Group Sues to Block Project on Wetlands

A Seal Beach environmental group filed suit Friday to block construction of a long-debated 355-home development planned in the city on the old Hellman Ranch, a stretch of degraded wetlands that once teemed with bird and plant life.

The Wetlands Restoration Society, a grass-roots organization of about 150 that formed to oppose the 149-acre housing project, hopes to limit construction to far fewer units on just 20 acres overlooking the wetlands.

“We’re using any legal means we can to protect the wetlands,” said Galen F. Ambrose, co-founder of the group. “We’ll fight it as far as we have to.”

Officials with Mola Development Co., the Newport Beach-based firm planning the development, could not be reached for comment on the lawsuit, which was filed in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana.

But city leaders in Seal Beach, which was also named in the suit, expressed confidence that the legal challenge could be rebuffed.

“Based on the city attorney’s public conversations with us, I have a lot of confidence that the city would prevail,” said Councilman Joe Hunt, who voted for the project.

The housing project, which is north of Pacific Coast Highway and just west of Seal Beach Boulevard, has created controversy since plans were first revealed more than three years ago.

Mola Development originally proposed a 770-unit project for the site. But that plan, which included more than 600 condominium units, was strongly opposed by residents and was voted down by the state Coastal Commission last year.

The developer countered by introducing the scaled-back proposal, which includes plans to build a 15-acre park, give the city $1 million and restore and enlarge the degraded wetland. The work would include restoring tidal flow to the silt-choked basin, replanting native flora and expanding the wetlands from its present 26 acres to more than 36 acres.

Seal Beach council members reviewed the project during a special session Oct. 14 and approved it. The development is scheduled to go before the Coastal Commission Nov. 13.

While the Wetlands Restoration Society is concerned about the environmental damage the housing project would do to the remaining stretches of wetlands on the property, the group chose in its lawsuit to attack the development mostly on other grounds.

The group argues in the lawsuit that the council’s approval of the development is inconsistent with the city’s housing element and general plan, two key municipal blueprints for the future. In addition, the suit contends the development should not be allowed to go forward because the city’s housing element has not been properly updated as required by law.

Ambrose said the group and its attorney, Los Angeles lawyer Jonathan Lehrer-Graiwer, decided that a legal attack over the environmental issues “would not be worth the paper it’s written on” because the judiciary in Orange County is “all pro-development.”

Environmentalists have argued that the wetlands once stretched across 100 acres in the area, but have been reduced to a quarter of that by illegal dumping of dirt in the area. Mola officials, however, dispute such claims, saying the wetlands never occupied that much space during this century.

Although the wetlands have been greatly disturbed by mankind in recent years, it still plays host to the Belding’s savanna sparrow, an endangered species in California, according to Audubon Society members.

Ambrose said the group hopes to restore the wetlands nearly to its original form. The parcel is a key link to between 300 and 400 acres of ecologically sensitive marshes and other habitat farther inland that the environmental group hopes to save, he said.