San Dieguito River Valley’s Fate Looms Big in Council Elections

For the first time, the fate of the verdant San Dieguito River Valley, the county’s last coastal river valley without massive development, has become an issue in the San Diego City Council elections.

The San Dieguito River Valley looms as a major land-use battleground pitting developers interested in upscale housing and industrial parks against preservationists eager to see the valley become a greenbelt barrier to keep North County from being swallowed by urban sprawl from the south.

The problem is that the valley has not yet achieved a political constituency to make elected officials sit up and take notice.

But environmentalists, and sympathetic politicians, are trying to change that--starting with the four seats on the San Diego City Council that are up for election Tuesday.

Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer, who represents the city’s portion of the San Dieguito River Valley, is stumping door-to-door, distributing handbills warning: “I need support on the City Council to stand up to developers and create the San Dieguito Regional Park.”

Smiling Picture

The green-and-white handbills, with a smiling picture of the councilwoman, says Wolfsheimer needs candidates Mike Aguirre, Ron Roberts and Bob Ottilie to help her save the San Dieguito River Valley.

The distinction Wolfsheimer found between Aguirre, Roberts and their opponents on the issue has not been spotted by environmental groups studying the issue.

San Diegans for Managed Growth quizzed all eight candidates about whether they support saving the valley from development. The group also vowed to make sure the winners’ deeds match their supportive rhetoric.

Managed Growth member Leo Wilson said that, with the exception of the 6th District race between Ottilie and Bruce Henderson, the group found no major differences among candidates on preserving the San Dieguito River Valley.

Indeed, it is the Ottilie-Henderson race where the San Dieguito issue is the strongest.

The race could be seen as a test of whether the issue has the political clout that preservationists say will be necessary to overcome the daunting problems of planning, money and inter-agency rivalry that could easily scuttle efforts to save the 43-mile-long valley from Del Mar to the Sutherland Reservoir near Ramona.

One reason for spotlighting the 6th District race is that the seat is currently held by Councilman Mike Gotch, long an ardent supporter of saving the valley and a particular hero to environmentalists for his support in the days when the City Council seemed firmly pro-growth.

The major reason, however, for spotlighting the Ottilie-Henderson race is Henderson’s former role as attorney for the San Dieguito Trust, a landowners’ trust that owns 350 acres in the lower valley near Interstate 5.

Critical Articles

“Bruce Henderson has had an agenda for developing the San Dieguito River Valley since at least 1984,” said a pre-election newsletter sent out by the Friends of the San Dieguito River Valley.

“Although the landowners in the valley are pouring money into his campaign, he is trying to run as an environmentalist,” said an unsigned article in the newsletter titled “Crucial S.D. City Election.” The only candidate to get the group’s endorsement was Ottilie.

Henderson says he is being criticized unfairly and that he supports the San Dieguito River Valley as a park as long as landowners are properly compensated or allowed to transfer their development rights elsewhere.

He said he resigned as attorney for the trust in June because he heard it would be a political issue.

“I resigned because word was put out that Bob Ottilie was going to try to distort my activity to do planning as somehow an effort to rape the valley,” Henderson said. “Also, I didn’t want a conflict of interest.”

Ottilie, like Henderson, a Republican attorney, has sent out full-color brochures comparing the lushness of the San Dieguito River Valley with the concrete and congestion of Mission Valley.

The brochures blast Henderson as pro-development and promise that Ottilie will fight to retain the San Dieguito River Valley as “one last open space frontier for all to enjoy.”

On Wednesday, preservationists stepped up their attack on Henderson, calling an anti-Henderson press conference at North City West’s High Bluff Park overlooking the lower valley.

Reporters were provided with copies of critical letters sent to Henderson by the Environmental Protection Agency and the California Coastal Commission, both of which were alarmed by cutting, grading and filling being done by farmers leasing land from the San Dieguito Trust.

Sensitive Wetlands

Environmentalists assert the farming operations have destroyed sensitive wetlands directly east of Interstate 5 and caused siltation that threatens to plug up the San Dieguito Lagoon west of the freeway and kill it as a bird habitat. The letters reflect a dispute between Henderson’s clients and state and federal agencies over whether regulatory permits were necessary.

Another part of the dispute is whether the trust’s property fits the scientific definition of a wetlands and therefore falls under state and federal protection. Henderson, on behalf of his clients, argued that it did not.

“That really represents Bruce Henderson’s idea of preserving the river valley: to represent landowners’ best interests and work to see that the property gets developed,” Del Mar Councilman John Gillies told reporters, taking the unusual step of meddling in the internal politics of a neighboring city.

“I think he’ll be working behind the scenes to circumvent regulations and to take the property owners’ point of view,” said Alice Goodkind, president of the Friends of the San Dieguito River Valley.

Henderson, in a telephone interview, called the accusation “ridiculous.”

“There is no way I would do anything but represent the public interest on the council,” he said. “That’s why I’m running. It’s sad that such allegations are made.”

Henderson added that Goodkind and the others are just mad that through his efforts the value of his clients’ property was enhanced--thus making it more expensive to create a regional park.

‘Very Vocal’

“I have been very vocal that I’m a good environmentalist, and those people have been very vocal about being good environmentalists,” he said. “They think they’re better than I am. I don’t understand that debate. I don’t call them names.”

While the bluff-top press conference was unceasingly hostile to Henderson, support for Ottilie was only lukewarm.

“Bob Ottilie is not a great environmentalist,” said Jackie Sanders, chairman of the Friends of Famosa Slough. “He’s not going to win any awards, either. But I personally have the feeling the guy at least will shut up and listen. Henderson, during our interview, never once shut up. He knew everything. There’s no talking to the guy.”

The Friends of the San Dieguito River Valley newsletter began by lamenting the defeat of candidate Bob Glaser in the September primary and concluded that Ottilie is “the better alternative” among the two remaining choices.

Once the smoke of the political season clears, the San Dieguito River Valley will be part of the council agenda in three key ways:

- First it will be the focus of a task force put together by Wolfsheimer to study preservation and purchase of the city portion of the lower valley from Lake Hodges to I-5.

- Second, another task force has been assembled by the San Diego Assn. of Governments, composed of officials from the county, the city of San Diego, and other cities whose boundaries include portions of the valley--Del Mar, Solana Beach, Escondido and Poway. Sandag is also organizing a citizens’ advisory group.

Sandag has projected an 18-month work schedule to devise a preservation plan for the valley--assuming that agreement can be reached by various public agencies and private landowners.

“Our goal is the preservation of the river valley as a regional open-space park,” said Sandag senior planner Mike McLaughlin. “We want to identify what parcels can be purchased, what agreements can be reached with property owners, where the money can come from, and what people expect from open space.”

Bitter Battle

A healthy amount of cooperation will be needed to preserve the San Dieguito River Valley--with its overlapping jurisdictions and competing political egos. The county Board of Supervisors and the San Diego City Council have already fought one bitter battle for control over a significant portion of the valley, with the county winning.

- The third way the San Dieguito issue will confront the City Council is through an upcoming review of the land-use plan for the lower valley--the approximately 800 acres between I-5 and El Camino Real, bounded on the south by North City West and on the north by Via de la Valle.

Much of the area is given over to horse ranches and tomato and bean fields. To the east of El Camino Real, in land under the county’s jurisdiction, estate housing, country clubs, golf courses and a tennis ranch have begun to sprout.

At the urging of Henderson’s successor as attorney to the San Dieguito Trust, the city Planning Commission in September delayed a decision on important matters of new roads, zoning and possible development for the city area.

A new hearing is set for January, with the fight then shifting to the council.

Possible Uses

A project manager for the San Dieguito Trust suggested at a public meeting last summer that the trust property would be a good location for a scientific research and business park, with a “campus-like” setting, connected to I-5 by a new interchange.

Trust officer Judith Munk later said that no specific proposal is being formulated and that a research and business park is only one possible use. But suspicion among environmentalists is unabated.

“What they really want is another Sorrento Valley with a highway going down the middle of the valley,” Goodkind said. “That’s what we’re fighting to block.”