to address our site. It is incumbent on them to bring options to the regulatory agencies as they are ‘potentially’ responsible.

But, it is incumbent on all parties to estimate when, if ever, this will be remediated.  We have waited long enough.

The post about our original letter is here.

The City Council will hear and update on the Escondido Climate Plan Update.  Please attend if you care about this issue.  Please see the Sierra Club blog for more information here. 

Since it is clear the Escondido will have a new Mayor, Paul McNamara and District 1 Councilmember Consuelo Martinez, this issue should be delayed until they are seated on December 12. 

1. Given the significant change in leadership in just 2 weeks, the Council should put off any decisions or direction until this issue can be heard by the leaders who will vote on it and will be responsible for implementing it.  The current leaders have made clear that they support ‘the minimum possible’.  Our situation demands much more action than this.
2. The E-CAP should adopt 100% clean energy as a goal.
3. The E-CAP should commit to developing a transportation master plan for biking, walking, and transit.
4. The E-CAP must not rely on out of region mitigation.
5. The E-CAP must include a social equity element.
6. The E-CAP must be measurable and enforceable.

Our most recent ‘Jewel of Escondido’ recognition goes to California Homemades at 138 W. Grand Ave.  California Homemades has many options of delicious lunches and snacks that are fully plant-based.  Here you can have soups, roll-ups, wraps, and lots of other things and protect the climate and animals at the same time.  Plus, eating a more plant-based diet is better for your health.  

It is somewhat ironic that the same day that we will install a new Mayor and a new Councilmember,  (who actually care about the environment and public health), DTSC will hold their next public open house about the Chatham Barrel Yard waste site.  Please plan to attend if you can.

Important letters have been filed by local organizations.  Please read these before you attend the meeting.

Escondido Neighbors United
Sierra Club North County Group

You can get background info here: 

Chatham Open House:  Wednesday, December 12, 2018
 Please come and join DTSC at a community meeting to be held Wednesday, December 12, 2018 from 4:00 p.m. to 8 p.m., located at: 
California Center for the Arts Escondido (Theater Lobby) 340 N. Escondido Blvd., Escondido, CA 92025

For further information about the upcoming public meeting, and if you require disability meeting access information, please contact the DTSC Project Manager Hossein Nassiri at  (714) 484-5384 hossein.nassiri@dtsc.ca.gov.

This week Escondido Neighbors filed ENU Comment Letter on Chatham Remedy Review August 2018.  The Public Fact sheet is here and the full 5-year Remedy Review Report is here. 

The letter raises many issues about the lack of progress of the cleanup, the failure to stop contamination from entering Felicita Creek, and the need to add treatment wells to stop further expansion of the plumes, among other issues.

If you are interested, please submit comments to DTSC by Sept 6th.  This is a serious issue for our region and one that needs additional action.

If you are new to this issue, here is some background.

More information about this site can be found
here  DTSC Chatham Barrel Yard Link Envirostor 

The NCG of the Sierra Club filed this comment letter with the city of Escondido.  If you are interested in being involved or notified about this process, please email your contact info the Mr. Mike Strong at the city mstrong@escondido.org  .