Housing near O.C. wetlands approved

After years of bitter argument and compromises, the state Coastal Commission has cleared the way for a developer to build about 175 homes near the Bolsa Chica wetlands.

It is a small victory for the developer, who had hoped to build 268 homes in what was once a part of the wetlands in Huntington Beach. But the vote most likely won’t end the skirmishes between builders and preservationists.

Within hours of the commission’s action, officials with the Bolsa Chica Land Trust said they were considering a lawsuit to overturn the approval.

“We’re not happy about this,” Flossie Horgan, the trust’s executive director, said Thursday, a day after the commission approved Shea Homes’ plans for Parkside Estates.

“We’re going to be talking to our attorney about this and will make a decision later,” she said.

For nearly 12 years, Shea and preservationists have been at odds over development near the wetlands. The area where the homes would be built is west of Graham Street, north of the East Garden Grove Wintersburg Channel and south of Kenilworth Drive. The proposed Parkside Estates site is separated from the wetlands by a flood control channel.

Much is at stake for the city. Shea Homes has said it will pay for $15 million in flood-control improvements in the area, which could eliminate mandatory flood insurance for 7,000 residents and businesses.

At the commission meeting, the land trust argued unsuccessfully that the project site should be preserved because of its proximity to the wetlands. “It is part of a wetland,” Horgan insisted.

The trust also said Shea bought the property in 1996, leased it for farming and then allegedly altered the land with bulldozers to hide pools of water -- a contention rejected by the developer.

“If developers can buy property and farm it, then cover up wetlands, then it threatens the Coastal Commission Act,” Horgan said.

The trust isn’t the only one displeased by the vote. According to Laer Pearce, a Shea spokesman, the company is unhappy that commissioners set aside more land than anticipated for conservation.

Initially, the commission recommendation was to allow homes on 38 acres, with eight acres for parkland and three for conservation. Shea officials conferred after the meeting and said that with commissioner’s changes, they have about 25 acres for homes, Pearce said.

“It’s not great,” he said, because the company has lost acreage for building, in favor of conservation. The project calls for seven homes per acre, or about 175 homes. But homes won’t be built any time soon. Pearce said the project must be approved -- again -- by the Huntington Beach City Council because the commission changed the local coastal plan. The proposal then must go back to the Coastal Commission for final approval.

“Just to get our application to this point has taken five years,” Pearce said. “And now it could be another two to three years before we get the final approval.”

Shea Homes took exception to the trust’s characterizations of the developer’s stewardship of the land.

“We really worked hard to identify what needed to be preserved,” Pearce said. “And you can’t get through a more rigid environmental agency than the Coastal Commission.”

david.reyes@latimes.com