Environmentalists File U.S. Suit to Block Playa Vista Project

Environmentalists sought Tuesday to halt the massive Playa Vista development and its vaunted DreamWorks SKG studio for the second time this year, alleging in a federal lawsuit that government engineers failed to conduct a sweeping review of the project’s impact on fragile wetlands.

The Ballona Wetlands Trust and the Wetlands Action Network claim in the suit filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles that a partial review conducted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did not satisfactorily account for the project’s overall effects on the area’s natural habitats.

The suit also alleges that the corps performed an inadequate assessment of the first phase of the development, which calls for offices, apartments, the DreamWorks studio and a freshwater marsh at the Playa del Rey site.

The suit says the corps violated the Clean Water Act and other federal laws, and asks the federal court to revoke a permit issued by the corps four years ago that allows developer Maguire Thomas Partners to dredge and fill pockets of wetlands scattered throughout the 1,087-acre site as part of the first phase of the project.

“We must fight to protect our remaining wetlands,” Marcia Hanscom, executive director of the Wetlands Action Network, told a press conference outside the federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. “We don’t think that progress means that we have to pave over every last piece of earth.”

U.S. Army Corps officials, who regulate development in wetland areas across the country, said they had not yet seen the lawsuit and could not comment.

But Playa Vista officials defended the corps, which spent more than three years studying the project’s environmental impacts before issuing the dredge and fill permit in July 1992.

Upon studying the first phase of the project, the corps determined that the mixed-use development would not have a significant impact on wetland habitats, said Playa Vista project manager Doug Gardner.

Gardner and other Playa Vista officials said the environmental groups were making a futile attempt to block the project.

The same environmental groups sued the developer in state court earlier this year, claiming that the initial phase of the Playa Vista development had not undergone adequate state environmental reviews.

But a Los Angeles Superior Court judge tossed the case out in July, concluding that the developer had complied with state environmental law.

“This [latest] lawsuit raises issues previously litigated and decided in our favor,” Gardner said. “It will not affect our ability to proceed with the project.”

The environmentalists remain undaunted. They have hired nationally known environmental lawyer Steve Crandall, who was among a group of attorneys that won a $5-billion civil jury award two years ago against Exxon Corp. over the massive Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

Crandall criticized the corps’ approach of reviewing the environmental impacts of each phase of the Playa Vista project--rather than conducting one intensive study. He said changes to the site at each stage will affect the overall ecological health of the wetland area.

For example, a new saltwater marina and the creation of a 51-acre freshwater marsh in phase one could hurt saltwater wetlands that are slated to be preserved at a later time, he said. All of the changes should have been studied together, he said.

“We think it’s ridiculous from an ecological point of view,” Crandall told the news conference. “It’s one [overall] project. It’s one system of wetlands.”

The environmentalists’ news conference Tuesday was not without its light moments. A theater troupe known as FrogWorks performed a portion of a three-act spoof about a board meeting involving the heads of Playa Vista, government officials and DreamWorks moguls Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg--what one actor called a “tragic comedy where the frog is martyred and rises as an angel.”

“Woodlands, schmoodlands,” actress Susan Suntree bellowed. “I see 1,000 acres of prime real estate. Build on that sucker.”