Madrona (Canyon Crest) Amended EIR Comment Deadline Extended

Upon request from citizens concerned that the Madrona (formerly Canyon Crest) Amended Environmental Impact Report public comment period ending on 7 January 2013 was not timed, with the Christmas and New Year's holidays, to allow enough opportunity for responses, the City of Brea has agreed to extend the deadline another 15 days to 22 January.

A post from 26 November on this blog had more information about the newest iteration of this controversial 162-unit project on the north side of Carbon Canyon between the Orange/San Bernardino counties line and the Olinda Village community.

To review that post, please click here.

If you are as concerned about the myriad impacts of this proposed development on Carbon Canyon as many of us who have registered opposition to it over the years (this blogger only coming into this in 2008, whereas others have been fighting this project for much longer), then review the documents as best you can and send your comments to City Planner David Crabtree so they can be entered into the public record.

From there, the project's appeal, filed in 2008, will return to the City Council and there will be another opportunity to register concerns then.

Whether or not the property owner intends to build, or (more likely) secure that valuable tentative tract map and then sell the land, the idea of a large residential subdivision in a wildland area, taking away increasingly rare open space, disturbing wildlife, being prone to dangerous wildfires, and subject to a host of other issues, is bad public policy.

If the City of Chino Hills can spend millions of dollars fighting the Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project and its "towers of terror," then certainly the City of Brea can, for several legal reasons embraced under the California Environmental Quality Act, show its commitment to community by rejecting this project (and any others that involve the land in question.)

Carbon Canyon is slowly being swallowed up by a creeping suburbia and for the promoters of Madrona to refer to their project as a "refined country" one really only means that the term "refined country" is code for a permanaent destruction of a central part of the Canyon.

Developers have had more than their share of regional land to develop; we have more than enough people; more than enough cars and traffic; not enough space on Carbon Canyon Road; not enough schools and funding for them; too much trash and not enough landfill space; too little open space; not enough water (long term); and the list can go on and on.

Don't forget that Chino Hills has already approved two unbuilt projects in the Canyon, totaling some 120 houses and an application is expected soon for well over 200 more.  Think about what this, and the 162 proposed for Madrona, would do to the Canyon

So, if these issues matter to you, register your concern to the City of Brea and request the City Council to reject the Madrona project.