CHAPTER 8

The Environmental Impact Report

There are two documents relating to wildland fire that a developer is required to submit when proposing development in the high-fire-hazard area called the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI).

The first document, already examined in detail, is the Fire Protection Plan (FPP). The FPP must meet the requirements of the state’s Health and Safety Codes, which is part of the Public Resource Codes. If the proposed development is located in a State Responsibility Area, CalFire, the state fire agency, is responsible for ensuring that these codes are adhered to, including but not limited to logistical and technical matters such as width of roads, hydrants, turn-around areas, building materials, fuel modification zones and setbacks. Equally importantly, the FPP also has to satisfy Article 86 of the California Fire Code that requires new development not pose a significant risk of  injury or loss of life in the event of a worst-case scenario wildland fire. We have already analyzed in detail the very significant risk to Stonegate’s residents from wildland fire. We have also seen how political pressures have induced CalFire to believe that it cannot take action, no matter how unsafe the project may be, because fire safety decisions may pose a potential obstacle to development (land use) decisions.

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The second required document for any proposed development is the Environmental Impact Report (EIR). The purpose of the EIR is to identify a project’s significant effects on people and the environment and to specify how any negative effects will be mitigated or avoided. The study of environmental impacts is mandated by the California Environment Quality Act (CEQA) enacted in 1970. The Stonegate developer has already acknowledged in the Stonegate Specific Plan that state law on new development prohibits construction of homes and essential facilities in hazardous areas unless they can be designed to reduce the hazard to the satisfaction of responsible agencies.  In January 2007, the Deer Springs Fire District, the responsible agency, unanimously rejected Stonegate’s Fire Protection Plan as dangerously inadequate. The County ignored the DSFPD and clandestinely approved Stonegate’s Fire Protection Plan, avoiding both public comment and Fire Board input.

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Stonegate’s draft EIR was submitted to the County on August 31, 2007. In the segment of the report dealing with the issue of wildland fire, Stonegate’s EIR was anything but honest and complete.  The wildland fire portion of the EIR is located in the Appendix.  A detailed critique of this document can also be found in the Appendix. State law requires that the Environmental Impact Report be submitted by the developer in order to facilitate public and governmental review of the expected consequences of any new project. The most important requirement of the report is that it be open and honest and make a good faith attempt at full disclosure. It should not be crafted to present the developer’s point of view.

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The Stonegate developers totally omitted from their EIR any mention of the controversy that has existed about Stonegate's fire danger. They completely excluded any mention of the rejection of Stonegate’s Fire Protection Plan by the local Fire District Board (the FAHJ). They excluded their own statement that the project could not be evacuated in the “Fire Condition One” scenario and omitted their own statements that the development’s fire safety would be predicated on the de facto use of Shelter-in-Place (which was ruled out as a permissible fire strategy for this particular site by the County).

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An Attempt at an End Run

After Stonegate submitted its EIR to the County, it was expected that the local Deer Springs Fire District would respond decisively and submit a response to the County in the 45-day time period allotted by law. On September 8, 2007 the Fire District Board held its usual monthly board meeting.  Surprisingly, the Board President, responsible for creating the Board's agenda, did not place the recently-released Stonegate EIR on the agenda. The 45-day period for public and administrative response had already started running, since the EIR had been submitted to the County on August 31, 2007. The omission of Stonegate’s EIR from the Board’s agenda was very surprising, given the fact that the project had such disastrous consequences for the Fire District in which it was to be built. Two Board members called for immediate action and began drafting an official District response to be sent to the County within the allotted time frame. Had this not been done, the District would have forfeited its right to respond to Stonegate's EIR.

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The task of responding should have been straight-forward but the initial foot dragging and reluctance to do so signaled the existence of a troubling undercurrent. What resulted thereafter was a clearcut attempt to undermine the board’s previous rejection of the Fire Protection Plan that had been issued in January, 2007.

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Two board members were assigned the task of drafting the board’s response to Stonegate’s EIR. The entire document can be found in the Appendix but the major points they raised were:

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Response Time: By law, the response time for fire personnel to reach the project had to be under five minutes. The Board President had made an issue over this but felt this could be easily solved by having a firehouse within the project. The concentration on response time, however, did nothing to address the fact that during Santa Ana wind conditions, fighting wildfire is problematical or impossible because the high winds nullify firefighting efforts altogether. Simply placing a fire station within the Stonegate development will not solve a worst-case wildfire scenario in which a wind-driven wildfire can quickly spread out of control. This out-of-control scenario was seen over and over again during the 2003 and 2007 wildfires. Fast response times are more pertinent to EMT (emergency medical tech calls) than they are to the problem of fighting Santa-Ana wind-driven wildfires. Moreover, building a firehouse does nothing to address the problem of evacuation from this site. The principal focus on response time seemed disingenuous and an attempt to divert attention away from the project’s most alarming deficiency---the inability to evacuate in a timely fashion in the event of a major wildfire--and the resulting unspoken, underlying strategy upon which the project was predicated…“Shelter-in-Place.”

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Evacuation: The issue of evacuation should have been the primary concern about the Stonegate development because lack of timely evacuation is at the heart of the danger to residents in the event of a wildland fire. The inability to evacuate the Stonegate project could not be resolved, given the proposed project’s large population density, the enormous fuel load surrounding the development and the poor and limited egress which could not be enhanced due to terrain constraints. In the Fire Board’s EIR response, a curious sentence appeared: “Even if the FPP was considered technically accurate in that it met the fire code, the problems we noted in our response to the FPP are based on our knowledge and expertise of the District, and still have not been addressed.”

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The above sentence was a giant red flag. First of all, Stonegate’s Fire Protection Plan was certainly not technically correct because it clearly failed to meet the requirements of Article 86 of the California Fire Code that requires no significant risk of injury or loss of life from wildland fire. If the above sentence were allowed to stand, it would seem to imply that the Fire Board rejected the FPP because they did not like the project for other reasons. The District’s reasons for rejection pertained to fire safety issues alone, and did not ever include or imply that the FPP was “technically” correct.

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It appeared that the Board’s response was being manipulated or weakened by some Board members who wished to aid Stonegate, giving the impression that the Board was incompetent in its understanding of its role to oversee fire safety issues only and not reach beyond its defined powers. A clear attempt was made to undermine the Board’s credibility and authority. The sentence linking the words “FPP” with “technically correct” seemed calculated to undermine the Board’s previous rejection of the FPP.  Only by strong objection to this confusing and odd sentence by Board members Tebbs and Van Ingen was it eventually removed from the Board’s response to the County.

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The same theme had begun to permeate Fire Board meetings. One board member kept insisting that the Fire Board had no power at all (not even over fire safety issues) and suggested that the Board step aside to yield to the will of the County Supervisors. The fact that election to the Fire Board is part of the General Election every four years, and that election by voters to the Fire Board comes with a clearly defined obligation to oversee and ensure fire safety in the District, was now being characterized as a position that was trifling and utterly powerless. The notion was repeatedly floated that the Fire District Board better not “get in the way” of the County Supervisors. Matters had come full circle.  What we were now hearing was reminiscent of the time when development interests openly controlled the Board.

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Yet another eyebrow-raising incident occurred when some researchers asked to submit pertinent information to those Board members who were drafting the District’s EIR response. One of these Board members angrily interceded, stating that the community had no business being involved in any part in the  process, not even as researchers or purveyors of information. The open flow of information was now being banned. Why this Board member was so resistant to community input was reminiscent of the previous developer-controlled Fire Board that was openly antagonistic toward community participation. It had become increasingly clear that the Stonegate developers had succeeded in inhibiting the Board from acting vigorously and unequivocally in the defense of the fire safety of the residents of the District.  Silence and a lack of transparency were now once again characterizing the Board’s behavior.       

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Contortions by the County Government

 To Avoid the Truth

San Diego County government has done everything in its power to prevent the truth about Stonegate’s fire danger from being revealed. Besides granting favors and concessions to the developers and treating them as “clients”[1]---a comment made by the Director of the County Department of Planning and Land Use---there are at least three separate ways that the County tried to squelch the challenge of independent, locally elected Fire Boards that acted as advocates for public safety. It is important to recall that the residents of the Deer Springs Fire District pay a special surcharge for fire protection and elect their own representatives to administer these funds.  Deer Springs is located in an area called a “State Responsibility Area” and CalFire (a state agency) is responsible for helping to fight and suppress fires in this area. The residents of this Fire District also pay state taxes to support the state’s efforts.

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As already discussed, the County had previously acknowledged that the Deer Springs Fire District had to approve Stonegate’s Fire Protection Plan before the project could move forward. This was the County’s position so long as the local Fire Board was controlled by the developer’s representatives.  After the 2006 Fire Board election, however, the County realized that Stonegate’s FPP would no longer be rubber-stamped by the Fire District. This had never occurred before in the history of the County, where all FPPs were automatically approved, no matter how deficient or devoid of content they might be. As a result of the election, the mantra of the Deer Springs Fire Board suddenly changed from “We cannot and will not stand in the way of development” to “We are responsible for ruling on fire safety and that we will do.” The County chose to ignore the Fire Board altogether and clandestinely approved Stonegate’s FPP (even though the County does not even provide fire protection for the District). The Fire Board subsequently went forward with its unanimous rejection of Stonegate’s FPP. The County and the Supervisors would imply have to deal with the fact that the local Fire Board having jurisdiction had gone on record stating that Stonegate’s FPP was inadequate and that the project posed a significant risk of injury or loss of life in the event of wildfire.

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The County’s second attack on the local Fire Board, and on the independent Fire Districts in general, was to try to disband the local fire districts altogether and coalesce them under one central authority (controlled by none other than the County) through a process involving a state organization called LAFCO. In this way, the County Supervisors could gain control over fire safety, including the evaluation and approval of Fire Protection Plans for new developments. In that way, the County would not be impeded by safety concerns when those concerns posed a problem for land use (development) decisions. Stonegate is a prime example of how unimportant it is to the County that a Fire Protection Plan ensure fire safety. Enormous monetary contributions to County politicians have made developers the most powerful special interest group in San Diego County. This has allowed development interests to influence and, in some cases, actually write County policy and law. There is evidence that the Building Industry Association has actually drafted policy that the County Supervisors directly incorporated into law.

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So far, the County has only been marginally successful in its overreaching plan to take control of local fire districts. Existing law and the great financial burden of creating a centralized fire bureaucracy have made this difficult but they will continue to try to gain power by seeking to eliminate local control under the guise of “efficiency” and “enhanced” fire protection. Coercing and shaping public opinion through the use of fear tactics is becoming increasingly common.

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The County’s third attack was to pass the Consolidated Fire Code in May 2007 that states that for independent fire protection districts, the Consolidated Fire Code is to be enforced by the person designated as the Chief in that district. The Deer Springs Fire Chief is granted the authority to stipulate all conditions for permits related to fire safety. Therefore, he may rule on the FPP. However, the organizational chart of the Deer Springs District places the Fire Chief under the Board. By state law, the Board has the power to hire and fire the Chief. The previous Deer Springs Chief consistently took the side of developers and repeatedly identified his principal role as that of "liaison between the County and the District" (as opposed to defining his role as overseer of the fire safety of the District residents). He saw himself as a political operative, which was an incredibly inappropriate view of his obligations and responsibilities to the taxpayers of his District. He in no way acted independently, with public safety as his overriding goal, given the political pressure brought to bear on his decisions. Thus, civilian control over a Fire Chief is extremely necessary when it comes to ensuring public safety and removing the influences of special interests. Of course, development interests, with both money and time on their side, will eventually try to regain control of the local Fire District Board. In the Deer Springs Fire District, community members are trying to maintain control over a District Board that is now being threatened by Horn surrogates.

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Will the Fox be in Charge of the Chicken Coop?

When the Board President resigned from the Fire District Board in early 2008, it left one vacancy to be filled. Board member Laurel Nicholson would not agree to any compromise candidate to fill the Board vacancy, and let a deadlock remain.  In the event of a deadlock, the law specifies that Supervisor Horn would fill the vacancy. Horn’s choice was exactly the person Nicholson wanted in the first place, Robert Frey. Frey is presently the Hidden Meadows Sponsor Group Chairman (another position appointed by  Horn). Horn now had his tentacles squarely around the Fire District Board. Horn is working toward recapturing the Fire District Board and have it do the bidding of the developers and special interests that have funded him over the past sixteen years.

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The Fire Board Elections of 2008

An important District Fire Board election will take place on November 4, 2008.  The 2006 election of the previous Fire Board was not a complete success but did result in the precedent-setting rejection of Stonegate’s dangerous Fire Protection Plan. Stonegate will now be trying to reverse that victory for public safety by electing its own advocates on the Fire Board. There are only two candidates that can be trusted to stand up to dangerous developments, Joan Van Ingen and Tim Geiser. If Van Ingen and Geiser are not elected, it is entirely predictable that the new Fire District Board will find a way to accommodate the Stonegate developers, in addition to raising the tax surcharge to the residents of the Deer Springs Fire District.

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There are many reasons that Stonegate is a dangerous and ill-conceived project. We have addressed the subject of wildland fire. It will be difficult for developers and politicians to ignore the fire safety issue going forward, especially if the District Fire Board is preserved as a forum for opposition to unsound, unsafe development.

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Conclusion

We believe that the subject of building in the WUI and its relationship to the ability to evacuate has been disregarded by our County government. The Stonegate developers did not even consider the danger of wildland fire as significant and did not even include fire danger on the list of controversial aspects of the project. It has been widely presumed throughout San Diego County that the concerns of wildland fire safety must not be allowed to interfere with new development. Particularly, as a result of the 2003 and 2007 fires, many in the community have taken a different view.

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Our government does not react until a catastrophe occurs. The out-of-control subprime mortgage fiasco has endangered the entire world’s economy. It was caused by corruption, greed, and lack of enforcement of existing regulations. The same is true of Stonegate. The warnings regarding Stonegate have been well-documented and well-publicized. If Stonegate is approved and a wildfire occurs that injures and kills people because of lack of evacuation options, the blame will be squarely on all those in County government who failed to stand up for public safety.  The analogy to the 1911 Triangle factory fire is frighteningly pertinent. In that case, inadequate evacuation was known to exist in a ten-story factory building (because of blocked and impassable stairwells) that resulted in the deaths of nearly 150 women when a fire broke out and they could not evacuate. By analogy, the building of a populous housing development atop a highly fire hazardous mountainous site, surrounding by a massive fuel load, with inadequate egress in the event of wildfire, can result in a similarly horrifying scenario on an infinitely more massive scale. Major wildfires are an accepted fact of life in California; being unable to evacuate is, however, not acceptable. Foisting a phony and self-serving fire “protection strategy” called “Shelter-in-Place” on an unsuspecting public is also not acceptable. Permitting a project to be built atop a potential bonfire is a politically scandalous decision that can and must be prevented before a large-scale tragedy results.

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It is rare to write about a catastrophe before it occurs. If the captain of the Titanic had slowed down, there would have been no headlines. If the escape stairwells were left unblocked in the Triangle factory building in New York City, there would have been no headlines. If the Hindenburg had not been built because of the obvious danger, there would have been no headlines.

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San Diego County government is now being told that a catastrophe is looming if this particular development is approved. The record has been extensively documented and remains for all time a somber witness and warning for any future event.

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Let’s see what happens.