Environmental committee excels at tough job

Alex Coolman

Masochists and saints wanted for local committee: group will spend long,

unpaid hours sifting through the minutia of environmental documents and

make recommendations that may or may not eventually be followed.

Sound good? Welcome to the Environmental Quality Advisory Committee, a

Newport Beach group with the challenge of slogging through some of the

most gruesome corridors of civic bureaucracy.

It’s a group, city officials and committee members say, that’s playing a

more influential role in city environmental politics than ever before.

From the proposed Newport Dunes development to the expansion of the

Conexant headquarters on Jamboree Road, the advisory committee is

weighing in with its views.

And more than was the case in the past, the city is listening to what the

committee has to say.

The committee is composed of 21 members -- with each council member

appointing three seats -- and a single chair. Mayor John Noyes and

Councilman Tom Thomson also sit on the board.

In the past, committee member and spokeswoman Laura Dietz said, the

group’s emphasis was decidedly lightweight. Mild subjects such as

recycling and littering were the most controversial things it tackled.

More difficult questions, such as growth and traffic, were left in the

hands of the council.

But in recent years, that has changed.

In 1998, the council passed a resolution “reestablishing” the committee

and gave it a weightier mission. Instead of devoting itself to polite

environmental subjects, the committee would henceforth have the

formidable task of reviewing the environmental documentation for major

developments.

Committee members now routinely read through works of technical analysis

with the length -- but without the prose quality -- of Leo Tolstoy’s “War

and Peace.” They boil down jargon and statistics into something

resembling a coherent description of a development. And on every project

they consider, they try to raise questions that will matter to Newport

Beach residents.

The group’s suggestions are not ultimately binding, but the

recommendations can give the council a sense of what the public cares

about in connection with a development.

“It’s a consensus-building process,” said Bob Hawkins, the new chairman

of the group. “It may be that EQAC doesn’t get everything that our

comments are driven toward. But if we get 90%, we’ve improved the

project.”

Perhaps because the committee has a more substantial mission than it used

to, it has managed to attract and retain committed members in recent

years.

“We’re starting to develop a really good nucleus. We’re really building

our knowledge base,” said Dietz, who is heading into her second year with

the group. “It takes a certain kind of person with a certain kind of

interest to hang in.”

The committee is also a more prominent force in development debates than

it used to be. Where the group’s reports once had to be crammed into

public comment time at council meetings, it now is allowed to give its

reports separately.

“It’s just evolved,” Noyes said. “Right now, I think they’re as strong as

they ever were.”