Topline:
Southern California farmers are conserving a lot more Colorado River water, but that’s also causing the Salton Sea to dry up faster.
Why it matters: Since Southern California farmers agreed to a major new deal with the federal government to cut water use significantly, the Salton Sea has dropped about 10 inches and the sea has shrunk by some 3,500 acres, exposing more toxic dust from the lakebed.
Keep reading...to learn more about addressing this conservation conundrum.
Southern California farmers are conserving a lot more Colorado River water, but that’s also causing the Salton Sea to dry up faster.
That’s because the Salton Sea is filled primarily by agricultural runoff from farms in the Imperial Valley in far Southern California. Those farms have a single source of water: the Colorado River.
The Salton Sea is a landlocked, shallow lake in Riverside and Imperial counties. The lakebed has been contaminated for more than 100 years with pesticides and other chemicals that create dangerous air pollution for surrounding communities.
Balancing conservation with the impact on the Salton Sea is a long-running conundrum.
“It feels that we are responsible for conserving the Colorado River for the good of the many,” said Silvia Paz, director of grassroots group Alianza Coachella Valley, which is working to address the impacts of pollution from the Salton Sea.
“And on the flip side, I don't think it's fair that one particular community that's already an environmental justice community has to bear that responsibility — almost alone it feels like,” Paz said.
The Salton Sea is part of the massive Colorado River delta. For millennia, the area flooded periodically as the river shifted across the sandy delta region spanning across present-day Southern California, southern Arizona and northern Mexico.
Lake Cahuilla is some of the last evidence of that era of flooding before the river was controlled and diverted via dams and canals. Today, the river no longer meets the sea.
The Salton Sea as we now know it is California’s largest lake. And it's man made. It was first created back in 1905, when an irrigation canal gate failed and the river flooded into the historic lakebed of Lake Cahuilla.
Since then, the sea has been fed by agricultural runoff. Once a popular vacation destination in the 1950s, as farmers got more efficient with water use and climate change-driven heat worsened, the lake — and its tourists — has been drying up, and the lakebed has become increasingly exposed.
Researchers are finding that a naturally occurring toxin plus chemicals from farm runoff in the drying lakebed are worsening air quality and contributing to higher rates of asthma and other respiratory illness in surrounding communities.
Though it’s saltier than the ocean, the Salton Sea remains a biodiversity hotspot for fish and migratory birds.
Imperial Valley farmers in Southern California use more Colorado River water than anyone. They grow primarily hay as well as leafy greens and other produce that feeds much of the country and the world.
In August, the Imperial Irrigation District agreed to a major new deal with the federal government to cut its water use by an amount that’s more than double the amount the entire state of Nevada uses in a year. The cuts will happen through 2026.
And they're needed: Two wet years have helped, but the risk of Lake Mead reaching deadpool — meaning the water level has dropped so low that it can no longer flow downstream — remains a looming possibility. That could cut off the main water supply for tens of millions of people and farms downstream.
The first phase of this new program started this summer, and included a program where participating forage crop growers didn’t water those crops for 49 days, during the hottest part of the year. The main crop grown in the Imperial Valley is alfalfa.
In return, the Imperial Irrigation District got $589 million from the feds to pay those farmers who can then invest in more water-efficient technologies, pay workers, or otherwise invest in their farms.
The program was a success, said Tina Shields, the Imperial Irrigation District’s water manager. She said the district cut water use by about 175,000 acre-feet this summer. For comparison, the entire city of L.A. uses about 500,000 acre-feet of water every year.
The short duration of the program had little impact on the economy. If anything, it helped farmers stay in business because hay markets are bad right now — that’s a reason why so many farmers participated this summer, Shields said.
Plus, water use in the area is down in general because October has been abnormally hot, so watering would just burn crops.
Since that program ended at the end of September, the surface elevation of the Salton Sea has dropped about 10 inches and the sea shrunk by some 3,500 acres, exposing more dust from the lakebed, said Paz, whose group along with researchers from UCLA and the Pacific Institute measured the decline.
“Our communities don't have the luxury to escape the dust that is blown into the air,” Paz said. “Siloing this issue as a water-only issue leads to all these other consequences.”
In its review, the federal government found the new agreement with the Imperial Irrigation District, or IID, would have no significant new environmental impacts to the Salton Sea and surrounding communities. But many people in the area disagree.
“The reality is that, for our communities, it's not a negligible impact,” Paz said. “This is a cumulative impact to the conditions that we're already suffering.”
Research has shown that asthma rates and other respiratory diseases are far higher than average among communities near the Salton Sea.
Those impacts are why the Sierra Club recently sued the IID about the conservation deal. The organization says the district did not do a proper environmental review of the impacts to the Salton Sea and nearby communities.
“We believe that they should be paying the bill for some of the impacts,” said Richard Miller, director of the Sierra Club’s San Diego chapter.
The IID argues it's already done it's part to address the issues caused by a drying Salton Sea. Shields said the district only agreed to this recent round of additional conservation efforts because they negotiated that $250 million in federal dollars would go towards accelerating the state’s Salton Sea efforts.
“That funding is conditioned on IID implementing these additional conservation efforts,” Shields said. “So we up front took care of the Salton Sea from our perspective.”
But it’s the state that is primarily responsible for addressing the pollution impacts of a shrinking Salton Sea. They are behind on their 10-year plan, which aims to restore nearly 30,000 acres by 2028 of exposed lakebed to native desert habitat and man-made ponds that support endangered fish, migratory birds and reducing pollution.
In recent years, restoration efforts have accelerated, in large part thanks to that $250 million in funding from the Biden-Harris Administration, said Miguel Hernandez, a spokesperson for the state’s Salton Sea Management project, in a statement to LAist.
He wrote that, so far, the state has completed more than 2,000 acres of habitat restoration and dust control, with some 6,500 acres currently under construction and major construction complete for a 4,100-acre conservation area — additional federal funding is helping to expand that project by 750 acres.
See a map of completed and ongoing Salton Sea restoration projects here.
“IID is doing the right thing conserving water to stabilize the Colorado River, and our federal partners stepped up to provide funding for this water conservation and for California’s ongoing projects at the Sea to reduce dust emissions and restore habitat,” Hernandez wrote.
But Paz said the sea is shrinking faster than projects are being built to cover the exposed lakebed.
“We need to balance this out. They need to move a lot faster,” Paz said.
Everyone agrees the ongoing restoration efforts are key to addressing the impacts of a shrinking Salton Sea. But balancing necessary conservation with the impacts of that conservation can seem like an impossible problem to solve.
“It’s the rock and a hard place,” said Shields. “As we get more efficient, the downside is the Salton Sea has less water. It's a tough thing with an inland body of water that has no outlet and the only inlet is receiving drainage water from the adjacent areas. So it's a balancing act to keep everybody happy.”
It’s the rock and a hard place.
Shields continued: “But if the Colorado River crashes, that's not something you just fix the next year,” So we're going to do everything we can to ensure that our communities have a reliable and safe water supply. And it may be that there are impacts to the Salton Sea, but without the Colorado River, there would be no Salton Sea.”
Paz said she supports and understands the conservation needs, but that means that policymakers and water managers need to think more holistically about the mitigation efforts.
“If this is the only way, we need to broaden how we think about how we’re protecting and preparing our communities,” Paz said.
She said accelerating the state's restoration projects is essential, plus funding for air filters and weatherizing more homes, particularly mobile homes that house farmworkers, for which funding is lacking, she said.
But Paz said mitigation for conservation impacts to the Salton Sea could go beyond direct impacts, to improving general quality of life, especially as desert communities face some of the quickest accelerating impacts of the climate crisis.
One example? A new plan envisioned by the community and supported by local governments to build a commuter rail line connecting all the Coachella Valley communities, that will also add green space, shade and an emergency shelter to help communities ride out disasters and excessive heat.
“We’re talking about being very mindful of how our built environment is being developed to address the needs that we have, particularly when it comes to climate resilience,” Paz said.
She added that funding from Proposition 4, which is on the November ballot, would help speed up some existing efforts.
“We're very hopeful that Proposition 4 gets support statewide and that that funding will become available,” Paz said. (Update: Voters did indeed pass that proposition).
As for the state’s plan, it’s estimated it will cost more than a billion dollars to complete the necessary habitat restoration and dust mitigation efforts.
Among other things, a large chunk of the $250 million from the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act will go towards a more than 4,000-acre restoration area to plant habitat that supports migratory birds and reduces dust pollution, said Mike Lynes, public policy director for Audubon California. Other ongoing projects are showing preliminary promise.
“We cannot lose our hope,” said Paz. “Transforming our communities takes a lot of work, but at the end of it, this is a work of hope and that is what allows us to keep envisioning and to keep trying. Because I believe that a different future is possible.”
Topline:
Saying he had concerns it could disenfranchise voters during the midterm election, a federal judge on Tuesday seemed skeptical of the Trump administration’s demands that California election officials set aside 20,000 ballots that it claimed could have been mailed to noncitizens. “Some of these may be very valid voters, and that’s my concern about disenfranchisement,” said U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, an appointee of President Bill Clinton. Carter said he would issue a formal ruling by Wednesday, but he told the courtroom he was likely going to appoint a special master to weigh the evidence both sides present at a hearing in two weeks. That means his final ruling might not come until after the election.
What to know: Carter also suggested that his ruling would order federal authorities to stop telling election officials that they could face criminal charges if they didn’t comply with the Trump administration’s demands. The Trump administration on Friday sent letters to California election officials telling them to set aside ballots from suspected noncitizens, and threatened them with criminal charges if they allowed those people to vote. “This court believes it would be wise that any threats to state or county (election) employees cease immediately,” Carter told the courtroom. Carter’s remarks point to yet another likely legal blow to the Trump administration as it seeks to validate President Donald Trump’s longstanding claims of widespread election fraud favoring Democrats. Experts and election officials say those claims are meritless.
The backstory: The Trump administration sued California earlier this month saying election officials refused to comply with a 48-hour federal deadline to set aside the ballots of up to 20,000 people the administration had flagged as possible noncitizens until the voters’ citizenship could be verified.
Saying he had concerns it could disenfranchise voters during the midterm election, a federal judge on Tuesday seemed skeptical of the Trump administration’s demands that California election officials set aside 20,000 ballots that it claimed could have been mailed to noncitizens.
“Some of these may be very valid voters, and that’s my concern about disenfranchisement,” said U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, an appointee of President Bill Clinton.
Carter said he would issue a formal ruling by Wednesday, but he told the courtroom he was likely going to appoint a special master to weigh the evidence both sides present at a hearing in two weeks. That means his final ruling might not come until after the election.
He said he didn’t want to “just wing it with a ruling” based on last-minute evidence the federal government submitted to the court the night before Tuesday’s hearing.
Carter also suggested that his ruling would order federal authorities to stop telling election officials that they could face criminal charges if they didn’t comply with the Trump administration’s demands. The Trump administration on Friday sent letters to California election officials telling them to set aside ballots from suspected noncitizens, and threatened them with criminal charges if they allowed those people to vote.
“This court believes it would be wise that any threats to state or county (election) employees cease immediately,” Carter told the courtroom.
Carter’s remarks point to yet another likely legal blow to the Trump administration as it seeks to validate President Donald Trump’s longstanding claims of widespread election fraud favoring Democrats. Experts and election officials say those claims are meritless.
Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, acknowledged that the government’s list of 20,000 people may contain citizens, but he said the possibility that noncitizens were voting illegally was too great a threat.
“I would ask the state how many illegal votes is OK for them?” Essayli said. “It cannot be that the state has a right to facilitate the counting and tabulation of noncitizen votes. There’s no right to that.”
The Trump administration sued California earlier this month saying election officials refused to comply with a 48-hour federal deadline to set aside the ballots of up to 20,000 people the administration had flagged as possible noncitizens until the voters’ citizenship could be verified.
The administration sought a temporary restraining order forcing the state to comply.
California officials argued there was no way they could since they were busy overseeing the election. They also called the demand an illegal effort to meddle in state-run elections that could disenfranchise legal voters.
“I just want to make sure the stakes are clear: that what we’re talking about is stripping voting rights from thousands of people until proven otherwise,” said Anne Bellows, a deputy attorney general with the California Department of Justice.
State and county officials also have questioned the methodology the federal government used to flag possible noncitizens.
In a court filing, Los Angeles County officials said that a sampling of 200 names from the federal list, which included people from all over California, found that many of them were likely citizens and that most had not voted before and were not sent ballots. Federal investigators re-reviewed those 200 names and found that only four were citizens, Essayli told the judge.
“We stand by the reliability of the information,” he said. “We take our obligations and ethics very seriously.”
Carter noted that, last week, federal prosecutors charged 28 California green card holders for allegedly voting or registering to vote in violation of laws prohibiting noncitizens from participating in elections.
He said that if noncitizens really are voting in as large of numbers as the Trump administration claims, there’s nothing stopping federal prosecutors from finding them and charging them without the risk of blocking legal voters from having their ballots counted.
“If it’s this big, you’ve got a remedy for goodness sakes,” Carter told Essayli. “Go out and indict.”
After the hearing, Essayli said from the courthouse steps that the state could “resolve this today.”
“They just seem disinterested in getting to the bottom of this,” Essayli said, noting that the number of ballots in question could tip smaller elections. “A lot of elections are decided by tens of votes or hundreds of votes."
The hearing came a day after two judges on a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an emergency effort from the Trump administration to bypass Carter’s courtroom.
The Trump administration sought an emergency order from the appellate court, claiming that Carter didn’t schedule a hearing fast enough. The two judges said prosecutors’ arguments about urgency didn’t hold up.
Their ruling noted that the prosecutors have been making claims about illegal voters on California’s voter rolls since July and could have taken action any time since, so their “claimed emergency, at least in part, is a self-constructed one.”
Judge Mark Bennett, a Trump appointee, noted in a concurring opinion that he had “serious doubts” about the federal government’s claims that prosecutors could “superintend or intervene in a state’s election administration.”
He wrote that Congress granted states — not the executive branch — authority over elections.
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Patrick Bumatay, another Trump appointee, argued that “federal law precludes California from commingling ballots likely cast by aliens with legitimate ballots, because it encourages and induces illegal voting.”
“Stopping that practice for those identified as likely noncitizens is the bare minimum,” Bumatay wrote.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
Topline:
The Los Angeles City Council gave L.A. Police Department the greenlight Tuesday to move forward with a pilot program to install new automated license plate recognition cameras in the city, despite concerns from some council members and the public about privacy and surveillance.
What happened: The council voted 9-6 to veto the program, but fell short of the 10 votes required to nix the agreement and send it back to the Board of Police Commissioners. The narrow vote divided the council, which debated at length about whether L.A. should move forward with introducing more license plate readers on its streets without requiring additional restrictions on how the department uses the data.
About the pilot program: Security company Axon will install cameras on some city streetlights for a three-month trial period at no cost to the city.
Background: This summer, LAPD declined to renew its contract with Flock Safety for similar technology after reports that law enforcement agencies including LAPD had shared Flock data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. Across California, the use of AI license plate readers has faced pushback from community members concerned about how the information is used.
Read on… for more about the ALPR pilot program and the concerns about its use.
The Los Angeles City Council gave the L.A. Police Department the green light Tuesday to move forward with a pilot program to install new automated license plate recognition cameras in the city, despite concerns from council members and the public about privacy and surveillance.
The council voted 9-6 to veto the program, but fell short of the 10 votes required to nix the agreement and send it back to the Board of Police Commissioners.
Under the pilot program, security company Axon Enterprise will install cameras on some city streetlights for a three-month trial period, at no cost to the city.
The narrow vote divided the council, which debated at length whether L.A. should move forward with introducing more license plate readers on its streets without additional requirements on how the police use the data.
This summer, LAPD declined to renew its contract with Flock Safety for license plate readers after reports that law enforcement agencies including LAPD had shared Flock data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. Across California, the use of AI license plate readers has faced pushback from community members concerned about how the information is used.
“I certainly understand the department's desire to bring on a new company to replace Flock, but in the neighborhoods that I represent, there still seems to be a lot of uncertainty about how this new technology will work,” said Councilmember Curren Price, who voted to veto the pilot program.
Council members who blocked the veto cited public safety concerns, saying there were other ways to require the police to increase transparency. Councilmember Traci Park said that outrage over the technology stemmed from misinformation.
Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who also voted against rejecting the pilot program, said the council’s power to negotiate tighter regulations on how LAPD uses license plate reader data could come later on, after the three-month testing period.
“The point of leverage is going to come after the three months, he said. “That's when we're going to be faced with this question about ‘Do we expand this?’”
The City Council weighing in on an LAPD pilot program is not the norm, and comes after months of heightened scrutiny over how the department utilizes automatic license plate reader data. The department primarily uses the technology in its vehicles rather than on city streets.
In July, the Office of the Inspector General for the L.A. Board of Police Commissioners issued a lengthy report on the status of the technology within LAPD, and recommended the department get approval for new contracts from the Board of Police Commissioners, a civilian body appointed by the mayor that determines policy for the department.
That’s what led the board to consider and approve the Axon pilot program in September. That opened up an opportunity for the L.A. City Council to intervene in the decision. Under the city charter, the council can veto actions by boards of commissioners with a two-thirds vote.
That’s what Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez was pushing for when he initiated the council vote. He said Tuesday that the vote was an opportunity to push the police department to commit to independent auditing of how it uses automated license plate reader data, establish board oversight of sharing data with external agencies and limit who in the department can access the data.
“We should take time to make sure that we have thorough, thoughtful protections laid out before we install more cameras,” Soto-Martinez said Tuesday.
The pilot program is just a small slice of LAPD’s business with Axon. The Board of Police Commissioners also recently approved a 10-year, $235 million contract with the company for body cameras, tasers and automated license plate recognition cameras for around 1,600 police vehicles.
That contract will require council approval and is currently being reviewed by the city administrative officer, according to the mayor’s office.
Topline:
High tides broke records and flooded neighborhoods along the Southern California coast today for the second day in a row. Scientists say even higher ones are likely headed our way in the next few months.
The tides: The tide gauge in San Pedro read 8.18 feet Tuesday morning, recording its highest measurement since records began over a century ago. The previous record of 7.93 feet was set in 2005. Records were also set at tide gauges in La Jolla and Santa Barbara. The exceptionally high tides were expected to peak Tuesday and slowly subside over the coming days.
The flooding: The high tides flooded streets and homes on the Balboa Peninsula in Newport Beach and on the Long Beach Peninsula. It also prompted officials to close a section of Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach.
Why it matters: The current tide conditions are a preview of what’s to come this winter, scientists say. The yearly peak of the tidal cycle is still at least a month away. El Niño will also continue to drive up sea levels, and the high tides on top of them.
Read on … for a detailed look at coastal conditions.
Record-breaking high tides rolled into Southern California waters for the second day in a row Tuesday.
The tide gauge in San Pedro read 8.18 feet Tuesday morning, its highest measurement since records began more than a century ago, after already setting a new record on Monday. The previous record of 7.93 feet was set in 2005.
Records were also broken at tide gauges in La Jolla and Santa Barbara.
High water levels spilled over seawalls and swept across beaches, inundating communities along L.A. and Orange County coasts that have been hit repeatedly by storm surges and destructive surf over the last few months.
“We've already seen impacts that we have not had in quite some time,” said Lisa Phillips, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service.
The exceptionally high tides were expected to peak Tuesday and slowly subside as the week progresses. Coastal flood warnings are in effect up and down the coast until Thursday afternoon.
But scientists say the conditions are just a preview of what’s to come in the next few months with the highest astronomical tides of the year — and peak El Niño season — still on the horizon.
On the Balboa Peninsula in Newport Beach on Monday, water poured over the seawalls of some homes that back up to Newport Harbor, leaving up to a foot of flooding in some intersections.
At the corner of 39th Street and River Avenue, Diane Teitscheid waded ankle-deep, motioning for cars to slow down so as not to slosh the water into her and her neighbors’ garages.
“All the water on our entire street is coming from that house,” she said, pointing to a home where water rushed through the side gates.
The city urged residents to prepare for the high tides, knocking on doors and offering free sandbags at multiple locations. Some did not heed the warning.
“What we're finding is there's just some private residents that are choosing to do nothing,” said Joe Stapleton, the Newport Beach City Council member whose district includes the Balboa Peninsula. “And by doing nothing, they're intentionally flooding streets and neighbors' properties.”
Stapleton said the city is now planning to take “more of an enforcement approach,” which could include fines for people who refuse to bolster their seawalls with sandbags in flood-prone areas.
Flooding also prompted officials to shut down part of Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach.
Farther north, seawater inundated streets and homes on the Long Beach Peninsula, where a number of structures along the boardwalk have been rendered uninhabitable by recent storm surges from Hurricane Marie and Tropical Storm Rachel.
Tides are naturally high during this time of year because of the position of the moon and sun.
But at the moment, other factors are driving up sea levels and pushing astronomical tides even higher than they would normally be.
First, the ocean off the coast of Southern California is warmer than ever recorded — we’re nearly a year and a half into a prolonged marine heat wave. Since warmer water takes up more space than colder water, sea levels are higher. Water temperatures across the Central Coast and Southern California are 5 to 9 degrees above average.
Scientists say the warming is being driven by a combination of human-caused climate change and El Niño, a climate pattern in which the normally cooler eastern Pacific Ocean heats up.
Second, El Niño has pushed a Kelvin wave into Southern California waters. What’s a Kelvin wave? It’s essentially a huge mass of warm water moving across the ocean. When a Kelvin wave collides with a landmass, it can raise sea levels up to a foot.
University of California climate scientist Daniel Swain also said the current tidal conditions are just the beginning of even more severe high tides over the next several months. That means more flooding for coastal communities.
“We have not seen the worst coastal flooding this year that we're likely to see later,” Swain said. “This is probably, unfortunately for those who are dealing with it, just a preview of what is to come. The coastal flooding will be more widespread geographically and probably significantly deeper later this season.”
Swain said king tides — the term for tides at their yearly peak — have yet to arrive. Tides generally don’t reach their highest until late November, December and January.
On top of that, Southern California will likely see continued sea level rise from El Niño-driven Kelvin waves over the next few months. And this year’s potentially historic El Niño season is also likely to come with significant rain, potentially adding storm surge and surf.
Topline:
A proposal to build a new police station next to "Bunnyhenge" in the city’s Civic Center Park has become a top election issue in the City Council elections.
The backstory: The city is actively studying the idea of building a new police headquarters on a large portion of Civic Center Park, which would likely cut into the sculpture garden that houses the beloved concrete rabbits known as “Bunnyhenge.”
City Council elections: Three seats on the seven-member council are contested (in a fourth seat, the incumbent Robyn Grant has no challengers). Two of the challengers, Walter Stahr and Andy Gerken, entered the race specifically to fight against building a new police station in the park, which would include the city jail.
Read more … about the issues roiling the beach city's political scene.
Drive around Newport Beach this election season, and you’re likely to see lawn signs with an image of four giant concrete bunnies behind bars below the phrase “SAVE OUR PARK.” It’s a reference to the current City Council’s controversial idea of building a new police headquarters and jail on the parkland that surrounds the Newport Beach Civic Center, home to the famous, or infamous, “Bunnyhenge” sculpture.
The proposal, one of several the city is considering for a new police headquarters, wouldn’t actually lead to the sculpture’s demise, but the idea of paving over a significant portion of the open space and paths around the sculpture has emerged as a top issue in the city’s November City Council race. Other major issues include protecting the city’s vulnerable shoreline from El Niño and preventing the kind of chaos that engulfed the Balboa Peninsula on July 4, when looting, illegal fireworks and street brawls broke out, leading to hundreds of arrests.
Three seats on the seven-member council are contested (in a fourth seat, Robyn Grant, the incumbent has no challengers). Two challengers, Walter Stahr and Andy Gerken, entered the race in their respective districts specifically to fight against building a new police station in the park, which would include the city jail.
“I am 100% opposed to a jail in the park. That is my number one issue,” Stahr said at a candidate forum in September.
At the same forum, Gerken said, “I imagined a police department there and the park gone, and I thought, ‘How could I not run?’ So I ran to save the park.”
The issue illustrates a classic Southern California debate, and one that gains increasing urgency as developable land grows ever more scarce — how valuable is open space?
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Newport’s current police headquarters, off Jamboree Road, is more than 50 years old. The force has outgrown the building, and it is plagued by maintenance problems. “It’s routine that we have sewage backup; we had the electrical fire last month, the power outage with the failure of the backup generator in November,” Dave Miner, the police chief, said at a city meeting in March. “We definitely do need a new building.”
Neither the City Council members nor the candidates running to unseat them dispute the need. The question is where.
A series of ad hoc committees has looked into several options:
Concept designs show the police station taking up to one-quarter of the existing parkland on a slope that would put it right under the watchful gaze of the giant concrete rabbits of Bunnyhenge.
Earlier this year, when the majority of City Council members seemed to favor the park option, opponents sprang into action. Dozens of people showed up to a City Council meeting in March to speak against the idea, including Stahr. He is challenging incumbent Erik Weigand in District 3 along with another challenger, Tim Stoaks.
“Parks are sacred spaces,” Stahr said from the lectern at that meeting. “One does not destroy a park to make way for an office building, because, face it, that’s what the police station really is: it’s an office building and a parking structure and a huge gas station.”
Supporters say putting the new police station on city property makes financial sense and would consolidate the city’s main services at the Civic Center.
No decision has been made to build the new headquarters on the parkland. But the city has allocated at least $1.5 million dollars to evaluate the option.
The controversy over potentially putting a new police station in the park has echoes in Newport Beach history. In the early aughts, the city was desperate to replace its outgrown City Hall. One controversial option was to build it on part of the land, the same slender parcel at issue now, that residents had been promised as their own coastal version of a Central Park.
Residents put the idea on the ballot in 2008, and after a whopping $800,000 in spending for and against the measure (the equivalent of about $1.2 million today), voters approved the new Civic Center.
The park was developed along with the Civic Center, including the sculpture garden where Bunnyhenge sits. It also includes wetlands, walking paths through native coastal vegetation and a dog park.
The quirky installation of giant rabbits at the park has spawned love and ire over the years. Families take their holiday pictures with the concrete beasts, and they’ve become a destination for out-of-town visitors thanks, at least in part, to their inclusion in the popular Atlas Obscura travel guide.
But some, including former City Councilmember Scott Peotter, thought the bunnies were a waste of money. In a 2014 campaign video, Peotter criticized city officials for spending money on the installation. At the end of the video, Peotter walks away while one giant bunny’s heads spontaneously explodes. (It wasn’t real, and the bunnies still stand.)
Park lovers say a new police station would not only intrude on the sculptured bunnies’ territory, but the project would also eliminate walking paths, jeopardize the adjacent wetlands and reduce habitat for the real bunnies and other animals that live in the park.
At a forum held in late September at the OASIS Senior Center, City Council candidates were asked which site is most appropriate for a future police station and why. The two challengers running on the issue, Stahr and Gerken, were unequivocal about where it should not be located.
“Definitely not the Civic Center Park,” Gerken said, adding that he would consider the police department’s preferences regarding the other options.
Stahr said, “I don't know the precise place it should be. The one thing I am absolutely morally convinced of is that it does not belong in the park.”
The other two challengers, Stoaks and Tina Babajanians, also said they opposed the idea.
In contrast, incumbents Weigand, Lauren Kleiman and Joe Stapleton didn’t rule out the possibility. “What I will agree with a lot of people in the community is this process has been flawed from the beginning,” Stapleton said, noting that he would have favored a “more public-facing committee” rather than the initial ad hoc committee, which had no public members.
Kleiman, who is facing a challenge from Gerken to represent District 6, said she supports building a new station “anywhere that is central and that allows the police to have continued operation … that would not impact safety in the city.” She said ideally the new HQ would get built where the current one sits, but doing so would be logistically challenging and disrupt police operations.
Weigand, who is facing a challenge from Stahr and Stoaks to represent District 3, said he was “OK with studying the Civic Center site … to figure out if it actually works.” If it turns out it's not feasible, he said, the city should look at nearby properties that would put the new HQ in “the heart of our city.”
After the candidate forum, resident Pamela Marks said her top issue is making sure the police station doesn’t get built in the park. But more than the idea itself, she said, she doesn’t think the current City Council has listened to residents’ concerns about the proposal. “I get that feeling when I go to the meetings. They kinda roll their eyes and, you know, they just blow it off,” she said.
Asked why preserving Civic Center Park is important to her, Marks said, “The park's important to me because open space is important to me.” She said she volunteers for the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in neighboring Huntington Beach. “I've released wildlife in that park because that's where it was found.”
Attend a City Council meeting
When: Meetings are held twice monthly on Tuesdays starting at 4 p.m. The next meetings are scheduled for October 27 and November 10.
Where: 100 Civic Center Dr., Newport Beach
Remote options: You can watch the meeting (during or afterward) on the city’s website, or live on Spectrum (Channel 3) or Cox Communications (Channel 852).
Attend a meeting of the Newport Beach Police Headquarters Advisory Committee
When: No meeting is currently scheduled but you can review past agendas and find email addresses for the committee members on the committee webpage.
Find out more about the proposals
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