For nearly 20 years, the City of Santa Barbara has been seeking to expand and upgrade the Santa Barbara Airport and its facilities. The City's current plan seeks to extend the safety areas at each end of the major runway, construct a new taxiway, a service road and 75 new hangars, and significantly expand the airline terminal and parking facilities. The problem, as with many airports, is the fact that the Santa Barbara Airport is located in a wetland - the Goleta Slough.

The Goleta Slough is the largest estuary between Point Mugu and Morro Bay and is designated as an Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Area. The City's plans for the airport (the “Aviation Facilities Plan”) would permanently destroy 14 acres of the Slough and nearly 11 acres of upland habitat (which functions as a crucial wetland buffer zone for wildlife. The project would also divert Tecolotito and Carneros Creeks. Channelkeeper has opposed the airport expansion plan because we believe it violates the California Coastal Act, which provides for protection of coastal wetlands and creeks.

 

In 2002, Channelkeeper urged the California Coastal Commission to find the project inconsistent with the California Coastal Act, for one because the City had failed to examine all feasible less environmentally damaging alternatives to filling the wetland as required by the Coastal Act. One alternative that Channelkeeper advocated for would have avoided the need to fill the wetlands and alter the creeks - Engineering Materials Arresting System, or EMAS, which functions much as a runaway truck ramp in slowing planes in the event of an overshoot.

 

We also argued that the City's plans to divert the creeks to make way for the extended runway area violate the Coastal Act's prohibition against altering coastal streams. The Coastal Act allows only three exceptions to this prohibition - for water supply, wildlife enhancement, or flood control projects. The City initially characterized the project as a wildlife enhancement project, and in fact City Council voted to approve it as such. However, the City's own counsel advised that the project was unlikely to qualify for this exemption under the Coastal Act. All of a sudden, the airport expansion project was dubbed a “flood control project” so it could qualify for this exception to the Act's otherwise strict prohibition against the alteration of coastal streams, despite the fact that the project has nothing to do with flood control.

 

The Coastal Act further requires that projects which alter coastal streams and do qualify for one of these three exceptions must incorporate the best mitigation feasible. Channelkeeper concurs with the view of local biologists that the best mitigation for the rapidly declining Slough would be to restore tidal circulation to the wetlands. Improved tidal action would enhance the functioning of all parts of the Slough ecosystem, maximize biodiversity, provide higher quality habitat for rare and threatened species, and increase the resilience of the ecosystem.

 

The City has argued that restoring tidal circulation may not be feasible because the FAA has expressed concern that doing so could increase bird activity near the airport and possibly increase aviation bird strike hazards. The City maintains this despite having commissioned a study in 2000 which found the opposite. Despite this and other agencies' finding that the best mitigation - restoring tidal circulation - is indeed feasible and is therefore required by law, the City has decided to proceed with mitigation plans which consist largely of weed removal (requiring significant use of herbicides), and which many agencies, scientists and advocacy organizations find to be inadequate. In fact, the Coastal Commission initially rejected the City's mitigation plans and required them to undertake a tidal restoration experiment to assess whether restoring tidal circulation would increase the potential for aircraft bird strikes, and if not, required that the City restore tidal circulation to several acres of the Slough.

 

Unfortunately, in June 2002 the Coastal Commission sided with the City of Santa Barbara and found the project to be consistent with the Coastal Act. This spurred Channelkeeper to file suit against the Commission, with the City of Goleta joining us as a co-plaintiff. After difficult deliberation, the judge narrowly rejected our argument and, in July 2004, ruled against Channelkeeper and Goleta in our lawsuit.

 

Undeterred and steadfast in our belief that the project is in direct violation of the Coastal Act, we decided to appeal the Judge's decision. The fundamental purpose of the Coastal Act is to provide the greatest possible protection for coastal resources - including protecting our precious coastal wetlands from further destruction and our streams from substantial alterations - not to sanction any project that includes such alterations. We felt that the court's ruling as it stands would set a dangerous precedent for future development projects that seek to fill wetlands and alter coastal creeks. Such an interpretation of the Act would seriously jeopardize coastal resources. Projects in the coastal zone requiring the alteration of coastal streams would be permitted as long as the project proponent could identify some minimal improvement in flood control, even if such improvements were coincidental and not the primary purpose of the project. The purpose of the Act is to maintain, and where possible restore, sensitive coastal resources, not to sanction their destruction.

 

Unfortunately, the appeals panel ruled against us in December 2005. They found that there was in fact substantial evidence in the record to support the Coastal Commission's determination that diverting the two creeks to make way for the extended runway would have some flood control impact and thus qualifies for the flood control exception to the Coastal Act's prohibition against alteration of coastal creeks. While this is a very unfortunate outcome for Channelkeeper and the Goleta Slough, the appeals panel specifically decreed that the decision not be published, which means it cannot be cited in future cases and thus will not be precedential.

 

Channelkeeper continues to send regular Public Records Act requests to the City of Santa Barbara to ensure that they are conducting the necessary water quality monitoring and reporting required under the Construction Permit and to ensure that the construction project does not have a negative impact on water quality. We will also continue to monitor the tidal restoration experiment to ensure that the City adequately mitigates the environmental harm the construction project is likely to cause by restoring tidal flows to the Slough, provided that such efforts would not result in an increase in the risk of airplane-bird strikes at the airport.