UC settles suit over construction site pollution
Santa Cruz Sentinel 3/12/07
The suit, filed last year by the Coalition for Limiting University Expansion and later joined by the city of Santa Cruz, was dropped to avoid a drawn-out court battle that could have lasted several years, plaintiffs said.
The settlement ends only one of many outstanding legal spats over the university's plans to grow by 4,500 students and 3.9 million square feet in the next 13 years.
The suit accused the campus and its contractor of violating the federal Clean Water Act by allowing water polluted with sediment to migrate from several construction sites into nearby creeks, ponds and groundwater.
Under the settlement reached last Monday, the university did not admit any wrongdoing, and the claims were never validated by the courts.
The city and university agreed to revive a stalled project to reduce sediment runoff into the city's Pogonip park, 640 acres of open space below the campus, and ultimately into the San Lorenzo River. UCSC, under the agreement, will pay $110,000 to restore damaged gullies in the Pogonip, UCSC's building company Devcon Construction will contribute engineering and construction services valued at $40,000, and the city will chip in $90,000.
Also under the settlement, UCSC and its contractors will provide more detailed plans on how they curb the stormwater discharge from construction sites. Further, they must provide CLUE and the city with water samples from construction sites during rainy seasons.
"This agreement merely standardizes what the campus already does to protect construction sites, and prompts action by the city to proceed with a long-delayed Pogonip project for which the campus set aside funds almost a decade ago," UCSC acting Chancellor George Blumenthal said in a statement.
At the core of the legal wrangling is the university's Long-Range Development Plan. The city and neighborhood groups say UCSC's plans to grow from 15,000 to 19,500 students by 2020 would cause major strains on the city's water supply, traffic and rental housing stock unless UCSC helps pay for mitigations.
"Knowing the amount of development that's discussed in the LRDP, this suit was to make sure that if UCSC does add development, at least in the construction process, it will be done in a more responsible way," said Don Stevens, a member of CLUE.
CLUE contended that inaction would threaten the unique ecosystem of redwoods and karst on the 2,000-acre campus, citing the assessment of consultants. Karst terrain consists of gullies, sinkholes and underground drainage.
Blumenthal called the settlement beneficial to all parties, but not because it produced any new environmental protection.
"I believe the real benefit of this settlement is that it limited all parties' unnecessary expenditure of additional resources," Blumenthal said, adding that the university has a long record of environmental stewardship.
City Councilman Mike Rotkin, who is also a campus lecturer, disagreed, saying the campus has a poor record in the area of stormwater management.
"It took a lawsuit to force the campus to take these issues seriously," Rotkin said.
CLUE, which has about 100 members, settled a lawsuit with the university last year that had sought to prevent UCSC from allowing the general public to uby homes in Ranch View Terrace, a development planned on campus for faculty and staff.