Los Osos recently broke free from its 35-year-long building moratorium complete with California Coastal Commission approval, but the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors wants eager landowners to think of—and pay for—the local habitat they’re about to disturb.
“Without the HCP [Habitat Conservation Plan], all the work completed to create the regulatory framework for build-out capacity for the community will be for naught,” Emily Ewer, senior planner at SLO land consultant group Oasis Associates, told supervisors at the Dec. 10 meeting. “Los Osos is going to be a complicated regulatory biome, which must include the snails and their HCP.”
The coastal town witnessed a generation-spanning change with the supervisors’ Oct. 29 decision to lift the build-out restriction by incorporating the Coastal Commission’s suggested modifications. With community development set to grow, the Coastal Commission recommended amending the Growth Management Ordinance to include a 1 percent maximum annual residential growth rate—or up to 50 residential units per year.
Aggravated by a suburban residential boom in the 1970s, Los Osos suffered from groundwater depletion, seawater intrusion, and nitrate contamination by the 1980s. In 1988, the SLO County Regional Water Quality Control Board ordered a ban on almost all new septic systems, which triggered the building moratorium. Los Osos’ status as an environmentally sensitive habitat area added to its building constraints. The entire community sits on an ancient dune landform that produces a soil type called baywood fine sands, which supports a unique set of wildlife.
In June, the Coastal Commission also recommended that the Los Osos Community Plan follow provisions outlined in SLO County’s Habitat Conservation Plan that’s been 15 years in the making. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services approved the plan for a 25-year term in February. Species covered by the plan include the federally threatened Morro shoulderband snail and Morro manzanita and the federally endangered Morro Bay kangaroo rat and Indian knob mountainbalm.
At the Dec. 10 board meeting, supervisors approved the conservation plan in a 4-1 vote, with 5th District Supervisor Debbie Arnold dissenting. The move means that site disturbance must be mitigated by paying into the county’s habitat conservation program. Payment into the fund is based on the size of the proposed area of development. That fund would be applied to conserve a piece of land of the same size in a green belt area surrounding Los Osos.
“Our staff is telling us we have another alternative on the HCP. Yes, it’s a few more dollars per square feet,” Arnold said. “But we’re talking about borrowing $2 million from our general fund at a time when we’re going to be super tight with money.”
The total cost of implementation is $43 million for the 25-year permit term. But a $2 million internal loan is meant to jumpstart HCP implementation, which will be paid off by the people who want to build in Los Osos through habitat mitigation fees. Supervisors will deliberate the fees at a hearing set for Feb. 4, 2025.
Under Fish and Wildlife approval, the conservation plan must be implemented within the first three years of its federal approval. Forgoing the conservation plan means those keen on building will have to participate in Fish and Wildlife’s habitat conservation program, which is the alternative Arnold referred to. The mitigation fee for the federal program is more costly than the county’s plan, tallying $2.73 per square foot of ground disturbance compared to the local rate of $1.95 per square foot.
A project applicant would have to pay $16,380 in mitigation fees under the federal program to build a new residential unit on an undeveloped 6,000-square-foot lot. Under the Los Osos Habitat Conservation Plan, the same unit would cost $11,700 in fees.
“It [the federal program] covers the same compliance with the Endangered Species Act that we’re providing with the HCP for a lower price,” said 2nd District Supervisor Bruce Gibson, who represents Los Osos. “It’s like buying a Cadillac; it doesn’t work very well.”
County Director of Planning and Building Trevor Keith added that the $2 million loan wouldn’t be spent all at once. The county can draw it down depending on the level of conservation activity needed. Green belt conservation involves the county either acquiring plots through willing landowners or restoring government land impacted by hiking trails.
Property owners who want to build are on a waitlist established by the Growth Management Ordinance. The ordinance gives first priority to lots based on waitlist position during Phase I that spans Jan. 1 to June 1, 2025. The entire rest of the waitlist will be prioritized in Phase II that lasts from July 1 to Aug. 1, 2025.
“In doing so, waitlist positions are honored and approximately 75 days are provided from notification to submit construction permit applications, but if those on the waitlist are not ready to build, allocations will be made available to those that are ready to build,” the staff report read. Δ
This article appears in Dec 19-29, 2024.