CORRESPONDENCE - #41 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE S�tY Op �k Y BERKELEY DAVIS IRVINE LOS ANGELES RIVERSIDE SAN DIEGO SAN FRANCISCO j r SANTA BARBARA SANTA CRUZ "1868 Dept. of Health, Society, and Behavior Dept. of Chicano/Latino Studies 653 E. Peltason Drive,AIRB 2026 Irvine, CA 92697 December 7, 2021 RE: General Plan Process and Content Dear Santa Ana City Council Members, I write in my role as a founding member of the iPlo-NO Santa Ana! Lead-Free Santa Ana! Community- Academic Partnership to understand and address resident-driven concerns about lead in the environment. In this role, we have developed a robust sampling and analysis process, and have thoughtfully engaged residents of Santa Ana to better understand their concerns. I write to ask that the Mayor and City Council vote to delay adoption of the General Plan Update and the EIR, to take the time to adopt specific commitments to remediating environmental injustices in Santa Ana, and to implement a community review and approval process for each component in the General Plan prior to approval by City Council. We believe that the current soil-lead policies in particular are insufficient,because: 1) there are no provisions for the city to engage in soil-lead testing in residential neighborhoods, and no clear process or agreed upon safety thresholds for identifying lead-contaminated properties; 2) while Implementation Action 2.4 of the Safety Element expresses a commitment to working with our organization to understand the prevalence of environmental lead contamination in Santa Ana and to proposing solutions and measurements of effectiveness, there is not an actual expressed commitment to remediating the lead, and the timeline limits the action to 2022- -with a problem as widespread as soil-lead contamination, one year is not enough time to effectively address the crisis; and 3)there is no commitment to collaborating with the Orange County Health Care Agency to provide health care for undocumented and uninsured residents living in neighborhoods impacted by soil-lead contamination. In the long-term, we would like the city to create an Environmental Justice Enforcement Agency, with staff trained to document and investigate community concerns about potential environmental injustices,meet quarterly with community stakeholders (like OCEJ, MPNA, Thrive Santa Ana, Santa Ana Active Streets Coalition, and Rise Up Willowick)to determine best practices for addressing environmental injustices, and to provide residents with regular reports on their work and local environmental health issues they have identified. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or need further clarification. My contact information is below. Alana M.W. LeBr6n,PhD, MS Email aJ ra. i((i L c Il.edu University of California,Irvine, Phone: (617)733-7963 Department of Health, Society, and Behavior Fax: (949) 824-1019 1