By Jonathan Friedman
Staff Writer
October 27, 2009 --
At its meeting tonight, the City Council is expected to recommend the City Manager work with the Exposition Construction Authority (Expo) to “further explore and mitigate” the effects of a light rail maintenance facility proposed for the Pico Neighborhood.
However, the City has no official say regarding the location and features of the maintenance facility. Only the Expo Board of Directors has the authority to make a final decision on those matters.
A maintenance facility is needed in Santa Monica for Phase II of the Exposition Light Rail, which would connect Culver City with Santa Monica. Expo has proposed the facility for a Verizon-owned property on Exposition Boulevard off Stewart Street.
Pico Neighborhood activists complain that this location poses a health and noise threat to nearby residents. City officials have proposed other locations, but Expo has rejected them for cost and feasibility reasons.
A current proposal on the table is to create a so-called hybrid concept, which involves the maintenance facility covering two properties -- the Verizon site and the Santa Monica College parking lot. This proposal would allow for the building to separate from the residences with a 120-foot buffer and includes a series of measures to mitigate the impact on the neighborhood.
This concept has not appeased the opposition. The Pico Neighborhood Association read a letter at a recent Expo-hosted public hearing claiming a danger would be created when combining a rail system with methane seeping from an inactive landfill below portions of the City yards and Stewart Park.
“We are concerned that the combination of methane gas seepage and migration with high voltage electricity could pose a serious ignition and subsequent explosion hazard to nearby residents and park visitors as well as to Expo workers and riders and to passing motorists, pedestrians and cyclists, possibly causing immediate loss of life as well as property damage,” the letter states.
City staff asked ICF Consulting to look into the Association’s concern. ICF said the risk does not exist.
The staff report for tonight’s meeting states, “ICF has determined that the levels of methane being detected along the surface of the landfill and within the landfill itself are well below the regulatory action levels, pose no explosive risks, are undetectable along the surface in the ambient air, and that the methane is unable to travel laterally via subsurface utilities to the sites being proposed for the Expo Light Rail maintenance facility.”
The Draft Environmental Impact Report for the light rail project, which was released in January, only analyzes the impacts of placing the facility solely on the Verizon site. The final version of the environmental document, expected to be certified this January, could include an analysis of the hybrid concept, if the City requests it.
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