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