On Tuesday, Jan. 12, the Rossmoor Community Services District received an update from staff on their efforts to obtain information about the composting project at the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos.
So far, the federal government has provided Rossmoor and neighboring communities with very little informaiton.
Five Southland communities have filed Freedom of Information Act Requests concerning the temporarily suspended composting project at the base. The project was temporarily halted following complaints from residents of several communities about the smell.
In Seal Beach, traffic safety and the impact of the project on property values were also concerns.
According to a staff report to the Tuesday, Jan. 12 meeting , “To date, only the city of Garden Grove has received a formal reply and it has been deemed inadequate.”
The other four communities that have filed FOIA requests are Rossmoor, Seal Beach, Los Alamitos and Cypress.
In December 2009, then Seal Beach Mayor Gordon Shanks asked the RCSD board to file an information request with the U.S. Department of the Army concerning the environmental review process for the military base’s composting project.
“The four cities of Los Alamitos, Seal Beach, Garden Grove and Cypress have made individual and collective attempts to obtain environmental documents, if any, in order to determine identified environmental impacts and corresponding mitigation efforts. While the project has been temporarily suspended, there is no guarantee that it will not resume when and if the JFTB deems fit,” the report said.
“Until December 14th, only an Environmental Checklist indicating a categorical exemption to environmental compliance had been provided. We now have the reply from the Department of the Army to those Freedom of Information Act requests previously submitted.There is no new information regarding an environmental review other than the categorical exemption. Therefore, CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) and NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) documents were apparently not submitted to the appropriate agencies.
“General Counsel is investigating whether this might be a circumvention of law,” the report said.
The commander of the JFTB temporarily has suspended the composting project.
Late last year, Rossmoor and other communities sent a letter to the secretary of the U.S. Army asking him to cancel the contract between the base and the company that was doing the composting work. To date, there has been no reply from the secretary of the Army.
In other business, the RCSD board:
• Reviewed the district’s quarterly recreation report by Recreation Coordinator Emily James.
“In continuing my efforts to add contract classes to the District, I have been in collaboration with the District’s own tennis pro, Fernando Molina to implement a regular tennis instruction schedule. We are hoping to schedule free clinics to residents during spring break and implement regularly scheduled tournaments to add to the growing number of tennis patrons,” James wrote.
“In the time that has passed since my November recreation report, I have received two estimates for the cost of implementing a senior mobility program in conjunction with the city of Los Alamitos and the Los Alamitos Medical Center. The funds that OCTA (Orange County Transportation Authority) would be able to contribute unfortunately are not enough to implement the program without grants to provide additional funding. Emeline Moya from the city of Los Alamitos and I are currently researching senior transportation that would help cover the costs of the program,” James wrote.
• Authorized General Manager Henry Taboada to execute an agreement with West Coast Electric to install additional lighting at Rossmoor Park. West Coast Electric submitted a winning bid of $23,000 for the project. The other two bids were in excess of $24,000.
• Elected Shannon Hough as the new president of the district board.
