Page 9 - northlake_appeal_20180423

Jodie Sackett, County of Los Angeles
June 16, 2017
Page 7

accommodate the species. Therefore there is no substantial evidence in support of your
conclusion of no significant impact.

With respect to the coastal California gnatcatcher ("CAGN") you again assert no significant
impact based on monitoring during vegetation removal and the "preservation," creation and
enhancement of habitat under MM's 5.2-1, -2, -6, -12 and -13, as well as consultation with the
USFWS under MM 5.2-15 (you inaccurately refer to this as consultation with CDFW). First,
MM 5.2-6 which provides for sage scrub mitigation does not call for any sort of conservation
easement, which would be necessary to assure that impacts are actually reduced, and second, you
provide that "implementation shall begin not more than one year following project impacts to
this habitat type." The CAGN will plainly be impacted in the interim as there is an entire
breeding season that will be missed. Mitigation must be complete prior to impacts to the sage
scrub onsite. Additionally, the Habitat Mitigation and Monitoring Plan ("HMMP") could easily
have been developed already but you defer both it and its performance criteria to a future time
(DSEIR at 5.2-45). And there is no provision for maintenance beyond 5 years, and the potential
for monitoring for far less than that, which means that it would be impossible to sufficiently
establish that performance criteria would be met.

Additionally, your MM's specify at MM 5.2-13 that to comply with the Migratory Bird Treaty
Act, you will establish buffers of a mere 25 feet around nests. This is entirely unacceptable; an
appropriate buffer is more like 200 feet. See Attachment Bat 1-11. Finally, raptors begin
nesting around January 1, not February 1. See Attachment C.

Fire Hazards

At 5.5-5 you document the Santa Clarita Valley recent wildfire history, acknowledging over 270
fires since 1960. Earlier you concede that the "growing wildland-urban interface has exposed
communities to zones that are highly vulnerable to wildfires." At 5.5-10 you state Santa Clarita
is designated a "VHRHSZ" but you do not spell out what this means. At 5.5-12 you note that
L.A. County General Plan policy S 3.1 requires discouraging high density and intensity
development in VHFHSZ's, which is precisely the opposite of what this Project does. For this if
not other reasons, the Project conflicts with the County's General Plan.

Threshold 5.5-4: Would the Project expose people or structures to a significant risk of loss,
injury or death involving.fires, because the Project is located within a Very High Fire Hazard
Severity Zone?, and Threshold 5.5-7: Would the Project expose people or structures to a
significant risk of loss, injury or death involving.fires? You acknowledge that "The Project site
is within a designated VHFHSZ area and would be essentially surrounded by undeveloped lands
in the VHFHSZ category." Nevertheless, you assert that with compliance with the County Code
and a "Fire Management Program" that has apparently not yet been developed, "impacts ...
would be less than significant." There is essentially no substantial evidence in support of this
conclusion in light of your earlier comments and the L.A. County General Plan.