4 Agencies Investigate Bulldozing of Huntington Beach Wetlands

As Huntington Beach officials saw it, their mid-December cleanup effort was just part of park maintenance.

Saying that an inlet of Talbert Lake harbored rats and was a breeding ground for mosquitoes, they bulldozed willow trees, cattails and bushes from three acres of marshland in the city’s central park.

But local Audubon Society members are outraged, claiming that the city has destroyed an oasis for birds--one of the best bird-watching sites and one of the last fresh-water marshes in Southern California.

Echoing the bird watchers’ concerns, this week three federal agencies and one state agency--the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Department of Fish and Game launched investigations into the city’s action.

Letter of Complaint

In a letter of complaint to the other agencies, Nancy M. Kaufman, project leader of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Laguna Niguel office, on Tuesday declared that the bulldozing appears to have proceeded without required federal and state permits, constitutes unauthorized fill of a wetland and has destroyed part of a “riparian habitat within the park that supports one of the largest and densest concentrations of passerine migrants (migrant songbirds) anywhere in Orange County, or for that matter, the western United States.”

If it is determined that the city acted without proper permits, it could be forced to restore the habitat.

According to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists, more than 40 species of birds regularly bred within the marsh and more than 200 species have been sighted there in the last four years, including American lesser goldfinches, bush tits, northern orioles, warbling vireos, hermit warblers, cinnamon teal and ruddy ducks. In addition, a small songbird called the Least Bell’s Vireo, on both state and federal endangered species lists, was sighted in the park in the fall of 1985.

Riparian habitat--wildlife habitat adjacent to a river, pond or lake--is increasingly rare in Southern California, federal biologists said.

Species Declining

“Southern California has lost over 80% of riparian areas that were once existing,” Kaufman said. As their habitat has become limited, the species that used to live in those areas have been declining, too.

Loren Hays, an avid bird watcher and the U.S. Wildlife service biologist who discovered the bulldozing, said many birds displaced by the parks’ cleanup effort will probably not be able to find another fresh-water marsh to support them and will probably die.

But Daryl Smith, superintendent of parks, trees and landscaping for the city of Huntington Beach, argued that the bulldozing, performed at the request of county Vector Control officials, was done in a manner respectful of wildlife.

Although the bulldozers scraped “a jungle” of wild vegetation from marshy land at the Jack Green Nature Center, the contractor left some black willow trees and several stands of cattails untouched on the remaining mounds of dirt that form the banks of Talbert Lake. In a finishing touch to this $12,000 cleanup effort, the city will soon begin replanting some willows, Smith said.

‘Hundreds of Rats’

“We’re trying to provide not just a bird sanctuary but a place where people can jog and camp,” he said.

As evidence that the marsh at Huntington Central Park needed pruning, “hundreds and hundreds of rats were coming out of all that brush and debris” during the bulldozing, Smith said. “I don’t want to see some type of deal like bubonic plague.”

Smith added that he did not believe that federal or state officials have any jurisdiction over a city park.

However, federal officials maintain that under a 1972 amendment to the Clean Water Act, they do have jurisdiction over all wetlands--usually defined as swamps or marshes. “Every little stream, every little pond, everything that’s even moist” comes under the enforcement authority of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said Glen Lucas, chief of the corps’ south coast section regulatory branch.

Minimize Damage

Robert Leidy, West Coast enforcement coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency, said mosquito or rat problems should be able to be controlled with chemicals or with traps in a way that would minimize damage to wetlands.

If the EPA determines that Huntington Beach needed a permit for its work and failed to get one, “we’ll probably seek some sort of restoration” of wetlands--requiring Huntington Beach to replant the high grasses and thick brush that the city’s contractor pulled out, Leidy said.

Officials from the four agencies expect to meet with Huntington Beach officials in the next two or three weeks to discuss its cleanup effort, federal officials said.