Malibu Bluffs Ark

 Image: Jan Brueghel, Paradise Landscape with Noah's Ark, from the collection of the Getty Museum.

No, the title of this post is not a typo. Ever since the City of Malibu swapped Charmlee Wilderness Park to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy in exchange for Bluffs Park Open Space in 2014, controversy has raged around the park's future. The five-year swap between the city and the SMMC was intended to allow both parties to examine how the swapped properties could be used. At Bluffs, the city's goal was to use the time to explore building sports facilities in the open space park. The key word is explore. The swap didn't come with any guarantees that development would be feasible.

A wish list for Bluffs Park at a workshop at Malibu City Hall, © 2017 S. Guldimann

The City of Malibu hired a consultant to develop a plan that included a wish list of recreation facilities. However, as Malibu city staff began meeting with California Coastal Commission staff to discuss the plan, they were made aware of the extent of the constraints on the site. The city's plans for the park went from this:

To this:

Critics of the athletic facility expansion argue that even the revised project has too great an impact on environmental resources and does not adequately meet the city's environmentally sensitive habitat area setback requirements.

Proponents of the plan are upset by the prospect of downscaling or relocate some of the desired facilities elsewhere. In a recent editorial, the publisher of the Malibu Times argued that every potential site in Malibu has issues:

"Every site they choose has its problems: construction problems, size problems, noise problems, neighbor problems, access problems, parking problems and so on, and there will always be a reason not to do it."

That's certainly true, but not every site is also mapped Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Area, home to as many as eight California special concern species, and a foraging area for a species of raptor with special protections. 

Not every site was originally purchased with taxpayer-funded bond money to be open space as part of the Coastal Commission's first priority acquisitions list under the Coastal Act. 

And while we're at it, not many sites have as many geological issues, including active landslides and the section of the Malibu Coast Earthquake Fault that prevented this parcel from being developed in the first place. 

Geology isn't our focus with this post, but it's worth spending a moment reflecting on it. The bluffs that give this park its name are still eroding due to active landslide zones. Here's the view from the top:

Bluffs Park erosion, © 2107 S. Guldimann

Here's the view from Malibu Road, where a landslide has been reactivated by the past winter's rains. There are six landslide faults along Malibu Road in Bluffs Park.

Malibu Road landslide, winter 2017. © S. Guldimann

The yellow dotted lines on the geology map, below, indicate the landslide zones in Bluffs Park, the arrows show the direction of the slide. That big black dotted line running through the middle of the park is the Malibu Coast Fault, an offshoot of the San Andreas Fault, and one of the reasons the Santa Monica Mountains—and Malibu—run east-west, instead of north-south.

The geology that prevented this site from being developed first as a General Motors facility that would have been similar in scope to the Hughes lab up the hill, and then as a housing tract like the one next to Pepperdine, is part of what makes this small pocket of open space unusual. The deep ravines and sloping coastal terraces, volcanic intrusions and alluvial soils are critical habitat for species that can't survive elsewhere, and that is the main point of this post. 

At a recent Malibu Parks and Recreation Commission meeting, the majority of the commissioners weren't aware of one of the main issues with the park plan: not the geology, but the presence of special concern species in the area proposed for development. If they weren't aware of this, then most Malibu residents probably aren't, either. 

Four California Special Concern Species were identified at Bluffs Park in 2010 during a biology survey for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy's camping plan environmental impact report:

1. Catalina Mariposa Lily. This etherial flower landed on the California Species of Special Concern list because of habitat loss. It grows from a bulb deep in the earth and can remain dormant for long periods when conditions aren't right. In a good year, hundreds bloom in Bluffs Park.

Bluffs Park Mariposa Lilies © 2017 S. Guldimann

2. Blainville Coast Horned Lizard. In more than a decade as as environmental journalist and photographer I've built a fairly substantial library of plant and animal photos. The horned lizard isn't in that collection, because I haven't seen one in years, despite the fact that this small lizard was still fairly common when I was a child. It is plummeting towards extinction throughout its range at a frightening rate due to loss of habitat and the introduction of a highly aggressive and invasive ant species that drives out the native ants that are this lizard's only source of food.

 

Image: USGS

3. Yellow-breasted Chat. You are more likely to hear the chat than see it, despite its bright yellow breast. This is a shy scrub dweller that likes the safety of the willows and laurel sumacs in Bluff Park's riparian area. It is on the special concern list primarily due to habitat loss.

Image: wikipedia

4. California Yellow Warbler. The tiny yellow warbler depends on the same kind of riparian woodland the chat requires, and like the chat its numbers have plummeted in California due to (surprise!) habitat loss.

Image: Wikipedia

There are the two additional California special concern plant species documented on site by the California Native Plant Society in the past year, according to a report they submitted to the city:

5. Dudleya Cymosa, spp ovatifolia. There are several dudleya species at Bluffs. This one may be the smallest, but it is also the rarest. Also known as Santa Monica Mountains dudleya, it grows only in the coast ranges from Ventura to Orange County, with the highest concentrations right here in and around the Malibu area. This dudleya is on the rare plant list because of its limited distribution and, yes, loss of habitat.

Image: NPS

6. Plummer's Baccharis. This rare plant is also limited to the south coast ranges, although it occurs on some of the Channel Islands. Like the dudleya, it is on the special concern list due to its limited distribution and habitat loss. Plants like this can only grow in highly specific conditions, putting them at increased risk not only from habitat loss but also climate change.

Image: Anthony Valois,  NPS

The presence of these six specially listed species at Malibu Bluffs Park Open Space is fully documented by qualified experts. Their presence in the park is scientific fact. 

Reliable witnesses have added the Coastal whiptail lizard and the loggerhead shrike to the park's menagerie of protected species, giving us a total of eight California Special Concern Species in Bluffs Park.

The shy and retiring coastal whiptail lizard is rarely seen except in spring during mating season. This beautiful  and amazing lizard was missed by the SMMC's EIR, but has reportedly been spotted at the park by a recent observer. Habitat loss has pushed this once-common species almost entirely out of the Malibu coastal zone. When the last remaining viable habitat is developed or fragmented it will have nowhere to go. The only voice it has is our voice. Photo @ 2017 S. Guldimann

I photographed this loggerhead shrike not at Bluffs, but at the city's recently acquired Trancas Fields Park—the other potential site for ballfields. The birds were spotted this winter at both parks. Like the other special concern species, this fierce little bird, which preys on snakes and lizards nearly its own size, is increasingly at risk from habitat loss. It's not adaptable. When it is pushed out of the only kind of habitat it can survive in, it can't move on. It simply dies out. Photo © 2017 S. Guldimann

The survey conducted by biologist Kathleen Dayton on April 26–28, 2010, for the Conservancy's EIR, also noted that another listed species of plant, Coulter’s saltbrush, had previously been observed at the site, and that another rare bird, the coastal California gnatcatcher, “cannot be ruled out,” although neither species was observed during her survey. 

There's another species  with special protections who is regularly seen foraging in the fields at Bluffs Park Open Space: the white-tailed kite. 

Every year, white-tailed kites winter at Bluffs Park, using the now-dead eucalyptus trees as a lookout and foraging in the open space park's fields for their prey. Photo © 2017 S. Guldimann

At its August 10 meeting at King Gillette Ranch, right here in the Santa Monica Mountains, the California Coastal Commission unanimously supported special protections for white-tailed kite foraging areas in an amendment to Santa Barbara County's Local Costal Program. South Coast Director Steve Hudson described the birds as rare and special, and made a point of stating that their foraging areas require protection from development.

Bluffs Park is home to an amazing number of threatened, protected, and rare species in a small area and there may still be more that have not been identified—species that have returned or recovered following the 2007 fire, but there's another major environmental obstacle for development in the park. Here's a photo of city officials standing in the middle of it right after the swap took place:

First Official City of Malibu Bluffs Park Tour, 2014, Image © S. Guldimann

The group shown above, which included former City Manager Jim Thorsen and two Malibu City Council members, was standing in the center of fields of native needle grass, talking  about plans for ballfields, oblivious to the rare habitat under their feet. 

In a 2003 memorandum to Coastal Commission Staff on ESHA in the Santa Monica Mountains, ecologist John Dixon stated: “Native perennial grasslands are now exceedingly rare. In California, native grasslands once covered nearly 20 percent of the land area, but today are reduced to less than 0.1 percent. The California Natural Diversity Database lists purple needle grass habitat as a community needing priority monitoring and restoration.”

Native needle grass may not look impressive, but its presence at Bluffs is important.

Purple Needlegrass, Image © 2017 S. Guldimann

According to the California Coastal Commission document, “grasslands with 10 percent or more cover by needle grass [are] significant. The memo recommends that this habitat be protected as "remnants of original California prairie," and concludes that "patches of this sensitive habitat occur throughout the Santa Monica Mountains.”

Purple Needlegrass at Bluffs Park © 2017 S. Guldimann

Needlegrass was lush and abundant at Bluffs Park this spring. This whole meadow of it is right where a parking lot is proposed, and there appears to be a much higher concentration of it than just 10 percent. Recent surveys conducted by the California Native Plant Society indicate that the Malibu Bluffs Park wildfire burn area, which was damaged in 2007 and contained extensive areas of native grassland as well as coastal sage scrub, is making a strong recovery. Species that weren't observed during the 2010 SMMC EIR study due to the fire, are reportedly making a comeback. 

We spend a lot of time talking about ESHA in Malibu, but there are some strange misconceptions about it. A former local politician who really ought to have known better recently argued that disturbed ESHA is no longer ESHA, and that the part of the park damaged during the 2007 fire ought to be fair game for development. That's not how it works. 

The City of Malibu's Coastal Land Use Plan defines ESHA as:

1. Areas in which plant or animal life or their habitats are either rare or especially valuable because of their special nature or role in an ecosystem and which could be easily disturbed or degraded by human activities and developments are Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Areas (ESHAs) and are generally shown on the LUP ESHA Map. 
   
   The LUP also states: 
   
   
   4. 3.4  Any area not designated on the LUP ESHA Map that meets the ESHA criteria is ESHA and shall be accorded all the protection provided for ESHA in the LCP. The following areas shall be considered ESHA, unless there is compelling site-specific evidence to the contrary:
      
      • Any habitat area that is rare or especially valuable from a local, regional, or statewide basis.
        
      • Areas that contribute to the viability of plant or animal species designated as rare, threatened, or endangered under State or Federal law.
        
      • Areas that contribute to the viability of species designated as Fully Protected or Species of Special Concern under State law or regulations.
        
      • Areas that contribute to the viability of plant species for which there is compelling evidence of rarity, for example, those designated 1b (Rare or endangered in California and elsewhere) or 2 (rare, threatened or endangered in California but more common elsewhere) by the California Native Plant Society.
        
        
   5. And also:
      
      
   6. 3.6  Any area mapped as ESHA shall not be deprived of protection as ESHA, as required by the policies and provisions of the LCP, on the basis that habitat has been illegally removed, degraded, or species that are rare or especially valuable because of their nature or role in an ecosystem have been eliminated. 
      
      
      
      
      

Almost the entire Bluffs Park, including the area where new ballfields and parking lots are proposed, is designated ESHA on the city's official map. It's the green area under the word "coast" in the map, above. 

The presence of all of this ESHA at Bluffs Park and the threatened species that depend on it for existence raise some interesting ethical questions. It's a kind of microcosm of the political perspective that takes the position that human desires deserve to take precedence over environmental concerns, that the reward now will be greater than the price we may pay later. 

Here in California we are constantly reminded of what is at stake. It's right there on our state flag:

The last documented native California grizzly bear was killed in August of 1922, less than a hundred years ago.  Today, this species lives on only as a symbol of what was lost, but hopefully also as a reminder of what we still stand to lose. 

My dad worked hard to save the Point Dume headlands from becoming first a hotel, and then a California State Parks beach parking lot. He was part of the effort to put both Point Dume and the Bluffs on the Coastal Commission's first priority acquisitions list. No one today would think a parking lot was a good use for what is now the Point Dume Nature Preserve. 

In the 1970s, the county thought it would be a good idea to bulldoze what is now the Point Dume Preserve and turn it into a large paved parking lot. It didn't happen because activists with clearer vision prevailed. @ 2017 S. Guldimann

The Adamson House was also scheduled to become a beach parking lot. The fight to save it was led by Judge John Merrick. It's a landmark, a museum, a priceless cultural resource today, but it also almost ended up being a parking lot, not because State Parks is evil—it's not—but because a decision was made somewhere on paper, without actually looking at and understanding what was at stake. That forgotten and ignominious planner was right, we do need more beach parking, but not at the expense of something that can't be replaced once lost.

The Adamson House, once destined to be torn down for a parking lot. © 2017 S. Guldimann

We've created a world where nature is increasing forced into islands of parkland, arks as much as parks that contain the remnants of a vanishing world. However, as natural resources continue to diminish, we seem to be increasingly looking towards the places we set aside with different goals in mind. The new fight to save the national monuments and parks from oil exploration and mining is the big example, but even a tiny park like Malibu Bluffs Park can highlight this dichotomy. 

Malibu's mission statement, General Plan, and Local Coastal Plan all place an emphasis on protecting environmentally sensitive habitat area. It's a key element of the Coastal Act. Either something is ESHA or it isn't. If it is, it needs to be protected from all development, not just from development we don't want. Otherwise, what's the point? 

This isn't just an argument over maps with red and purple lines, it's about the environmental impacts of replacing this:

Bluffs Park Meadow © 2017 S. Guldimann

With this:

Bluffs Park Ballfields © 2017 S. Guldimann

Whether or not that change is compatible in any realistic way with the continued survival of the special concern species that have been documented on the site remains to be seen, but it's unrealistic to claim that there will be no impact. Coastal Commission staff have already made it clear that there are substantial issues. Ultimately, ESHA will be the deciding factor in the debate over Bluffs. 

Bluffs Park Path © 2017 S. Guldimann

Malibu Bluffs Park Open Space is an island in a rapidly changing landscape, an ark that carries a fragile living cargo. Maybe the fate of a small lizard or a rare flower doesn't matter equally to everyone, but these animals and plants have special protections at the state level and that's because they are balanced on the edge of extinction. And this time it isn't some soulless corporation or profit-obsessed developer who is conspiring to help shove them over, it's us—the people of Malibu who have always worked together to combat pollution, protect resources and open space, and fight for environmental justice, except, I guess, when there's something we want badly enough to look the other way. 

What happens to Bluffs Park Open Space has serious consequences that go far beyond local wants or desires. We all need to rise above politics-as-usual and work together to find a viable solution that provides athletic facilities without sacrificing environmental resources. To do that fairly and thoroughly those resources—lizard, bird, flower and leaf of grass—have to be a major part of the discussion, otherwise all that talk about stewardship and environmental responsibility is just talk.

Bluffs Park Open Space Park © 2017 S. Guldimann

High Stakes

Traffic and development continue to dominate the Malibu election discussion.

In a recent editorial, Malibu Times editor Arnold York wrote: 

"One of the problems I always have with city council elections is that there are truly not many issues on the table. I don’t think there is anyone in Malibu that endorses rampant development nor can I ever remember anyone advocating it. Of course, what I might call normal expansion, you might call rampant development."

One reason we haven't seen rampant development in the Civic Center area is because there have been too many constraints to overcome. Many local activists have expressed the concern that the city's new wastewater treatment plant will soon remove developers' biggest obstacle. 

This is an official City of Malibu map of past and future development in the Malibu Civic Center area. M is for sale, O sold last year, the owners of S and L sued the city over Measure R, and Q is already approved to become a 110,000-square-foot shopping center. These properties represent a lot of potential change for a small area.

Another reason is that the impact of development is cumulative. Unless there's a massive project that brings large numbers of the community together in opposition, bit by bit development—often described as "piecemealing," can go unnoticed. A setback variance here, a height variance there, and before anyone realizes what's happened we find ourselves with the Great Wall of Malibu instead of a view of the coast. It's hard to know when it happened. One day the open space is there, the next it isn't.

Along large stretches of Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu development is so dense one would never know the ocean is right on the other side of the road. The situation is somewhat better on the western end of town, but the proliferation of massive landscape plantings, like ficus hedges, block the view as efficiently as eastern Malibu's garage doors and massive houses.

It seems to be an unspoken law of the universe that once a city is established it seeks to grow. Cities have planning departments not conservation departments, and planners have much in common with hair stylists—always trying to give you a cutting edge (so to speak) haircut when all you want is the ends trimmed. However, hair grows back, the environment doesn’t. And the burden of environmental oversight in Malibu has remained the responsibility of the citizens, as the city officials wield their metaphorical scissors in what often seems a determined effort to give Malibu the planner's version of a mullet.

If all one had to go on was the strip of Malibu that lines PCH one would not give these "27 miles of scenic beauty" a second glance.

What does it say about eastern Malibu that beach access has been systematically reduced from this:

This 1950 aerial photo of Malibu Road from the collection of the Los Angeles Public Library shows modest houses and long stretches of open shoreline.

To this?

Today, the same stretch of coast is wall-to-wall houses. Every time a permit is issued for a rebuild, the replacement house is bigger than the one it replaced, as developers attempt to push the limits of the city's building codes to the breaking point. Yes, property owners have rights, but the city has a responsibility, too, not just to ensure that plans meet code requirements but that they comply fully with local coastal planning requirements WITHOUT excessive variances.

That wall of houses leaves little room for the actual beach. Visitors who navigate their way to east Malibu beach accessways get to enjoy a patch of perpetually damp sand under a row of majestically cantilevered decks. 

Oh look! A public beach accessway!

Alas, the illusion that the stairway leads to the splendors of nature is rapidly dispelled.

You do, however, get to enjoy a worm's eye view of the underneath of other people's houses. That monster in the distance was under construction when I took this photo. It replaced a modest house that did not intrude dramatically into the ocean.

 Malibu journalist Hans Laetz once described Malibu’s current system of balances like this:

 “If the current system is working, it is only because a few dedicated folks are continuously playing CEQA [California Environmental Quality Act] whack-a-mole down at City Hall.”

Even on a perfect day when the water is clear and clean and the sun is golden, and the historic Malibu Pier looks like a picture postcard the vision is marred by Malibu's version of urban sprawl. Photo © 2016 S. Guldimann

Here's a closer look. Pacific Coast Highway turned into a wall of stucco one project at a time. 

This is the same view in the 1940s. The long white building was the shed for the Ridge railroad.

Grassroots efforts have curtailed many major Malibu projects, ranging from the marina and the freeway, to the county's plans for a city of 200,000, but residents just don't have the resources to go up against every cash grab proposed by shortsighted development interests. 

Property owners have the right to develop their property, but they aren't entitled to excessive variances that allow them to impinge on public views and key environmental resources, and that sense of  entitlement is something that has been overly relied on for decades. 

The main objection to the so-called "Whole Foods in the Park" shopping center development was the number of variances granted to the developer, including the infamous vertical landscaping in place of open space. As  projects emerge for new Civic Center development will the variances for height and density granted earlier developers end up becoming expected entitlements? The Malibu Bay Company's "76,000-square-foot "Sycamore Village" is planned for the property on the corner of Stuart Ranch Road and Civic Center Way. The 110,000 square-foot La Paz shopping center already has its permits. The 3.5-acre Knapp property sold last year. It can support 23,000 square feet of development and isn't subject to Measure R. The 6.5-acre Ioki property, next to city hall, is currently on the market and could be developed with up to 42,000 square feet. Change is coming. Will this part of the community ultimately end up looking like an extension of Malibu's Great Wall?   

Are we going to end up with more of this?

This monster was forced through right before cityhood in the late 1980s. It's a prime example of what Malibu shouldn't be, but that doesn't stop developers from dreaming up similar projects.

Where did this thing come from and why did anyone think it was a good idea? The county isn't to blame for this one—it cropped up recently. When I was small child my dad used to take me to to buy African violets here for Mother's Day. It was Bowman Nursery back then, a private house with a greenhouse behind it where hundreds of flowers grew in neat purple and pink profusion. It changed from a small empty house to a giant empty office building seemingly overnight. It's a double shame, since it is right next door to the Malibu Synagogue and Jewish Center, a beautiful building that is designed to blend into the landscape.

Or can we maintain the qualities described in the city's Mission Statement that make Malibu a "unique land and marine environment and residential community" ?

Once one escapes from Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu really is 27 miles of scenic beauty, or at least maybe 19 miles of scenic beauty and seven or eight of obnoxious beach houses and commercial development. The two biggest challenges for Malibu moving forward will be to prevent "infilling," or changes to the city's zoning that permit higher density development and out of scale overdevelopment, and finding ways to retire commercial property and maintain open space.

Maybe the question we should be asking this year's city council candidates isn't what they stand for but what they have stood against.

That's the last empty lot on PCH in eastern Malibu, the last glimpse of ocean and horizon. Is it destined to become another section of the Great Wall, or are there other alternatives for Malibu's future?

It is difficult to focus on local issues when all of the attention is on a national election that resembles a cross between Monty Python and a post-apocalyptic horror film, but this November 8 Malibu residents will elect a city council that will weigh in on many key development issues. Let's make sure that the people we select are committed to the Malibu Mission Statement, so Malibu doesn't accidentally end up resembling a suburb of this place: