Before approving the start to a General Plan Amendment for the Sandpiper Golf Club renovation project, the Goleta City Council wanted some assurance that Devereux Creek did indeed lack habitat where it passed through an underground pipe.
Removing the environmentally sensitive habitat area (ESHA) designation for the piped sections of Devereux was among Sandpiper's asks for a change to the city's foundational planning document called the General Plan; the others were to de-designate the manmade pond as red-legged frog habitat and ESHA. Though the council voted to begin the amendment process on Tuesday, it is by no means a done deal. The amendment will come back to city decision-makers after environmental review is completed.
Devereux Creek runs above and below the fairways near the border of Ellwood Mesa, not far from Goleta's famed monarch butterfly grove and a gated community called The Bluffs. To the other side of Sandpiper is the Ellwood oil facility and the Bacara resort, as well as Bell Canyon, where much of Devereux's water has flowed ever since the culvert under the railroad tracks clogged some time ago. The biologists who've already looked the course over found good habitat for red-legged frogs, a threatened species, at Bell Canyon, as well as raptor nests near Devereux, which they recommended adding as ESHA.
