If the Los Angeles DWP hopes to build a power distribution station directly adjacent to Marquez Charter Elementary School, it will have to override a fierce coalition that includes parents, residents, two L.A. School Board members, staff from the LAUSD Office of Environmental Health & Safety, and City Councilman Bill Rosendahl. This was made clear Monday night when School Board member Steve Zimmer hosted a community meeting at the Marquez School auditorium to address the DWP’s proposed electrical distribution station just west of school’s playground. The DWP acquired the proposed site on Marquez Avenue by eminent domain in the early 1970s. The department needs at least one acre (44,000 square feet) of flat land for the distribution station and has been unable to find a realistic alternative site to its Marquez parcel, which is located in a residential neighborhood above privately-owned Marquez Canyon. The existing DWP substation, built in 1936 at the corner of Sunset and Via de la Paz, must be supplemented by a second station to handle increasing power demands within Pacific Palisades. In his opening remarks Monday, Zimmer thanked his fellow board member, Bennett Kayser (a Marquez Elementary alumnus), for ‘focusing my attention’ on this issue ‘before the letters and e-mails started coming in.’ Kayser was in the audience and remarked, ‘I’m opposed to this as much as Steve is. I think it ought to be a parking lot for the faculty.’ Zimmer distributed a letter written by LAUSD Superintendent Dr. John Deasy to DWP General Manager Ron Nichols, which stated in part: ’Please note that the District respects the right of your agency to take discretionary action deemed necessary to provide electrical service to the community. However, school staff, parents of students and the community surrounding Marquez Charter School have expressed overwhelming concern with the prospect of locating a new power distribution station next to their school. I also share their concern and ask that you direct DWP staff to eliminate this site from further consideration, preferably to a site away from our schools and students.’ In addition, Norm Kulla, senior deputy for City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, assured the audience that his boss ‘has asked the DWP to obtain an alternative site, and the DWP is in the process of searching for that alternative site.’ He said Rosendahl has called the DWP’s Nichols to express his opposition to the Marquez site. Zimmer emphasized several times during the meeting that the key strategy at this point is to ‘make sure this doesn’t become the preferred site,’ and that this goal must be advocated by Rosendahl, Deasy, the LAUSD’s Office of Environmental Health and Safety, and the Coalition of Palisadians to Keep Marquez Charter Safe. ’We hope [all the expressed opposition] will get the DWP to pay attention and that we’ll get the DWP to just be reasonable,’ Zimmer said. ‘Everyone needs and wants their power in the Palisades; that is not in question. Everybody understands that land is a challenge’And we know the folks [at DWP] have dueling interests. All those things we understand. The problem is that they don’t add up to anything against the safety of our children. Period.’ Bill Piazza, environmental assessment coordinator in the LAUSD’S Office of Environmental Health & Safety (OEHS), told the audience, ‘I want to say that we’re we’re partnering with you and we’re 100 percent behind you on this particular issue. We can’t necessarily force anything, but I think we have a solid technical argument’the safety of the children.’ During public comment, Joyce Wong Kup, a former land-use lawyer and an active member of the Marquez coalition, urged Zimmer and Kayser to have the LAUSD take immediate action against the DWP’s Marquez site. ’Undoubtedly, once DWP has settled on Marquez as its preferred project location and embarked on its EIR as required by CEQA, the DWP will be doggedly committed to the Marquez site. By then, it will be significantly more difficult for the reviewing agencies and the public to persuade DWP to redirect the project to another location, in spite of all the serious safety, health, and environmental problems concerning the Marquez site. At that point, any opposition will be too little, too late.’ On May 10, the Marquez coalition and representatives from the Pacific Palisades Community Council are scheduled to meet with DWP officials at Rosendahl’s office in West L.A.
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