Jurisdictional Disputes Put L.A. Port, San Dieguito River Mitigation on Hold

State legislation allowing the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to preserve a San Dieguito River lagoon as mitigation for their expansion projects has been put on hold because of jurisdictional disputes over the proposal.

“The bill is just going to sit there until all of this gets sorted out,” Mary Jo Martin, an aide to state Sen. William Craven, R-Oceanside, said Friday. Craven is sponsoring the legislation, which has yet to undergo committee hearings.

Martin said the most recent challenge came from state coastal commissioners at their meeting last week in San Diego. Two commissioners, both from the Los Angeles area, opposed the measure because they felt that mitigation measures should be carried out within the area in which the environmental damages were done.

And Chula Vista Councilman David Malcolm argued that the environmental mitigation should be done in the South Bay area, Martin said. Chula Vista bayfront redevelopment has been stalled by environmental restrictions for more than 15 years.

Under the San Dieguito River mitigation plan, which was quietly discussed for more than a year but not made public until February, the two port districts would double the size of their facilities in San Pedro Harbor and offset the environmental damage by financing development of a wetlands habitat in the San Dieguito River Valley, just east of Interstate 5 and the Del Mar Fairgrounds.

Martin told a San Diego Assn. of Governments executive committee that Craven had been approached by local officials and asked to sponsor a bill that would allow the off-site mitigation and permit a land swap between the state and the San Dieguito Trust, a group owning more than 500 acres in the San Dieguito Valley.

San Diego City Councilman Ron Roberts, a member of the Sandag committee planning a 43-mile-long park along the San Dieguito River, warned Friday that Malcolm’s opposition to the San Dieguito project could be a serious because Malcolm “has a lot of say” on Coastal Commission matters.

“We should not underestimate his power,” Roberts said. “We should talk to him and settle up.”

Malcolm could not be reached for comment Friday. A spokeswoman for the Chula Vista financier said he was “out of the country.”

Susan Golding, chairwoman of the county Board of Supervisors and the Sandag committee, instructed other committee members--all local elected officials--to try to persuade Malcolm to drop his opposition to the San Dieguito mitigation plan. She also instructed that letters be sent to all state coastal commissioners and the commission’s executive director urging them to support off-site mitigation projects.

“Even if it means that we in San Diego lose some projects, I think we need transference,” or the ability to locate mitigation projects away from the areas where the environmental damage is done, Golding said. Otherwise, she said, funds could not be spent on the most important projects.

Martin said that Craven’s decision to hold up the bill (SB 546) also was influenced by a jurisdictional dispute between the port officials and the state Lands Commission over who controls mitigation projects. The political dispute was the subject of two opposing bills in last year’s legislative session, one giving power to the commission and the other giving power to the port authorities. Neither bill survived, she said.