Nearly a month after the L.A. Department of Water and Power revealed the top-ranked locations for an electrical distribution station (DS-104) in western Pacific Palisades, a group of Paseo Miramar residents are opposing the two proposed sites in their neighborhood. The group, which includes several neighborhood residents and the Paseo Miramar Homeowners Association, has already retained the services of prominent land-use attorney Ben Reznik, who is known for winning lawsuits against the City of L.A. DWP’s announcement came at a public forum on January 15, more than three months after a task force was formed to narrow down possible locations for DS-104. The four priority Tier One sites selected by a DWP community task force include a 1.10-acre parcel at 16931 Pacific Coast Hwy; a 4.04-acre parcel at 16970 and 16948 Sunset Blvd. (Bernheimer Gardens); a 0.99-acre lot at 300 Via Nicolas; and a 4.72-acre parcel at 370 Paseo Miramar, which is owned by State Parks. The last two sites are located in the Paseo Miramar neighborhood, which has only one access road, via Sunset. Lorraine Totino, who has owned a home in Paseo Miramar since 1999, said she was ‘shocked and outraged’ when she heard about the proposed locations in her neighborhood. She said that anyone who is familiar with the Paseo Miramar area knows that geology has always been an issue. ’Those properties and the bottom of the hill have always remained vacant because of geological issues,’ Totino said, referring to the Via Nicolas and Paseo Miramar sites. ’These sites were put into Tier One before anyone knew,’ Totino said. ‘The first we heard about this is when they were already tiered.’ The task force was agreed upon last June after a meeting between Los Angeles Unified School Board Member Steve Zimmer, DWP General Manager Ron Nichols and Councilman Rosendahl that was prompted by local opposition to build DS-104 on an empty parcel adjacent to Marquez Charter Elementary School. DWP representatives have previously stated the purpose of the ranking process was to discern the best possible locations from those that aren’t ‘viable’ or ‘compatible with the community.’ The task force studied 15 potential locations and recently added an additional site, located on a semi-flat piece of land above PCH and in between the Edgewater Tower Condominiums and Malibu Village Mobile Home Park. ’I didn’t know about the tiering process until I went to that meeting at the park [which was a meeting hosted by Pacific Palisades Community on January 24 that featured an open discussion regarding DS-104],’ Totino said. ‘That’s when we realized that 60 percent of the task force members are attorneys who live in the Marquez area. I think the process of selecting the task force members was flawed and there was no communication with the community at large.’ Clarification: Three of the 15 task force members are attorneys who live in the Marquez area. Two others (including a Marquez parent) are members of the State Bar but are not currently practicing. The biggest hazard for our neighborhood is when there is construction, Totino added. ‘There have been numerous times when people have been trapped here because there is only one egress ‘if there were a fire no one would be able to get out.’ ’That’s a huge fear for all of us,’ Totino said. ‘We’ve seen fires coming over the ridge toward our homes. ‘ Sue Jernigan, a Paseo Miramar resident for more than 20 years, said she was surprised to hear about the locations selected. ‘I really don’t see any of the choices as being superior to the Marquez site,’ she said. Jernigan said she knew of DWP’s plans for the Marquez parcel 20 years ago when she was looking to buy a home and first saw the sign posted on the fence next to the school. ‘I don’t know why any [of the Marquez residents] were surprised,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I would have bought a home in the area knowing that [DWP was going to build a substation there].’ ’When we moved here it was very clear that the land around us was in play,’ Jernigan said. ”We actually didn’t have a backyard; we had to retain and create a space in our backyard.’ However, ‘we chose to live here,’ just as the people living around DWP’s Marquez parcel chose to live there, Jernigan added. ”I just can’t imagine [DWP] carrying that much equipment one way in and one way out’ it really affects us in a very unique way.’ ’We didn’t have any representation on the task force, yet 50 percent of the sites are in Paseo Miramar,’ said Bob Ramsdell, president of the Miramar Homeowners Association. ‘It should not have been our obligation to see the announcements.’ ’Nobody wants it in their neighborhood and essentially what DWP is saying it’s just a matter of money to fix the sites that are geologically unstable,’ Ramsdell said. ‘At the end of the day, it’s all of the DWP ratepayers and ‘all of Los Angeles that’s going to pay for that.’ ’We are in position where we do not like the process’ and ‘we feel as though we were excluded,’ Ramsdell said. ”You have some of the most spectacular views in the world here and you pay for that, and at the same time the people in Marquez Knolls knew that a distribution station would come into fruition.’ Basically, ‘we are creating a coalition of the underrepresented,’ Ramsdell said.’
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