News
EPA takes lead over Cargill: Speier, Save the Bay applaud move; developer outraged
San Mateo Daily Journal March 20, 2015
By Bill Silverfarb
The Environmental Protection Agency has taken the lead in deciding whether the Cargill Saltworks site in Redwood City should be protected to the chagrin of developer DMB Pacific Ventures.
The EPA’s move was praised by environmentalists and federal lawmakers but officials with DMB said the decision has stalled a three-year effort by the joint venture to clear key environmental hurdles before it comes back to the city with a new housing proposal for the land east of Highway 101.
“We are highly confused and frankly outraged,” said DMB’s David Smith.
Cargill/DMB requested three years ago from both the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to make a jurisdictional determination over whether the roughly 1,480 acres of land on the Bay was subject to federal laws including the Clean Water and Rivers and Harbors acts.
A corps report released this week indicates that only about 60 acres of the land falls under its jurisdiction through the Rivers and Harbors Act. The corps was presumably ready to make a determination on whether the salt ponds remain waters of the United States under the Clean Water Act as it previously ruled before the EPA stepped in.
But the EPA stepped in at the last minute to derail the process, Smith said.
“They’ve had three years to participate. All this time they’ve had this authority and have chosen to do nothing,” Smith said about the EPA.
Last month, Bay Area lawmakers urged the corps to stick with its previous decision that the salt ponds are protected by the Clean Water Act.
The EPA’s move to take over the jurisdictional determination of the land was praised Thursday by U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo.
