BILL ANALYSIS
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| SENATE COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES AND WATER |
| Senator Fran Pavley, Chair |
| 2009-2010 Regular Session |
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BILL NO: SB 792 HEARING DATE: April 28, 2009
AUTHOR: Leno URGENCY: No
VERSION: April 23, 2009 CONSULTANT: Bill Craven
DUAL REFERRAL: No FISCAL: Yes
SUBJECT: Tidelands and submerged lands: City and County of San
Francisco: Candlestick Point and Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.
BACKGROUND AND EXISTING LAW
1. Tide and submerged lands and the beds of lakes, streams, and
other navigable waterways are held in trust by the state for the
benefit of the people of California and are to be used to
promote the public's interest in water or water-dependent
activities such as commerce, navigation, fisheries,
environmental preservation and recreation. The State Lands
Commission (SLC) is the steward and manager of the state's
public trust lands. Actions of the SLC are subject to the
California Environmental Quality Act.
Existing law allows the SLC to lease trust lands, enter into
boundary agreements, and exchange public trust lands for
non-trust lands and lift the trust from public trust lands. The
SLC must be provided equal value in any such exchange. The
Legislature retains the authority to modify uses permitted on
public trust lands.
The Legislature has granted certain public trust lands to local
governments or local agencies for management. A grantee must
manage trust lands consistent with its own granting statutes and
the public trust doctrine. Grantees are generally entitled to
undertake development activities on their trust lands provided
those activities are consistent with the public trust. The
Legislature has retained for the state, by delegating to the
SLC, the power to approve land exchanges, boundary line
agreements, etc.
2. The Public Park Preservation Act generally requires parks
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agencies, including the California Department of Parks and
Recreation (DPR), to receive either additional land or
compensation when a park is transferred to a non-park purpose.
The amount of additional land or compensation is generally
required to be equal the cost of acquiring substitute park land
of comparable characteristics and of substantially equal size
located in an area that could be used by the same persons who
used the existing park land and the transferor is also entitled
to the costs of placing substitute facilities on the new park
land.
For lands obtained by DPR with funds provided by the federal
Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), federal regulations
require that once an area has been funded with LWCF assistance,
it must continually be maintained in public recreation use
unless the National Park Service approves substitution of
property of reasonably equivalent usefulness and location and of
at leaset equal fair market value, as determined by an
appraisal.
3. The City of San Francisco plans to revitalize the closed
Hunters Point Naval Shipyard and Candlestick Point areas within
the city. In June, 2008, the voters in San Francisco approved
Measure G that that integrated the planning processes for the
two areas.
Presently, DPR has a facility at Candlestick Point, called the
Candlestick Point State Recreation Area. It was purchased with
LWCF funds and consists of approximately 40 acres.
The proposed redevelopment area is large, and San Francisco has
big plans. The redevelopment strategy for the combined area
envisions more than 10,500 new residential homes, more than 32%
of which will be offered at below market rates, according to
information provided by the developer, a division of Lennar
Homes. Millions of square feet of commercial and retail space
will be developed, including what is billed as California's
largest center for green technology companies. More than 9,000
permanent jobs and 30,000 construction jobs would be generated
by the project, and the city is trying to direct jobs to the
under-served surrounding community of Bayview Hunters Point.
As part of the redevelopment project, the city wants to
redevelop Candlestick Point and reconfigure the public trust
lands and state park lands within the project area. The acreage
of the park would expand to 80 acres, some of which is the old
shipyard, which has toxic remediation issues. The redevelopment
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project would redevelop and expand the park, grant to the San
Francisco Redevelopment Agency in trust, specified public trust
lands within the project area, and would authorize the SLC and
DPR to approve land exchanges in furtherance of this project.
Importantly, this bill does not contain consummate the land
exchanges. In many respects this bill is very much a work in
progress, and several important issues need to be resolved
between the city, the developer, SLC and DPR, not to mention the
issues concerning the federal facility at Hunters Point.
The current state recreational area is under-utilized and
relatively undeveloped. There are piles of rubble and dirt
parking lots, and inadequate recreational facilities such as
trails. The objective of the redevelopment proposal is to
convert this shoreline into a major urban amenity such as Crissy
Field.
PROPOSED LAW
This bill would authorize a public trust land exchange and
boundary settlement within the project area, which is diagrammed
in the bill, subject to the approval of the SLC.
It would authorize a reconfiguration of the Candlestick Point
State Recreation Area. This would be accomplished with the
agreement of DPR to transfer certain portions of the SRA in
exchange for other lands that would provide an overall benefit
to the SRA. The terms of this consideration that would be
received by DPR are not yet finalized.
Numerous other technical changes to prior authorized land
exchanges would be repealed.
ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT
According to the author, the existing configuration of trust and
nontrust lands within the project area is such that the purposes
of the public trust cannot be fully realized. A substantial
portion of the trust lands are now interior, reclaimed lands
from the Bay that are no longer accessible to navigable waters,
or are "paper streets" laid out in a grid pattern that is not
useful for public trust purposes. Conversely, other lands within
the project area are adjacent to the waterfront and would have
high value as public trust lands, except they are not subject to
the public trust. The proposed exchange is intended to maximize
overall benefits to the trust. After the exchange, the entire
waterfront within the former shipyard and at Candlestick Point,
as well as certain interior lands that have high public trust
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values, will be subject to the public trust.
The Committee has received letters of support from local elected
officials, labor organizations, housing groups, the Bay Area
Council, BART, and others.
ARGUMENTS IN OPPOSITION
Sierra Club California is opposed unless the bill is amended. It
reads the bill as requiring DPR and SLC to accept the proposed
public trust boundary changes and land exchanges without the
ability to exercise their independent discretion and without any
environmental review. It is also concerned about the effect of
the proposed redevelopment project on birds and other wildlife.
A proposed bridge that would connect Candlestick Park with the
Hunters Point property that would cross Yosemite Slough concerns
this organization because of the potential effect on a wetlands
restoration project by the California State Parks Foundation.
Sierra Club is also concerned that there are too many unresolved
issues that involve DPR and the proposed land swap, and that the
bill may be premature since so many other regulatory agencies
have not been engaged.
COMMENTS
As noted above, this bill is a work in progress which means, by
definition, that if the Committee so chooses, the bill will
continue to be worked on as it continues through the legislative
process. As the city and the opposition have both noted, there
are issues that need to be resolved before this bill is ready
for final approval. However, even in the last two weeks since
the bill was originally scheduled to be heard in this Committee,
the parties have continued to work and by all accounts, progress
has been made on several outstanding issues.
It is important that DPR and the SLC, both actively involved in
the ongoing negotiations, are comfortable with the final
language in the bill, and it seems that one of the roles of this
Committee is to facilitate that result.
In an interesting internal San Francisco situation, Senator Yee
and Assemblymembers Ammiano and Ma wrote to Mayor Newsom
expressing concern about the possible transfer of contaminated
property at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard to the city. This site
is clearly contaminated with toxic and radioactive material. In
Measure P, voters called on the Navy to clean up the facility to
the highest standards. These legislators are concerned that the
Navy will simply cap these wastes, and they call on Mayor Newsom
to reject a low-cost engineering solution that does not
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adequately clean up the former shipyard. These legislators are
also asking the mayor whether any of the federal stimulus money
would be available to assist in the cleanup.
In a response, the mayor stated that Hunters Point has received
more cleanup dollars than all other closed Navy bases combined.
He disagreed that federal stimulus dollars could be used for the
cleanup. He also noted that by the terms of the agreement the
city has with the Navy, that the cleanup must be approved by the
California Department of Toxics and Substance Control and the U.
S. EPA.
In previous situations unrelated to the present San Francisco
proposal, the SLC has entered into agreements involving the
transfer of contaminated lands provided that adequate liability
insurance or other indemnification measures are part of the
arrangement. In addition, in such situations, the SLC has
specifically reserved the right to approve the remedial plan
even after it may have been approved by DTSC or the EPA.
Although it may not alleviate the concerns of the opposition, it
should be very clear that CEQA in fact applies to proposed
discretionary actions of DPR and SLC pursuant to this
legislation, should it be adopted.
To summarize: In addition to the cleanup provisions, there are
other unresolved issues, including:
1. The bill must satisfy the LWCF requirement pertaining to
the exchange of parklands purchased with those funds.
2. The SLC and DPR must be substantially in agreement with
the provisions pertaining to funding, the land exchange,
and the public trust provisions.
3. The bill must address the funding requirements of DPR
for developing the new parkland.
4. The bill must address the operations and management
funding needs for the new park.
The purpose of the suggested amendment below is to provide the
Committee with a role in the continuing oversight of the bill's
future negotiations and to ensure that the issues identified
above are resolved as the bill moves forward, assuming that is
the decision of the Committee. Because the toxic contamination
and remediation issue is of paramount concern to the public and
other legislators, the proposed amendment focuses on that issue,
but it is evident that these other issues must also be resolved
and that the Committee should be involved in those discussions.
The author has agreed to bring the bill back to Committee at an
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appropriate time.
SUGGESTED AMENDMENTS
AMENDMENT 1
Page 21, line 25, add a new (a)
"It is the intent of the Legislature to authorize the
commission to approve an exchange of public trust lands
under specified conditions, including but not limited to
the provisions of this section."
Renumber the subsequent provisions.
SUPPORT
African American Revitalization Consortium
Alice Griffith Tenants Association
BART
Bay Area Council
Bayview Hunters Point Multipurpose Senior Services, Inc.
Bayview Merchants' Association
City and County of San Francisco
Honorable Gavin Newsom, Mayor of the City and County of San
Francisco
Honorable Sophie Maxwell, Supervisor - District 10, City and
County of San Francisco
Hunters Point Shipyard Citizens Advisory Committee
Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center
Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center
San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Sophie Maxwell
San Francisco Branch NAACP
San Francisco Building and Construction and Trades Council
San Francisco Chamber of Commerce
San Francisco Housing Action Coalition
San Francisco Labor Council
San Francisco Organizing Project
TidesCenter
1 Individual
OPPOSITION
Sierra Club California
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