Residents Speak Out on Disney Project

Residents expressed concern Tuesday that an environmental impact report glossed over potentially toxic hazards on the site of Disney’s planned $2-billion creative campus.

The office project would be built on 125 acres now occupied by an aging business park near the Golden State Freeway. From the 1930s through the 1950s, the land was occupied by the old Grand Central Air Terminal.

Residents appearing before the Glendale City Council to comment on the project’s draft environmental impact report said they supported the development but were concerned about possible health dangers from chemicals left in the soil and in buried tanks on the site.

“Public opinion is, as far as I can tell, universally supportive of the project,” said Rod Sharkey of the Glendale Homeowners Coordinating Council, an umbrella organization of local homeowners groups.

In a written report to the City Council, the coordinating council said it wanted the final EIR to include plans for mitigating potentially carcinogenic dust that could be stirred up by construction, the removal of underground storage tanks and the treatment of possibly contaminated ground water.

Their arguments were bolstered by a state Department of Toxic Substances Control letter faxed to the city on Tuesday. It called for the EIR to better address the toxic waste issue and to include more detailed plans for removal of contamination.

But when Chris Halstead, a member of the Glendale Homeowners Assn., told the City Council it should “fully disclose the presence of those chemicals,” Councilwoman Ginger Bremberg accused him of overstating the problem.

“I don’t really think this is going to lead to a catastrophe, murder and mayhem in the streets,” she said.

Later, when homeowner Odalis Suarez said that a “suspected carcinogen is known to be present in this drinking water,” Bremberg accused her of being “close to hysterical” and “using words like toxic and carcinogenic to push panic” among the public.

Residents also criticized the EIR itself for being too long--more than 2,000 pages--and complex.

The report’s bulk “discouraged the process of review by members of the public,” said Joanne Hedge, president of the Glendale Rancho Homeowners Assn. Susana Lago urged that the final report include more “plain language.”

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Except for Bremberg, most other members of the council had little reaction to the comments.

A few speakers who followed the homeowner association officials agreed that potential environmental problems were being overstated.

“If you want to have a Chicken Little attitude, I’m certain the sky could fall down on any project in Glendale,” said homeowner Carol Gilmore, who lives near the site.

The last speaker at the meeting, Focian Rodriquez, said he has lived half a block from the site for 20 years. He urged both sides to settle their differences and get on with the project.

“Please, tear down all those junky buildings,” Rodriquez said, adding that he and his neighbors wanted to have a nice, tree-lined place to walk.

The City Council, in its capacity as director of the city redevelopment agency, must next decide what measures to include in the final EIR.