Magnolia Tank Farm LCP Amendment

The Commission approved the City of Huntington Beach’s project-specific LCP amendment for the Magnolia Tank Farm. A developer is proposing to place a new hotel and 250 residential units on the former oil storage site for AES Huntington Beach power plant, next door to an unremediated California Superfund site and surrounded by other contaminated sites and within a coastal hazard zone. To deal with these and other concerns, Coastal Commission staff recommend a number of modifications to the LCP amendment, including language to ensure coastal hazards, affordable units and overnight accommodations, and environmental justice are all ensured in the planning and permitting process. California Coastal Protection Network, Sierra Club, Orange County Coastkeeper, Surfrider Foundation and others called for additional modifications to the LCP amendment, including ensuring remediation of the ASCON Superfund site next door is complete before construction, subsurface investigation of groundwater contaminants, extending the minimum setback from ASCON, extending affordable housing requirement into perpetuity, annual monitoring reports from the ASCON site, requiring additional flood protection assurances and groundwater monitoring. 

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This project is moving forward despite outstanding questions regarding the ability to protect the site from coastal hazards and rising seas, including extremely expensive and currently unplanned flood channel adaptations that will be needed over the coming decades. The unremediated superfund site next door has important environmental justice implications, especially considering the affordable units will be located on the ASCON border and the potential for groundwater rise to mobilize legacy contamination. 

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