PORT HUENEME : Council OKs Revised RV Park Proposal

The Port Hueneme City Council on Wednesday backed limits on a proposal to build a recreational vehicle resort at the south end of Hueneme Beach.

In a 3-1 vote, the council approved a revised plan that includes a request from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Department of Fish and Game asking the city to establish environmental buffer zones along the project’s perimeter.

In the vote, the council also asked the city staff to pull the city’s application to build the resort, now before the Coastal Commission, until it can resubmit the revised plans.

Councilwoman Toni Young voted against the measure, saying she would like to see the project moved to the opposite end of the beach because of environmental concerns, and Councilman Dorill B. Wright was absent.

A Coastal Commission staff report in August had recommended that the $2.3-million project be rejected, citing the RV park’s potential damage to habitat used by the endangered California least tern.

But Community Development Director Tom Figg said the city has tried to comply with environmental concerns. Several consultants will begin reconfiguration of the 10-acre site to include the buffer zones as a way to protect wildlife and vegetation around the proposed 143-space RV park.

Figg said the new studies will involve three consultants at a cost of $69,000, on top of $100,000 already spent on an environmental report. City officials expect the city to net $400,000 annually from the resort.

Paul Neibergs, a San Francisco Bay Area attorney representing the Sierra Club and a seaside homeowners group in a suit against the city over the project, said the proposed revisions to the RV park plan did not change the group’s stance.

Neibergs added that the fact that the western snowy plover, another bird that nests and forages at Hueneme Beach, was recently federally listed as threatened makes the project all the more troublesome.