Commentary: Banning Ranch development plan must be stopped

As a longtime resident of the Newport Beach, Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach areas, I am appalled to learn about the development plan to build on Banning Ranch.

Banning Ranch is more than 400 acres of open land nestled between Coast Highway and Superior Avenue in Newport and the Santa Ana River. Thousands of people drive by this coastal bluff daily and appreciate the sense of calm that having wild, undeveloped land brings to a heavily traveled intersection. However, if the developers and the city of Newport have their way, a development plan will be approved that will forever damage our community.

A California Coastal Commission hearing on the plan is scheduled for Oct. 7 at the Long Beach Convention Center.

The plan consists of a residential neighborhood with more than 1,300 homes, a hotel and a shopping center. This plan violates the wishes of Newport residents who voted against developing the land in 2006. The plan is based on putting money in the pockets of developers. It does not have the health of our community at heart.

Traveling from the 55 Freeway to Newport will become gridlock as a result of the additional 15,000 cars expected to traverse the area every day, while traffic-related air pollution will increase as a result of heavy emissions.

Banning Ranch is the site of an oil field, and digging up the underground oil wells and pipelines will emit additional substances into the air we breathe. Also, the homes will be built a stone’s throw from Hixson Metal, a metal finishing company designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as a toxic release inventory facility. Hixson Metal has been cited multiple times since 2014 by the South Coast Air Quality Management District, primarily due to the release of chromium-6 into the air.

If the politicians of Newport Beach, who approved the project in 2012, believe they have the best interests of residents in mind, why would they want to invite families to live on top of gases from the oil field and next to Hixson Metal?

If they stop to examine their consciences and make the ethical choice to protect the health of local residents, this development plan could be halted immediately.

Please sign the petition against the development plan at www.banningpledge.com/brc and attend the hearing at 9:30 a.m. Oct. 7 to support the Banning Ranch Conservancy and appeal to the Coastal Commission to deny the development permit.

MAUREEN GATES is a Huntington Beach resident and a graduate student at the USC Keck School of Medicine.