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Great Park tries to keep contamination info under wrap
June 5th, 2009, 4:00 am · 20 Comments · posted by Sean Emery
Great Park leaders want to make sure there are no leftover contaminates on the El Toro base where they plan to build sports fields, community farms and a man-made lake. So, they are paying $250,000 for environmental studies to …their … lawyers.
Why go through lawyers and not an environmental consultant, who would actually do the work?
Well, says Great Park CEO Mike Ellzey, it would prevent “sensitive” environmental information from getting out in its raw form. It would keep the work confidential, and preliminary conclusions private, protected by the attorney-client privilege.
So. Does that mean, if the environmental report is not good news, then it won’t be shared with the public? Irvine Councilwoman and Great Park Board member Christina Shea worries that this could be the case.
“If public health is at risk,” she said, “The public should know what we are finding….Whenever they have an opportunity to keep things in the dark, that is what they do.”
But park spokesman Steve Larsen denied that anything is being hidden from public view. “Anything that is part of this item will be shared with the public,” he said.
And whose idea was it to go through Rutan and Tucker – one of two Great Park legal teams? “This is the advice we have been given by our lawyers to go through this process,” Larsen said.
PAYING THE ENVIRONMENTAL TAB
The Great Park’s board of directors has set aside $500,000 for the environmental study, half earmarked to Rutan and Tucker, and the other half earmarked to Great Park Design Studio consultant WRNS Studios. Both Rutan and Tucker and WRNS are expected to sub-contract with an environmental firm.
Shea believes that park leaders could use the attorney arrangement to shield negative findings from public scrutiny. (Although, despite her worries, Shea was among seven Great Park board member’s who unanimously approved the plan.)
City officials say there is nothing unusual about the plan, pointing out that WRNS was chosen because of its role in the Great Park’s design, and that Rutan and Tucker was chosen to address any legal issues that may arise.
GETTING THE NAVY’S OK
While Irvine leaders are eager to kick off work at the Great Park, city officials said that they still need the Navy’s sign-off before they can begin construction on portions of the initial 500 acre-plan.
And that’s where the new environmental review fits in, with city officials looking to contract with an environmental firm to compile tens of thousands of pages of data from the panorama of federal, state and county oversight agencies tasked with cleaning up what was once considered one of the nation’s most contaminated military installations.
The consulting firm would provide “an overarching plan that will, in part, be used to ensure that all parties… are informed and/or apprised of all applicable environmental issues/restrictions during park construction activities,” Irvine spokesman Craig Reem wrote in an e-mail to the Register.
Some Irvine leaders have been infuriated by the past release of internal reports prepared by Great Park consultants -most notably last year’s determination by a city-hired oversight firm that the project will eventually cost several hundred million dollars more than originally expected.
A LEGAL PROTECTION?
The plan may not work.
A few First Amendment and open meeting experts pointed out that the city’s legal team running a consulting contract doesn’t automatically mean that the information will fall under attorney-client privilege.
“If it doesn’t take an attorney to do a job you are having the attorney do, the attorney-client privilege does not apply to the communications,” said Terry Francke, general counsel for Californian’s Aware. “I don’t see how it results in them getting any better consultation services, and that presumably should be the determining factor.”
Peter Scheer of California First Amendment Coalition said it was hard to tell in advance whether a particular document is covered by attorney-client privilege.
“They are being clever, but maybe a bit too clever,” Scheer said.
(Great Park Chairman and Irvine City Councilman Larry Agran declined to comment for this story.)
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That base was there and active years before anyone worried about dumping hazardous chemicals. I would bet if any real independent studies were done the whole base might become a superfund sight.
It already is designated as a superfund site:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/r9/sfund/r9sfdocw.nsf/vwsoalphabetic/El+Toro+Marine+Corps+Air+Station?OpenDocument
I wonder how much overhead the lawyers are getting on the deal? Basically Irvine is using taxpayer dollars to hide information from taxpayers. Brilliant!
you hit the nail on the head Travis
“This is the advice we have been given by our lawyers to go through this process.”
Oddly enough, lawyers recommend that you should hire them.
Hey Mike Ellzey:
You can not get around the publlc information act by simply hiring an attorney and using the attorney client privledge statutes to intentionally side step around another law. And you just said you are doing that very thing in the news paper. What, are you retarded?
This will be another big waste of tax payer dollars.
Good job Irvine….
Retarded is probably the wrong word. Sorry.
But still, this is bad plan that is obviously going to be a big waste.
Such an amazing scam, I’m surprised they aren’t under investigation yet. Talk about all the money wasted on this giant farce.
Unbelievable! Another chapter in the story of the Great Boondoggle. I can understand why Chairman Agran declined to comment for this story, but not why he is still smiling.
It’s time to kill this great park fiasco and put it out of it’s misery!
And take it out of the hands of the clowns in Irvine running it!
Let’s get an initiative together. We’ll call it, THE UN-PARK INITIATIVE!
Or; KILL THE CLOWN PARK! OR BALLOON PARK!
Which one do you all like?
all sad billionaires, irvine co, exxon-mobil- shea-kol, et al, and your estates and attys–all ya’ll please exit the state of california and move over to your– east. no not that east– i mean texas. go there now go there quick– dont surf dont hike and dont “make” more roads and parks and houses for “the people of california” or orange county! just like i tell the telemarketers:
when i want something I WILL CALL YOU!
superfund sounds supersonic to me!! and we have all those fancy schmancy computin’ boxes now—- and i bet somebody has been keepin some fancy numbers! whooooooooo whooooooo!
saddle up! head em up MOVE EM OUT– NOW!
Surprise Surprise Surprise! The Great Pork is a complete joke and is failing miserably. Irvine has been given ample opportunity to create a world class park WITHOUT the use of public money.
Almost 4 years after Lennar gained title to the base, we have maybe 50 acres of “park” with an eyesore balloon and the cost to date so far has been hundreds of millions of dollars so far. Not to mention federal pork handouts from Barbie Boxer. Just the groveling for federal handouts alone is good enough reason to stick a fork in the Great Pork.
Let’s face it. The Great Pork is a financial sinkhole. It is time for the Agranistas to face reality and pick up the phone and call Los Angeles and lease the land for a world class international airport.
Doing so would create thousands of jobs, create DEMAND for the oversupply of housing, and be convenient for air travel. Gas prices are on the rebound. So it will only be more expensive to travel to LAX, Ontario, San Diego etc.
eltoroairport.blogspot.com
This all just goes to show what those guys have been saying at http://www.ElToroNow.com is right. They’ve been dead-on about the contamination cover-up, and this article is just more proof. I can’t wait until there’s a major law firm that comes down on the side of the good residents of Irvine who have been kept in the dark about the contamination on and around El Toro for years. Imagine waking up and finding out your home in Irvine is worthless because of the contamination that sits under thousands of Irvine homes. After all, who would want to buy a home anywhere near this toxic mess? Try nobody!
Lets see how much more taxpayer cash they skim before the Great Park is declared DOA. It will end up like the Orange County Fair, a freebie feeding trough for those more connected than the low life,unwashed taxpayer.
Interesting posting…thanks to that person who posted the link to the El Toro Now site.
I just hit that site and then google’d.
“TCE contamination”
The Google search engine gave me a choice to run “TCE Contamination Shannon”.
Guess what?
The city of Shannon, Quebec, Canada was next to a large military base which used TCE as a solvent (sound familiar)?
The city of only 2000 people used ground water wells for water supply (Sound familiar?)
The wells were found to have TCE in them and they’ve been cleaning it up since.
http://thecambridgeadvocate.com/archives/the-education-of-shannon-quebec/
Take a look at this site:
http://thecambridgeadvocate.com/archives/northstar-tce-cambridge-ontario-and-a-planned-school/
And here: the clean is being reported on
http://news.therecord.com/News/Local/article/542953
The longer these people wait on the clean up, the longer the plume seeps and moves.
This has been know about for 20 years!!!
Seriously folks, it’s time to consider firing the entire team that’s currently working of the “Great Park/Debacle” and start anew without the big $$ law firms, pie-in-the-sky design studies, and “skilled executives” managing this thing right into the ground,
They’ve spent over $60 million dollars and all they have to show for it are a bunch of really bad renderings of what the park could look like. I’m sure a heck of a lot of golf outings were worked into the executive review sessions as well. Bunch of losers!!!!
Couldn’t have said it better myself Christopher W. Why hasn’t the OCR gotten to the bottom of this? This swindle needs to be uncovered before more money is wasted.
The good news about this article is that Larry Agran did not contribute to it. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll soon have an article about a contaminated airport that threatens Woodbridge rather than a park. Your pictures tell the story.
Does any one know if surrounding cities, like Tustin Ranch, Costa Mesa, Newport or Huntington Beach are on the same water supply as Irvine and drinking water with TCE?? Does this mean that most of OC’s water is contaminated??
I believe Tustin Ranch may be supplied by IRWD (Irvine Ranch Water District) I don’t think Newport HB or CM are.
How about Lake Forest which borders Irvine as well, where IRWD supplies most of its water to, plus the southeast section of the El Toro base (Alton Pkwy-Irvine Blvd) comes within a couple of blocks of the Irvine/Lake Forest border (Bake Pkwy)
Being a resident of this area for several years now i have noticed many unusual odors coming in my home with the windows open at various times during the day, i usually just dismiss it as a plume of pollution (sort of smells like burning tires) but i wonder now if it has something to do with the somewhat close proximity to the former El Toro base.