Anaheim Criticizes County’s Analysis of Impact of New Jail

Orange County’s environmental impact report on a proposal to build a maximum security jail near Anaheim Stadium does not consider the potential adverse impact on the city, Anaheim officials said Friday in releasing the city’s comments on the report.

“We are very disappointed in the poor quality of the (county) study and its failure to disclose the devastating impact that constructing a jail adjacent to Anaheim Stadium will have on our community,” Mayor Pro Tem Irv Pickler said as he read from a written statement at a news conference at Anaheim City Hall.

The county’s draft environmental impact report, released Oct. 1, concluded that the proposed jail at Katella Avenue and Douglass Road would have no significant adverse environmental effect.

That report “stubbornly refuses to acknowledge that the proposed project would result in any unavoidable adverse environmental impacts,” the city said at the beginning of its 119 pages of comments.

The city’s comments protest that the county report ignores impacts related to social and economic issues as well as safety concerns. The city is not saying it necessarily would be adversely affected but criticizes the county for not reviewing that possibility more carefully, City Atty. Jack L. White said.

A second set of comments, also critical of the county, was released Friday by the Jail Action Committee, a coalition of Anaheim businesses and residents.

‘Not Germane to the Issue’

Michael M. Ruane of the Orange County Environmental Management Agency said the California Environmental Quality Act requires that environmental impact reports address environmental effects. And the county’s did that, he said.

Issues such as economic effects “are not germane to the issue in the EIR,” although they could be relevant to the supervisors in making their decision, Ruane said.

“We’re always willing to take a look at whatever creative solutions they offer, and we’ll be looking at that extensively,” Ruane said.

Anaheim officials have vehemently protested from the beginning plans to build a jail in the tourist-oriented city, which is the home of Disneyland, the California Angels baseball club, the Los Angeles Rams football team and a convention center.

The city’s comments were compiled by city staff and environmental planners, scientists and engineers from Jones & Stokes Inc. and attorneys from a private law firm. The review by the Jail Action Committee was prepared by New Jersey-based Louis Berger & Associates.

The county’s report, which the Board of Supervisors is expected to approve in final form Nov. 26, was the work of Newport Beach-based LSA.

The city responded on the last day of a 45-day period allotted for comments after the release of the county’s draft of its environmental impact report. Anaheim officials had requested an extension, but the county denied that request.

White said that if the draft environmental impact report is adopted in its present form, the city has grounds for a lawsuit. Ruane said the county has “anticipated the possibility of litigation throughout this process.”