Developers Reject Plan to Provide a Face Lift for Lagoon in Carlsbad

An offer by the Port of Los Angeles to foot the bill for a $15-million face lift of Batiquitos Lagoon in northern San Diego County was jeopardized Tuesday when two developers owning large portions of that coastal wetland called the state-endorsed improvement plan “totally unacceptable.”

The port and Pacific Texas Pipeline Co. hope to fulfill state and federal requirements that they compensate for constructing a landfill on tideland in Los Angeles Harbor to support a terminal for a 1,030-mile oil pipeline to refineries in Midland, Tex., by paying for the improvements at the lagoon in Carlsbad.

But representatives of Hunt Properties Inc. and Sammis Properties said at a negotiation meeting in Laguna Niguel that the Batiquitos plan would neither work nor create a visually pleasing setting. They urged adoption of an alternative plan devised by their consultants and rejected by the state as inhospitable to birds.

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

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

Should the parties fail to reach agreement on a plan for the 540-acre lagoon, Los Angeles 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.

All sides are expected to meet again next week in an attempt to find a compromise solution.