New StopMadrona.Org Web Site Up and Running

Tonight's Brea City Council meeting featured a staff report on the updates and modifications to the Madrona project (formerly Canyon Crest), a proposed development project including 162 houses on 367 acres on the north side of Carbon Canyon between Olinda Village and Sleepy Hollow.

Many posts here have discussed the long, tortured history and the many issues at hand with this project, which would require an unprecedented three "statements of overriding consideration" by the city to claim that benefits accruing to Brea would outweigh the unmitigated negative environmental impacts Madrona would have, according to the criteria of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

While there will be more said here in coming weeks, as the city readies for three hearings at council meetings in late January and February, a new Web site has been launched to bring attention to the fight to defeat this project.

StopMadrona.org gives an overview of the project, its history, and the effects it would have if approved.  For anyone concerned about Carbon Canyon and development in Brea, generally, it is well worth a look at the site, the URL of which is here.

There will be the usual debates between those who advocate private property as paramount, those who are looking at the overall effect of the project on Carbon Canyon, those who see the dissenters as NIMBYs and those being called by that pejorative who claim otherwise. 

Of course, it comes down to the five elected officials charged with the responsibility of representing all of the citizens of Brea on projects that have to be looked at on balance for the long term.  Its vote on the appeal of the 2008 planning commission approval (just prior to the devastating Freeway Complex Fire--the fifth such conflagration to torch the project site in recent decades) might mirror that 3-2 decision.  Whether that split is for or against Madrona remains to be seen, but proponents and opponents have two months to ready their arguments within city hall and the council chambers and in the public forum.

Those on either side would do well to take a close look at all available sources, including StopMadrona.org.