Owners Balk at Restoration Plan for Batiquitos

A preliminary state-endorsed plan to give Carlsbad’s Batiquitos Lagoon a $15-million face lift was rejected as “totally unacceptable” Tuesday by two developers who own large portions of the coastal wetland and propose major projects on its northern shore.

Representatives of Hunt Properties Inc. and Sammis Properties said the plan would neither work nor create a visually pleasing setting at the lagoon. Instead, the developers advocated adoption of an alternative approach devised by their consultants--and rejected by the state as inhospitable to birds.

State resource-management officials said that without the developers’ support, their proposal to revitalize Batiquitos by dredging it and restoring regular tidal exchange with the ocean could be doomed.

“They are the property owners, and if they oppose a plan the rest of us agree on, it’s dead,” said Laurie Marcus, who is coordinating the lagoon enhancement project for the state Coastal Conservancy. “We all hope it doesn’t come to that, and I don’t think it will. But that’s where things seem to stand at this point.”

Also at risk given the apparent stalemate is about $15 million that the Port of Los Angeles has offered to provide for the lagoon project. In a highly unusual deal, the port and Pacific Texas Pipeline Co. hope to fulfill state and federal requirements that they compensate for building on tideland in Los Angeles Harbor by footing the bill for improvements at Batiquitos.

Should the parties fail to agree on a plan for the 540-acre lagoon, port officials might choose to spend their dollars at one of several other needy wetlands in Southern California, the Tijuana Estuary or Los Cerritos Marsh near Long Beach, for example. Indeed, port administrators already have shown impatience with the pace of negotiations over the Carlsbad project.

“We like Batiquitos, because it’s big, it meets our needs and we think everyone shares the same basic goals here,” said Vern Hall, project manager for the port. “But we’re up against a time wall. We’ve got to get this thing off the ground and we’ve got to have agreement on a plan.”

Hall said the port’s Board of Harbor Commissioners is scheduled to vote on an environmental impact report for Pacific Texas Co.’s ambitious project in late November. He added that the board, betting that neither side would let a $15-million windfall slip away, would likely “take a risk” and give the project a green light regardless of whether agreement on a plan for Batiquitos has been reached.

Officials of the Long Beach-based pipeline company hope to begin construction early next year on a 116-acre fill project to support a terminal for their 1,030-mile oil pipeline to refineries in Midland, Tex. Later, the port will convert 340 acres from wetland for its own use. Together, the projects will cost about $300 million.

Normally, port officials would “mitigate”--compensate for ecologically sensitive land lost to development--by creating similar wetlands within the San Pedro Harbor. But they’re running out of room, and therefore have been forced to look outside the area to fulfill their environmental responsibilities.

The disputed plan was one of several alternative enhancement strategies presented at a meeting here Tuesday involving developers and officials from the port as well as numerous state and federal resource agencies. Each of the alternatives seeks to rid Batiquitos of tons of silt that is choking its plant and marine life and reopen the lagoon to the sea.

For years the wide and shallow Batiquitos has been cut off from the ocean and deluged with silt from erosion upstream and on nearby hillsides. The combination of forces causes it to dry up and smell in the summertime.

While everyone agrees that something must be done to save the lagoon, opinion varies widely on just what sort of program is appropriate. Developers eager to build attractive projects are concerned with improving the aesthetic appeal of the lagoon by keeping it filled with water, while state wildlife officials seek to preserve the shallow-water habitat critical to the birds that feed and nest there.

The problem, then, has been how to balance both needs.

The alternative endorsed by the Coastal Conservancy, which hired a consultant to recommend improvement schemes, recommends dredging 2.3 million cubic yards of silt from the lagoon and constructing a 200-foot-wide channel to the sea. In addition, it calls for creation of a levee in the eastern corner, where a stream feeds the lagoon. This fresh-water marsh behind the levee would capture sediment before it enters the lagoon.

Under this option, the lagoon would contain about 213 acres of tidal mud flats, 167 acres of deep water and 85 acres of salt marsh.

D.L. Clemens, vice president of Hunt Properties Inc., said that alternative means “too much mud flats and a result that wouldn’t look much different than what we’ve got today.”

Clemens, whose company plans a resort and residential community near Batiquitos, added that studies by his consultants come to different conclusions than those cited in the conservancy’s plan, which he said would fail to keep the lagoon open to the ocean.

“The plan they’re supporting is totally unacceptable for us, and if they insist on sticking to it we will simply not go forward with the enhancement program,” said Clemens, whose company owns 360 acres of Batiquitos. “We believe our plan, which we’ve spent a lot of time and money on, is the better approach. It already has significant compromises in it for the birds. We’ve given in a lot.”

But state Coastal Conservancy officials say that the plan favored by the Hunts and Sammis Properties would wipe out much of the lagoon’s shallow-water environment, which is unique in San Diego County and critical to many birds.

Despite their relatively hard-line positions, all sides are expected to meet again next week and attempt to craft a compromise.