Wieder Sides With Bolsa Channel Foes : Supervisor Opposes Plan If Huntington Harbour Is Taxed for It

County Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder on Thursday announced her opposition to taxing Huntington Harbour residents to pay for a proposed $25-million navigable channel to connect the harbor to the Bolsa Chica wetlands.

Saying she was heeding the wishes of her constituents, Wieder said she would oppose a channel between Huntington Harbour and a planned Bolsa Chica marina if no other funding can be found.

A local environmental group that has battled the Bolsa Chica development project reacted favorably to Wieder’s announcement, but a spokesman for the developer said her position on the connector channel would have “no impact” on the rest of the project.

Wieder said her mail survey of harbor residents last month showed that 42% opposed the channel, no matter who paid for it.

Another 42% favored the channel if they were not taxed for it, and 15% wanted the channel and were willing to pay “a reasonable fair share” for the waterway, she said.

Wieder said the county will keep the connector in the land-use plan for the project, for the time being, in case other funding can be found. But she said she will seek to remove it from the maps if no alternative source of money appears.

Bolsa Chica project officials said such alternative financing seemed doubtful because neither the developer of Bolsa Chica nor the federal government is likely to pay the estimated $25-million cost of the connector.

Huntington Harbour boaters now have only one access to the ocean, through Anaheim Bay, which they share with Navy vessels heading for the Seal Beach naval weapons station.

Signal Landmark Properties Inc., which plans a Bolsa Chica development of 5,700 housing units, restaurants, hotels and shops, wants to create a navigable ocean entrance to the marina it hopes to build south of Huntington Harbour.

Questionnaires Sent

Some Huntington Harbour residents wanted a second navigable channel included in the project that would give them access to a second ocean entrance besides through Anaheim Bay, Wieder said.

But the proposed connector “was never in ink,” Wieder said, and “once the subject of who paid for it reared its ugly head, I was going to be guided by what (Huntington Harbour residents) wanted.”

Wieder said her office sent questionnaires to 2,952 registered voters in Huntington Harbour, which is a part of Huntington Beach. She received 1,362 responses, a return rate of more than 45%, which she characterized as “a great response. . . . It shows you they really care.”

“We’re very happy to hear that Supervisor Wieder has taken this position,” said Victor Leipzig, president of the Amigos de Bolsa Chica, an environmental group that has fought since the early 1970s to preserve and upgrade the Bolsa Chica wetlands.

Leipzig said Amigos had opposed the channel because it would have cut through a state ecological preserve “that is of great importance for migratory bird life, as well as a fish spawning area.”

Wayne Clark, a spokesman for Signal Landmark, said that the company was not a backer of the connecting channel and that the waterway “has no impact on the Bolsa Chica project.”

The connecting channel was not a part of a bill pending in the state Legislature and carried by state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) to advance the project, Clark said.