ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : A Preservation Message

The Superior Court ruling that California’s wetlands cannot be paved over for homes was a resounding and welcome affirmation of state voters’ intentions a quarter-century ago, sentiments that still hold sway today.

Judge Judith McConnell’s tentative decision, announced last week, said the California Coastal Commission was wrong last year in approving residential development on the Bolsa Chica wetlands and in agreeing to filling in Warner Pond near Huntington Beach.

The commission was established to implement Proposition 20, approved by voters in 1972. Much of its work involves promoting public access to the 1,100 miles of California coast, but protection of the state’s dwindling wetlands should remain a major concern.

The commission overruled its own staff with its 8-3 vote to allow the Koll Real Estate Group to build more than 3,000 homes at Bolsa Chica, adjoining Huntington Beach. Koll has since revised its plans, agreeing before last week’s ruling not to build on the wetlands but to construct 2,400 homes on the mesa.

Nevertheless, McConnell’s ruling should send a signal to the commission, planning agencies, city councils and boards of supervisors that the wetlands must be preserved.

Pollsters have reported strong public support for protecting the environment, whether the issue is air quality or cleaner ocean waters. Politicians who have tried to dismantle those protections in recent years deservedly have incurred voters’ wrath.

California once had more than 50,000 acres of wetlands, perennial marshes washed by the coastal tides. But after decades of development, only about 13,000 acres remain. The biggest wetland in Southern California, 1,300 acres, is at Bolsa Chica.

The right of an individual or a business to develop property is important, but the need for balance is reflected in the numerous zoning codes regulating what can go where.

In the past several years California has tried to work out land exchange deals that allow developers to build elsewhere in return for leaving habitats of endangered or threatened plant and animal species alone. Those represent good efforts to achieve proper balance and are preferable to permitting construction on some wetlands in exchange for the developers’ helping preserve other tidal marshes. That has been done elsewhere and was originally to have been the case at Bolsa Chica. The court’s decision improved the outcome. Agreement by several government agencies is expected to provide tens of millions of dollars to restore the badly degraded wetlands, preserving an important part of Orange County.