Malibu Awarded FEMA Grant To
Restore Civic Center Wetlands
Special to the Mirror
At the June 26th
Malibu City Council meeting, the Malibu Coastal Land Conservancy
celebrated a significant step in their quest to help protect and
acquire for public ownership a floodplain area that historically was a
part of the Malibu Lagoon.
A $150,000 planning grant from the FEMA (Federal
Emergency Management Agency) flood mitigation program was presented to
the Malibu City Council as the first step in attempts by citizens and
the City to construct a combined federal, state and local funding
package to acquire and restore to natural parklands a former wetlands
area in the Malibu Civic Center area adjacent to Malibu Creek.
At the ceremony where FEMA regional director Martha
Whetstone made the announcement, she stated, "Malibu has the
distinction of having the second highest number of repetitive disaster
losses in the state of California. This grant will help Malibu plan
better for pre-disaster mitigation and reduction of risks by
addressing future development in flood-prone areas."
Mike Armstrong, FEMA’s Associate Director for
Mitigation flew in from Washington, D.C., for the presentation and
talked to the City Council about the Federal government’s desire to
change the focus in Malibu from being a center of repetitive loss
claims to a model for other regions to follow by lessening the risk of
future damage.
"Besides the obvious savings to taxpayers as
restored wetlands help
soak up flood waters that could cause damage to adjacent properties,
our flood mitigation program is designed to enhance the quality of
life in communities across the nation. Moreover, there is an
environmental dividend in restoring floodplains to their natural
wetland functions," stated Armstrong, who introduced himself as a
former city attorney who had struggled with land use decisions himself
for a decade and a one law student at Pepperdine in Malibu. law
student in Malibu.
More than two dozen leaders of the Malibu Coastal Land
Conservancy (MCLC) were in the
City Council’s audience, sporting MCLC t-shirts and hats, to applaud
this step forward by the City of Malibu and FEMA.
"We are most excited about this grant because it
marks the beginning of many federal and state partners working
together with Malibu residents to provide the necessary funds to fully
acquire, recover and restore the natural wetlands in the Civic Center
area for the benefit of the public," said Gil Segel, President
and Co-Founder of the Malibu Coastal Land Conservancy, which is
celebrating its one year anniversary this summer.
Segel went on to say, "We truly appreciate Martha
Whetstone, Mike Armstrong and Director James Lee Witt for providing
such great leadership at FEMA to help us jump-start the turn-around we
need in Malibu’s land-use planning."
Segel’s group has received numerous inquiries and
calls of concern from
members of the community who would rather see this Civic Center area
that historically linked to Malibu Lagoon and Malibu Creek recovered
as a natural area than to be converted to a proposed shopping mall and
office development.
"More pavement is not what we need in Malibu’s
flood-prone areas and
watershed," emphasized Marcia Hanscom, Sierra Club’s Los
Angeles Chapter Executive Committee member and Secretary of the Malibu
Coastal Land Conservancy. "As has been demonstrated in the
Mississippi River area, in Napa, California and in other flood-ravaged
regions, that recovery of former wetlands is the best action that can
be taken to minimize flood damage."
|