Rescue Plans Come From All Quarters : Restoration: For Beauty or for Wildlife?

For years, Texas oil billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt had driven by the shallow, brackish waters of Carlsbad’s Batiquitos Lagoon on his way to watch the thoroughbreds run at Del Mar.

Although it lacked the allure of a Texas oil well, the lagoon grew on Hunt. So when he learned in 1980 that a parcel of land on the northeastern shore of Batiquitos was for sale, Hunt jumped at the deal. Before long, planning was under way for the hotel, golf course and more than 5,400 residential units that will make up the Pacific Rim Country Club and Resort. Company officials hope to begin construction early next year.

Environmentalists shudder at the development proposals of men like Nelson Bunker Hunt. In the past, erosion from such projects has combined with coastal railroad and highway construction to wreak ecological havoc on the lagoons and hasten their geological demise.

The wetlands’ natural mechanisms have been so thoroughly thrown out of balance by the bulldozer’s blade that only restoration and careful management will guarantee their survival, biologists say. Restoration, however, is a new and delicate science, a procedure fraught with controversy over effective techniques and often hampered by disagreement over objectives.

Repairing and looking after a lagoon also costs money--millions more than the most dedicated nonprofit organization can raise. That’s why Nelson Bunker Hunt--like a lot of other developers--believes he may be the best darn friend a lagoon could ever have.

“Batiquitos Lagoon is an important asset to our project and we’re willing to do and spend just about anything for its benefit,” said Hunt, best known for his reputed attempt to corner the world silver market along with his younger brother, W. Herbert Hunt. “We need that lagoon and we appreciate that lagoon. So we’re ready to get the ball rolling and improve it in whatever way makes sense.”

Donald Sammis, who owns and plans to develop 160 acres overlooking the western bays of Batiquitos, agrees: “What we have here is the potential for a healthy partnership between the public and private sectors. Unlike the government and these citizen groups, we developers have the ability and finances to act quickly and help the lagoon--something that will benefit the entire community.”

Sounds promising. But there’s a catch: Do the goals of landowners holding the purse strings match the biological needs of the lagoons? Or, is a lagoon that would enhance the marketability of a hotel or residential project necessarily a healthy lagoon?

“It’s all got to do with people’s motives,” said Joan Jackson, a local Sierra Club leader and chairwoman of the Los Penasquitos Lagoon Foundation. “Unfortunately, many developers want their projects to surround pretty little ponds. Therefore, their objectives are aesthetic and may well conflict with what is best for the lagoons ecologically.”

Batiquitos is a useful--and timely--example. A shallow-water lagoon that for decades has dried up each summer and filled the air with the ripe smells of decaying nutrients, Batiquitos is the target of several restoration plans and a myriad of management philosophies.

The Hunts own 325 acres of the 526-acre Batiquitos and insist that it have a respectable, visually pleasing water level year round. They want to tap a well to pump salt water into the lagoon’s eastern basin--”play Mother Nature in the off-season,” as one company official describes it.

Sammis shares the Hunts’ goal--to prevent the lagoon from drying up and producing foul odors--but he argues that dredging Batiquitos and maintaining its mouth open to the sea hold the most promise. Sammis predicts an additional windfall from his plan: the mounds of material scooped from the lagoon bottom may be suitable for use on North County’s eroding beaches.

The Leucadia County Water District, meanwhile, has proposed dumping treated sewage into the lagoon, and finally, at the urging of the Batiquitos Lagoon Foundation, the City of Carlsbad has written a land-use and management plan for the controversial resource.

Some state officials and several bird enthusiasts are skeptical of nearly all the plans, worrying that dramatically altering existing conditions at Batiquitos may eliminate its relatively rare, shallow-water environment--a habitat cherished by a wide variety of shore birds.

“Batiquitos has been drying up seasonally for 100 years, and contrary to what some of these developers will tell you, it is not a dead lagoon,” said Earl Lauppe, a veteran wildlife biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game, which owns 135 acres of Batiquitos. “If we allow somebody to turn it into a lake, then we’re forcing those birds that depend on it to go elsewhere. And there aren’t many places left for them to go.”

Neither Hunt nor Sammis officials hide the fact that aesthetics play a major role in their lagoon-improvement efforts: “I’d be lying if I said our motives are altogether altruistic,” said Sammis Vice President Jon Briggs, “because it’s important that we have a beautiful front yard.”

At the same time, company officials say the critics’ fears are unwarranted. Biological consultants hired by Hunt and Sammis to study the lagoon have determined that their respective restoration plans will not jeopardize the shore birds and will actually increase the diversity of species that use Batiquitos, officials say.

Lauppe declined to comment until he has reviewed the consultants’ conclusions.

Disagreement over objectives is not the only force complicating lagoon management. Restoration, biologists involved in the efforts admit, is more an art than a science--a largely untested, trial-and-error process that has been known to exacerbate a lagoon’s ecological woes.

“It’s kind of like clinical medicine,” said Eric Metz, of the National Audubon Society, former wetlands coordinator for the Coastal Commission. “The doctor goes with his best professional instincts in treating an illness, but he’s never quite sure if it’s going to work and if it does, why.”

The picture is further muddied because each of the county’s lagoons has a unique set of conditions--requiring different responses. Buena Vista is fresh water. Batiquitos is shallow. Los Penasquitos has narrow tidal channels, San Elijo has a wide expanse of open water. And so on.

One problem, however, is shared by all the lagoons: siltation from upstream development is suffocating their plant and marine life and accelerating their natural geological transition into meadowlands.

Scientists know how to stem this tide of silt. Cities must enact tough grading ordinances that prohibit grading during the rainy season and require developers to construct basins to trap silt before it washes downstream.

“There’s no excuse for not doing some things, like controlling the erosion in the watershed that is the biggest enemy of these lagoons,” said Philip Williams, a San Francisco hydrological consultant involved in a study examining ways to lighten the load of sediment dumped in Buena Vista Lagoon. “The barriers there are not technical, but political.”

Convincing cities--particularly those outside the coastal zone--to act can be among the biggest obstacles. Tough grading ordinances may reduce a city’s appeal to developers, who view the restrictions as burdensome and liable to increase initial construction costs.

Vista, for example, dragged its feet for years before Buena Vista Lagoon activists convinced officials to take responsibility for the erosion caused by development within its borders.

“It takes a while to make a city realize it’s got to think about what impact its actions are having 30 miles downstream,” Williams said.

Restoration also is troubled by unpredictable natural episodes that can spoil millions of dollars worth of work. Buena Vista, for example, is a lagoon that some activists privately refer to as the victim of an ambitious $1-million improvement project gone awry.

The 1983 project, coordinated by the state Department of Fish and Game, involved draining the lagoon’s east basin and dredging it of more than 180,000 cubic yards of silt--the product of decades of development in the fragile flood plain.

The silt was used to create four nesting islands tailored for the California least tern, one of many birds that frequented Buena Vista and had for years put the lagoon on every bird watcher’s list.

But today, 18 months later, the islands remain barren of vegetation--not to mention birds--and are covered with a layer of hardened clay quite unsuitable for the particular terns.

Project managers say the problem is a temporary one caused by a lack of rainfall, which is needed to smooth the islands’ surface and produce plant life. Some lagoon watchers, meanwhile, worry that the islands are sinking, their silt destined to land back on the bottom of Buena Vista.

Other North County restoration attempts have been less controversial--and more immediately successful. A $385,000 water control project in the east basin of San Elijo has controlled the rampant growth of cattails, which threatened to clog and cover the lagoon’s open-water areas and thus discourage its use by migratory birds.

San Dieguito Lagoon, which sits just south of Interstate 5 between Del Mar and Solana Beach, was for years a stagnant pool with a rather poor range of marine and bird life. In 1983, it underwent the state’s largest restoration project to date and has shown strong signs of progress, Fish and Game biologists say. The restoration investment there--including purchase of a portion of the lagoon by Fish and Game--was nearly $2 million.

Carlsbad’s Agua Hedionda Lagoon, where water-skiers and a few hardy birds coexist, undergoes ongoing restoration of a sort. San Diego Gas & Electric, which operates the Encina Power Plant at the lagoon’s outlet to the ocean, dredged and opened the mouth of Agua Hedionda in 1952 and has maintained its regular interchange with the ocean ever since. The project is credited with supporting a rich colony of marine life in the lagoon.

Finally, after exhaustive studies and extensive debate, Los Penasquitos Lagoon--a favorite of many nature lovers because of its striking setting at the foot of the Torrey Pines bluffs--is soon to be the object of an enhancement project designed to rejuvenate its meandering tidal channels with regular infusions of seawater. That work will be financed in part by fees that developers of North City West pay into a fund administered by the state Coastal Conservancy.

Despite the uncertainties that surround the infant restoration science, biologists and educated lagoon advocates agree that the risks are well worth taking.

“Restoration failures should make us cautious about trying to manipulate the wetlands in dramatic ways,” said Jackson of the Sierra Club. “But we’ve already meddled so much and made it so difficult for nature to do her job, that we really have an obligation to interfere.”

A major lingering question, however, is who will finance the expensive restoration efforts and ongoing maintenance of lagoons.

To date, all North County restoration efforts have been financed primarily by public agencies. And, while Nelson Bunker Hunt may have millions to spend on mending Batiquitos Lagoon today, some environmentalists wonder who will foot the bill 20 or 30 years down the road, when the Pacific Rim Country Club and Resort is completed and the Hunts are back home in Dallas.

State wetland management officials are counting on public interest in the environment to support bond issues that could shoulder much of the cost. The passage of Proposition 19, which provided bonds for the purchase and restoration of wetlands, by 64% of the state’s voters last June, was a promising indication that Californians are willing to support future restoration activities.

But they also urge communities to make the right decisions today to limit damages and reduce the price tag tomorrow.

“The choice is clear,” said Alyse Jacobson of the Coastal Conservancy, which awards grants for restoration projects. “A community can make smart planning decisions that protect the lagoons today, or sink millions into remedying the consequences of bad development in the future.”