County May Join Attack on Protected Coastal Zone

Los Angeles County is considering lending its name to an effort through the courts to strip away about one-third of the five-mile-wide protected Malibu coastal zone created by the Legislature.

Led by Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who represents San Fernando Valley communities within the coastal zone, the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted 3 to 0 to consider joining a lawsuit to remove about 6,000 parcels from the protected area.

If the acreage were removed, land-use restrictions would be lifted that prevent widespread development in the largely untouched hills and canyons to the south of Mulholland Highway on the inland slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains.

The California Coastal Commission, environmental groups and state park officials believe such a change would harm the fragile watershed lands that drain into the sea, and could pave the way for construction of thousands of homes in areas adjacent to, or earmarked for, the proposed Santa Monica Mountains national parklands.

About 10 landowners are expected to file suit against the Coastal Commission next month, and have asked the county to join them.

Antonovich called the lawsuit “long overdue,” and said the landowners “deserve our assistance and our support.”

But Michael Wornum, chairman of the Coastal Commission, said the county is “making a mistake, at this time in the proceedings, to start playing around with where the edge of the coastal zone is.”

Wornum said the county is in the final stages of completing a long-delayed zoning document that, among other things, preserves the current coastal zone boundaries. The document requires final approval from the Coastal Commission. The zoning document would not attempt, as the lawsuit does, to redefine the protected zone.

“This lawsuit is not going to help good will and mutual cooperation, and I hope the supervisors won’t join it,” Wornum said.

However, Joseph M. Gughemetti, an attorney representing the landowners, said he believes that the county will join the suit because the board has opposed the boundary of the coastal zone for many years.

County officials have argued at numerous public meetings that the zone stretches much farther inland than the distance intended by the state Legislature when it approved the Coastal Act in 1976.

They say the boundary was supposed to be drawn at the first major ridge line near the coast, or five miles from the coast, whichever was closer to the sea.

“In the late 1970s the county did a study and determined there is a major ridge line well before the five-mile line that was drawn, and the coastal zone shouldn’t go past that ridge,” Gughemetti said.

If the ridge were made the boundary, the width of the zone would be trimmed by 1 to 2 1/2 miles along much of its 27-mile length, he said.