The City of Morro Bay will try and tap a State program for more money to update its nearly three decades old Waterfront Master Plan and possibly plan some major changes to the Embarcadero.
The City already applied for a $500,000 planning assistance grant from the California Coastal Commission last September (2023), and this latest action by the City Council would up that request by 50% to $750,000. The WMP is long overdue for an update.
“Adopted in 1996 and certified by the Coastal Commission in 1997,” the report on the issue said, “the City’s Waterfront Master Plan establishes a vision, design guidelines, and standards for public and private land uses and development on the Embarcadero.”
Like the City’s various other master plans, the WMP includes a lot of information about the harbor’s history. “The plan,” reads the report from Community Development Director, Airlin Singewald, “also contains important background and historical information about the waterfront, which provides applicants, staff, the public, and decision-makers with context for land use planning decisions on the waterfront.”
Currently, the WMP covers the land areas from Tidelands Park, down the Embarcadero and out to Morro Creek and Morro Rock. The new update would include both sides of The Embarcadero from Tidelands out to Morro Creek, plus the old sewer treatment plant on Atascadero Road (co-owned with the Cayucos Sanitary District) and “offshore wind,” according to the report.
The grant program includes something the City hadn’t contemplated in 1996 — sea level rise due to climate change, which the Coastal Commission emphasizes with its planning documents’ updates.
“The WMP update,” the report said, “would also include a new chapter to address these grant funding components, as well as update the existing document.” The City’s own Local Coastal Program (another planning document under the Coastal Commission’s purview) calls for these additional analysis and planning for Morro Rock (which is owned by State Parks), “and to incorporate sea level rise projections and an updated coastal hazard vulnerability assessment.” That could mean relocating under-deck utilities at piers and docks “to a location above the sea level rise zone” and also requires the City to “gather information the effects of sea level rise and other coastal hazards on Morro Bay’s shoreline.”
The added $250,000 would also help cover other issues that must be addressed, for example, what to do to replace the parking lost if all the street end parking lots on the Embarcadero were turned into parklets.
The update would “expand the scope of work to include a parking relocation plan that addresses the redevelopment of existing street-end parking lots west of the Embarcadero with pedestrian-oriented plazas as required by the City’s General Plan/Local Coastal Plan.”
That GP/LCP document was completed in 2021 and certified by the Commission that same year. It took about 10 years to get done.
One other item that could end up being included is Measure A-24, a citizen’s initiative on November’s Ballot that would lock in the existing zoning for the waterfront area from Beach Street north to Morro Rock and include the power plant property, where a project to build the world’s largest Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) facility has been proposed.
If passed, A-24 would require a vote of the people to change the zoning in any part of the designated area, including the power plant and the BESS Project. The power plnt was changed to “visitor-serving/commercial” zoning with the General Plan Update and Vistra needs it changed back to “Industrial” to accommodate the BESS Project.
The Commission’s planning grant program, funded by some $31 million in the State’s 2021 Budget, ordinarily has a $500,000 limit for the amount that staff can approve.
But Singewald said the commission staff said they would support the higher amount, which would have to be approved by the commissioners.
The City has tapped the Commission before, including getting $600,000 for the GP/LCP Update, a.k.a. “Plan Morro Bay.”
If the grant application is approved, Singewald said they would then put out a request for bids from qualified planning firms “similar to the consulting services utilized for the Plan Morro Bay update project.”
In another planning issue, Singewald asked the Council to approve the sixth amendment to the contract for Rincon Consultants, which is doing the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) on the BESS Project.
The City hired Rincon in March 2021 to review the BESS Project submitted by plant owners Vistra Energy. Previous amendments have swelled the original contract amount of $158,000 to $261,000 (a $123,000 jump); then $304,000 (another $23,000); to $477,000 ($172,000 jump); $483,000 (a $6,000 jump), and $531,000 ($47,000 jump); plus this sixth amendment — for another $94,000 — bringing the new total contract amount up to $625,000.
It should be noted that Vistra is paying all of these bills. So why did it jump for the sixth time? There’s been too much public input.
“A primary reason for this request,” Singewald’s report said, “is to cover Rincon’s cost to review and prepare responses to a higher-than-expected volume of comments on the Draft EIR.
“The City received 213 written comment letters totaling over 1,000 pages in response to the Draft EIR. Rincon will also provide written responses to the verbal comments received during the Draft EIR Scoping Workshop. Additionally, Rincon is seeking additional budget for hearing attendance, community engagement, and additional revisions to the Draft Master Plan, and project management.”
However, the new monies will not extend Rincon’s project deadlines. The EIR is supposed to be completed by the end of the year (Dec. 31), however, if the company needs more time, the City Manager is authorized to extend the contract.
Vistra has been breaking out its checkbook, over and over again as the costs for Rincon have gone up. “Vistra has previously paid the City an amount of $197,439,” Singewald said, “which represents cost plus 25% for the original contract, which was the requirement prior to the execution of the Deposit and Reimbursement Agreement.
“The Amendment No. 1 and Amendment No. 2 are covered by a deposit of $175,000 paid by Vistra, which is a Deposit and Reimbursement Agreement executed in January 2022. To keep up with expenditures, Vistra has replenished the deposit four times since January 2022 in the amount of $175,000 each (February 2023, May 2023, November 2023, and March 2024).”
While the Draft EIR drew an avalanche of public comments, the contract amendment itself drew some criticism as well.
Former City Councilwoman and environmental activist, Betty Winholtz told the Council: “I would suggest that if Rincon had produced an adequate DEIR, there would not have been so many comments. They left themselves open to criticism by doing incomplete work. In addition, the second public meeting they held was a duplicate of the first and was to no avail. Yes, the public deserves another, if not two, public meetings/hearings. While Vistra pays the bill, the City should take note not to use this company again.”
Another local resident, Steven Paige, criticized the EIR work as inadequate. “This flawed EIR needs major revisions to make it cover Social Justice and Environmental issues.”
Paige goes on to call for the EIR to address the concerns outlined in an Aug. 2 letter from the Coastal Commission staff that laid bare the problems with the BESS Project, in particular coastal hazards — tsunami run up zones, flooding from Morro Creek, and future sea level rise — plus the potential presence of protected habitats, namely dune scrub, on the BESS Project site.
In the end, the BESS Project will likely end up before the Coastal Commission no matter the path the project eventually takes.
