Nothing Sneaky About Board Action

Your article regarding the Board of Supervisors’ action on the Paramount Ranch zoning case (“County Alters Report, Reapproves Housing Project,” Aug. 9) may have left the casual reader with an impression that the board was seeking to somehow secretly cover our tracks on this case.

However the facts are quite different. As anyone expert in the field of EIRs and the California Environmental Quality Act would readily attest, public agencies often prepare addenda to their environmental documentation whenever minor changes are made to a project as a part of the final approval, and this case is no different.

These addenda help satisfy the informational goals of CEQA by describing the approved project as clearly as possible. CEQA also encourages the use of addenda to allow for minor technical additions to provide for the most thorough impact report. Contrary to the impression left by the article, none of the information included in the addendum for this project was significant new material or information that the county was trying to withhold from scrutiny.

What the opposition to the case did not choose to disclose is that the board at my urging reduced the impacts of the project significantly--thereby triggering the need for the addenda. On my motion, the board reduced the project from 159 homes to 150, and we required the developer to provide a large continuous permanent open-space buffer adjacent to the park property to the south. We required 80% of the oak trees to be saved and we imposed other requirements to reduce the impacts on surrounding areas.

Two final points. First it should be remembered that the general plan in place when I became supervisor in 1980 permitted 234 homes on the site. Today that amount is only 150, or two-thirds of the original amount. Second, one should not forget that there were significant numbers of nearby homeowners who supported the approval of the case.

MICHAEL D. ANTONOVICH

Los Angeles

Antonovich is county supervisor for the 5th District.