SEAL BEACH : City OKs Policy on Archeological Finds

After two years of discussions, the City Council this week adopted guidelines to safeguard archeological finds and provide a way of notifying interested parties.

The unanimous vote Monday ended a lengthy standoff between city officials and preservationists over how to handle the confidentiality of archeological finds. Officials feared full public disclosure of historical finds because of possible looting, but preservationists and environmentalists wanted to ensure that groups such as American Indians be notified if a discovery is made.

To solve the problem, the council voted to form an archeological advisory committee to work closely with an archeologist chosen by the city. The committee will verify the accuracy and completeness of any archeological reports.

Moira Hahn, a member of the now-defunct archeological task force which devised the new element of the city’s General Plan in collaboration with city staff, praised the decision. “It would put the control of an archeological excavation solely in the hands of the City Council” instead of developers, she said.

Hahn added that the adopted element also provides safeguards against archeological information becoming public knowledge.

Before the adoption of the measure, city officials had little to no access to archeological information on local development sites. Developers were hiring their own archeologists, and reports on findings were being sent to distant state offices where they received little attention, Hahn said.

This process became an issue in 1990 after the Mola Development Corp. proposed a massive development plan on the Hellman Ranch property that, according to the Gabrielino Indian tribe, would have meant the destruction of burial sites.

Preservationists were concerned that the city would not be informed by the developer of any archeological discoveries on the land, the last large undeveloped plot here.

“There were no checks and balances,” said Mark Hotchkiss, a member of the city’s Environmental Quality Control Board. “During the Mola stuff, the council, Native Americans had no insight as to what (developers) were doing.”

Even after the defeat of the proposed Mola project, preservationists said that the city needed to include in its General Plan an element that would protect future archeological and historical finds in the city.

With the newly adopted element, the council can oversee the archeological aspects of all development projects while leaving the cost to the developer.