1. On 10/4/14, the Sunday Daily Pilot ran a full-page ad by NBR LLC. This is the ad in its entirety.

2. Exact Text of Letter in Ad

3. Paragraph 3: NBR’S Letter to the Public FOR THE RECORD: The Conservancy does not want to turn the site into a limited- access area. Our plan will create more access to the site, not less. We will not be putting homes, a hotel or commercial space on the land. Our plan calls for an Interpretive Center and public restrooms. No other buildings. Every available acre will be dedicated to open space. Our proposed coastal nature preserve and park will provide more access, more educational opportunities and more recreational space for the public. Only the oil facilities will be closed for safety reasons, as they will be under NBR’s plan.

4. FOR THE RECORD: The property changed ownership in 2006. Since then, according to the County Tax Assessor, it has an assessed value of $42 million. Even the City understands that the land isn’t valued at hundred of millions, based on their 2008 consultative price study. The Conservancy has no plan to ask tax payers for acquisition money. It won’t be necessary. The Measure M2 Freeway Environmental Mitigation Program allocates funds to acquire land and fund habitat restoration projects. Acquired properties are purchased and permanently preserved as open space. Further, Measure M funds come from the half-cent sales tax approved by Orange County Voters in 1990. Paragraph 3: Sentence 2

5. Funding Sources: Measure M2 funds will be used to acquire and restore Banning Ranch. Additional acquisition funds: Private Individual Donors Grants from Private Foundations Public Grants No additional taxes are necessary.

6. FOR THE RECORD: The Conservancy’s plan will not further degrade “a great coastal property.” We aren’t building 1375 homes, a hotel and 75,000 sq ft of commercial space on Banning Ranch. Under our plan, the land will be preserved as a coastal nature preserve and park, which calls for open space remediation. Let’s take a look at what open space remediation on Banning Ranch looks like. Paragraph 3: Last sentence

7. VERNAL POOL Banning Ranch has one of the last vernal pool complexes in Orange County.

8. Lupine growing in the grasslands

9. Encelia and other wild flowers growing on the mesa.

10. Bannin g Ranch Bluffs

11. Note the habitat growth. These are not recent photos. They’re pre- drought and pre-other conditions that have disturbed the habitat, but they show what can happen on Banning Ranch after a week or two of rain. It springs to life, despite the fact that it’s an operational oil field with significant soil and water contamination. Everything was growing and thriving and all it took was a little rain. How is this possible? It’s because the land is self-remediating through a natural process called phytoremediation. Phyto is Latin for plant. Remediation means clean up. As it turns out, plants, left to their own devices, have the miraculous ability to clean up the contamination caused by humankind, even oil field toxins. Let’s see how phytoremediation works.

12. Phytoremediation. Oxygen is a key component of phytoremediation. If the contaminated soil and water is sufficiently oxygenated to support microbial life, the microbes will degrade the oil wastes and render them useable to the plants, which further degrade them. Great educational tool.

13. What happens if Banning Ranch is kept as open space? No massive remediation of the oil field is required, at a cost of $30-60 million. Per DOGGR regulations, old oil wells will not have to be blown out and filled with cement to plug and cap them at the cost of $80K to $150K per well. Over 2 million cubic yards of contaminated soil won’t have to be excavated. Natural land forms will not be altered. Wildlife won’t be displaced or killed. No rare or endangered species will be lost and the critical habitat won’t need to be restored because it won’t have been destroyed. Open space avoids the massive destruction that comes with trying to develop the land. Plus, most of the amenities of residential development can be offered by open space use at a fraction of the cost.

14. The Conservancy believes that open space remediation is the ideal solution for much of Banning Ranch. It would utilize native plants and natural forms of bioremediation to restore, preserve and protect the majority of the land as it now exists. In the lowlands, where the oil operation is located, there are hot spots that will require more extensive remediation.

15. FOR THE RECORD: In 2006, Newport Beach voters chose open space use of Banning Ranch as their highest priority. Is it possible that government officials might actually value the preferences of those they serve? The habitat on Banning Ranch is considered high value, all of it. USFWS declared all of Banning Ranch as critical habitat for the Gnatcatcher. As explained in Slide 7, Measure M2 funds are used to acquire land to be permanently preserved as open space. Not the undeveloped bits and pieces of the land, not the fragments, all of it. Paragraph 4: NBR’S Letter to the Public

16. CLOSING STATEMENT… The Conservancy believes it would be a disservice to the purpose and intent of the Coastal Commission, as well as to the public, to in any way undermine the Banning Ranch review process by turning it into a contest—us versus them, NBR LLC vs the Banning Ranch Conservancy. We believe this would only distract from the project under consideration, which is Newport Banning Ranch. NBR is the Project. NBR LLC is the Applicant, and the salient question, the one that must be answered before the application can be approved, is whether Newport Banning Ranch, the Project, conforms to the Coastal Act. Does NBR’s CDP application meet the statutory standards of the Coastal Act? To lose sight of that question would be a mistake and could take the process dangerously off track. The Conservancy doesn’t have a project before this Commission. We hope to one day, and we understand the interest in our conceptual vision for the land, which is why we gave a hard copy of our Vision Plan to each commissioner. It’s a work in progress, the content is fluid and changing because there’s much that has to happen, including the full review process. Please keep in mind that the Conservancy has not had access to the land, despite repeated requests. Prior to the Commission’s tour of Banning Ranch in June, I was one of several members of the Conservancy who’d never set foot on Banning Ranch. Nevertheless, we do have a Vision Plan, a Conceptual Water Quality Plan and we’re working on a Draft Remedial Action Plan.

17. Phytoremediation uses green plants and their associated microorganisms to reduce contamination in soils, sediments, surface water and ground water. Microbes degrade the contamination. Plants called hydroaccumulators and extractors draw the contamination in through their roots, where the cleanup process begins. Grasses, legumes and other plants are used to clean up crude oil contamination. Certain kinds of fungi are very effective in cleaning up diesel oil. That process is called mycoremediation. Science & Mother Nature at Their Best