Four-Month Survey Will Evaluate Risks at Playa Vista Site

Los Angeles city officials have announced the initial scope of a study to determine the health and safety risks posed by an earthquake fault and pockets of methane gas reportedly under the controversial Playa Vista project on the Westside.

The study is set to begin in August and is expected to take at least four months. It will focus on the area where the first 3,246 houses will be built, on 169 acres of the overall 1,087-acre residential and commercial project. Officials said they did not yet know the cost of the investigation, which will involve city, regional and state experts, along with outside consultants.

The City Council will use the results to decide whether to authorize the sale of $135 million in municipal bonds for the project on the Ballona Wetlands between Marina del Rey and the Westchester bluffs. At its completion, about 30,000 people would live in the massive development, which will also include offices and shops.

On Tuesday night, scores of environmentalists, area residents and project supporters attended a three-hour hearing held at a Playa del Rey hotel to comment on the scope of the investigation.

Five city staff members representing the city attorney’s office and the planning, engineering and building and safety departments, listened to the public testimony.

Playa Vista’s developers said they are confident the study will prove that all the methane and earthquake fault issues at Playa Vista can be resolved safely.

“We already know these answers,” David Herbst, a vice president for Playa Capital Co., the project’s development firm, said. “If it takes us another 120 days or 120 days plus to totally resolve these issues, that’s a win for us.”

At the hearing, however, many people criticized city officials for limiting the investigation to just the 169 acres, where construction is underway and is expected to continue during the study. Opponents contend that the entire property could be hazardous.

They also demanded that a supplemental environmental impact report be commissioned to more thoroughly examine effects on public health and safety and existing wildlife.

“There’s still tremendous opposition to this project and concern,” Wetlands Action Network executive director Marcia Hanscom said.

City officials, however, said the study to begin next month will address those issues.

The City Council decided to investigate the site after an independent consulting firm in April reported dangerously high levels of methane gas, which is combustible and is associated with a variety of toxic emissions, existed on the property.

The report by Exploration Technologies Inc. also identified a potentially active earthquake fault near Lincoln Boulevard that could trigger the release of gas from the Gas Co.’s Playa del Rey storage facility, near the Playa Vista property.

The City Council then asked the chief legislative analyst’s office to report back on the Playa Vista issues 120 days after the hearing.

“The main concern is to make sure we have the answers we need,” Assistant Chief Legislative Analyst Gerry Miller said. “If it takes longer than 120 days, so be it.”

Meanwhile, work continues on Playa Vista’s 409-unit Fountain Park Apartments complex, visitors’ center and infrastructure for 3,246 homes at the corner of Jefferson and Lincoln Boulevards.

In 1993, Playa Vista developers agreed to restore the fresh and salt water marshes on the Ballona Wetlands in exchange for the city’s “good faith efforts” to sell them about $428 million in Mello-Roos bonds, government issued bonds paid back by home buyers.