Foes May Get Chance to Solve Trabuco Canyon Growth Dispute

The Orange County Planning Commission on Tuesday opened what was to be three days of hearings on a request by a group of Trabuco Canyon residents to cut the number of homes that can be developed in that eastern county area.

But by the end of the first day, commissioners decided to explore whether to form a committee of landowners and residents to resolve their differences. The area in dispute is one of the most rural in the county, with hundreds of homes spread across thousands of acres.

But as development has come closer, residents have complained that their rural life style is being threatened, and county supervisors have suggested that county planners see what can be done to keep the area as rural as possible.

Planning commissioners asked the county Environmental Management Agency to report back on March 17 on the feasibility of setting up such a review committee for proposed projects in Trabuco Canyon, similar to boards of review now in existence in South Laguna and Dana Point.

Such boards “guide the county on implementation of the specific plan” of development, said Peter Herman, an aide to Supervisor Thomas F. Riley. “They’ve been very useful.”

Herman said the boards allow local residents to be involved in the planning process. He said they also help fulfill Riley’s wish “to get disagreements worked out before they get to the Planning Commission or the Board (of Supervisors).”

The disagreements between large landowners and residents in the area were in ample evidence.

The Rural Canyons Conservation Fund said it wanted the number of homes the county has approved for construction in the area scaled back. The county has approved 2,470 residential units for 6,300 acres stretching east from El Toro and Santiago Canyon roads to Cleveland National Forest and to O’Neill Regional Park on the south.

“We are not a no-growth group,” said Bruce Conn of the Conservation Fund. “We are asking for intelligent growth.”

But representatives of several owners of large parcels of canyon land--100 acres and more in some cases--contended that the conservation fund’s proposals would harm their ability to develop the land they own and would amount to the county’s seizing their property.

“I am opposed to the proposed changes,” landowner Ron Martin said. “I am opposed to having to give away half my land for no compensation” to satisfy county requirements. “While the other guys were lying on the beach, I was working” to buy the land and hold it, Martin said.

Conservation fund members called for fewer homes, and also suggested regulations on landscaping, requiring setbacks from highways and other measures they said would preserve the rural character of the canyon.

Planning Commissioner Thomas Moody said that while he could support some of the group’s suggestions, he thought others might not apply to the whole canyon. Moody said a board of review could work out the differences among contending factions on a parcel-by-parcel basis.