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County won’t release Blackwater documents
By Miriam Raftery
The Alpine Sun
Deadline for public comment looms
With a looming deadline for public comment, San Diego
County officials did not respond to a reporter’s inquiries
whether some comments would be included in the Environmental
Impact Report (EIR) for Blackwater USA’s proposed military-style
training camp in Potrero.
At a crowded April 5 public meeting on Blackwater’s
proposal, planners at the San Diego County Department of
Planning and Land Use (DPLU) gave out comment forms to concerned
citizens.
The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)
provides that public comment shall be accepted within 30 days
after a Notice of Preparation is filed for a project with
potentially significant environmental impacts.
The public was advised to return forms with comments
regarding what should be included in the EIR no later than 4
p.m. on April 27. Potrero residents and other concerned citizens
were told that only written comment forms sent to the contact
provided would become part of the official public record – but
there was one big problem.
The address, fax, and e-mail provided directed all
comment forms to Greg Kryzs, who was the County’s project
manager for the Blackwater proposal. County officials, however,
knew that Kryzs was leaving his county job shortly after the
meeting – and that no replacement was in order.
Ten days later, more than a week after Kryzs’s
departure, numerous calls and e-mails sent to multiple County
officials have failed to reassure citizens that public comment
forms will be read before April 27 – or included in the
project’s official EIR, as required by law. Responding to an
inquiry by The Alpine Sun, county spokesperson Michael Workman
said the Blackwater USA proposal “has been assigned to Planner
Jarrett Ramaiya, who is reviewing and responding to all comments
directed to Planner Greg Kryzs and DPLU.”
“It sounds like deliberate obfuscation,” said Jan
Hedlun, the only member of the Potrero Planning Group who
opposes Blackwater’s proposal. “Although they told us that they
would be taking our comments, it does not appear that this is
going to be the case. Who are we going to turn to if not the
County?”
At the April 5 scoping meeting held at the DPLU, Hedlun
recalled, “They said they were going to do all of this in front
of the media, and now they are throwing their hands in the air
as though they don’t know who to take charge?
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| Above, more
than 100 residents lined the streets prior to the April 5
meeting in opposition of the Backwater project. Below,
sheriff deputies were on hand at the April 5 scoping
meeting to deal with supposed unruly protesters. |
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“They know darn well who is in charge, so why are they doing
this tap dance? In any business when somebody leaves the
business, there is always somebody who takes over. You don’t
just leave dead air. Somebody is in charge of Greg Kryzs’s
stuff, so why are they pretending they don’t know?”
A new project manager, Jarrett Ramaiya, has been
assigned to oversee the Blackwater proposal, but an e-mail from
Citizens Oversight Panels Chair Raymond Lutz revealed all
Blackwater documents might not be released.
“I met him [Ramaiya] at the DPLU and he gave me a
letter from their attorney stating that some information was
going to be withheld from public review,” Lutz said.
Compact discs (CDs) on the project had originally been
in the file, said Carl Meyer, a Potrero resident who spearheaded
a petition against the Blackwater proposal. After Meyer inquired
about obtaining copies of the CDs, he was advised that they were
outdated and his request was denied.
When Lutz asked Jarrett Ramaiya to give him copies of
the CDs and other materials, Lutz said, “Jarrett would not
comment past saying that he would let the letter speak for
itself, and that he had a number of boxes of material in the
back. I asked to see the detailed plot plan, showed at the
scoping meeting but not in the file. He said there was a lot of
material he would have to go through and that all of it was not
made available to the public.”
Most troubling, Lutz said, was a reply he received when
he asked the new project manager if he would be reading the
public comments sent to Kryzs’ e-mail address.
“He said he was not briefed by Greg, and didn’t know if
he would get any of those emails,” Lutz said, adding that
Ramaiya pledged to have the file in “ship-shape condition” by
the middle of this week.
Ramaiya declined to comment on whether he or anyone
else would be reading the public comments submitted to Kryzs and
referred a reporter’s inquiry to Mike Workman, the County’s
public relations spokesperson. Workman has not returned a
reporter’s repeated calls and e-mails regarding Blackwater since
April 6.
Glen Russell, another DPLU planner who previously
talked to media about the Blackwater proposal, declined to
comment. Russell referred a call to Workman, who did not
respond.
A representative from Supervisor Dianne Jacob’s office
declined to speak on the record.
The County has also not responded to e-mails on April 9 and 10
to Claire Tosh, Public Records Act request coordinator. Those
e-mails asked for reassurance that all public comments on
Blackwater’s proposal would be read before April 27 and become
part of the official EIR.
A request was also made to Tosh for financial records
for key public officials involved in decisions regarding
Blackwater, specifically Potrero planners and Supervisors.
Tosh referred e-mails to Workman and advised he would
respond after returning from vacation on April 12. A follow-up
email to Tosh received only the same automated reply.
Environmental issues including golden eagle nests near
the site were identified as potential “fatal flaws,” according
to an Internal Working Draft on Blackwater West Project
Issues/Action Items dated October 23, 2006.
Blackwater has stated that it plans to provide
additional foraging for eagles and set aside a portion of the
land to mitigate potential harm.
Potrero residents and environmentalists have raised a
number of different issues that they believe should be included
in the EIR for Blackwater, including concerns about impacts on
groundwater, air quality, threatened and endangered plants and
wildlife species.
Whether Blackwater’s plan to build military-style
shooting ranges, a vehicular training track the length of 10
football fields and other facilities on land surrounded by
national forest and federal wilderness preserves will be deemed
acceptable from an environmental standpoint will be determined
by information contained in the EIR, including any public
comments received—provided those comments are added to the
record as required by California law.
As of press deadline on April 17, none of the County
officials contacted responded to a reporter’s inquiries.
“What is the County trying to hide?” Hedlun asked after
learning of document request denials and of the County’s refusal
thus far to provide assurances that public comments will be
read. “That does not give me warm fuzzies to believe that they
are for the best interests of our community,” she concluded, “if
they can’t be open or above board.”
E-mail
Christy Scott
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