Questions Surround O.C. Water Permit

Two powerful agencies are demanding closer scrutiny of Irvine Co.’s plan to build 800 homes above Crystal Cove State Park, saying that lower-level boards may have improperly granted water quality concessions to the developer.

Runoff from the project would go into two creeks that flow across state beaches into the ocean.

Alexis Strauss, a top official with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, wrote to state and regional water boards that their waiver of a water quality permit “raises issues both technical and legal that I believe warrant further discussion.”

In a letter dated Monday, Strauss, director of the water division for the EPA’s southwest region, wrote: “I ask the state of California to take no further action until we can review and resolve the legal issues.”

Separately, the California Coastal Commission voted Tuesday to hold a full hearing on the project in December, saying there are questions about whether Orange County planning officials improperly approved Irvine Co.’s plans for handling runoff from the controversial housing project between Laguna Beach and Corona del Mar.

“They didn’t notify us properly of what they had done,” said the commission’s executive director, Peter Douglas. “The more we looked into it, the more we realized there were serious issues. . . . This is not a technicality.”