Huntington Beach to Begin Annexation of the Bolsa Chica Area : Environment: After settling years of controversy, the council will start procedures Monday to incorporate the scenic 1,635-acre marsh, wetlands, mesa and bluffs.

In a major urban and environmental move, the City Council on Monday night is scheduled to start procedures for annexing the 1,635-acre Bolsa Chica area.

The vast, ecologically sensitive area would become part of the city by September, 1991, according to the council’s proposed timetable.

The annexation, which has the blessing and encouragement of Signal Landmark, the major landowner in Bolsa Chica, would put within the city limits the largest wetlands in Southern California. Annexation of the area would also add about 10,000 to 15,000 new residents in the next decade as homes are built along the Bolsa Chica bluffs.

Huntington Beach would get a rich source of new income from the annexation. Projections show the city netting about $500,000 a year after subtracting all city expenses, including added police costs.

“This is a very important move, and one that’s an advantage to everyone involved,” Mayor Pro Tem Peter Green said Friday. “It’s the equivalent of the city’s annexing an area as large, and environmentally as important, as the Newport Back Bay. I see no controversy at all in this annexation. It’s something that’s been planned for many years.”

Bolsa Chica is a scenic area of marsh, wetlands, mesa and bluffs beginning near the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway and Warner Avenue. Until last year, it was a battleground between environmentalists and developers. Environmentalists fought to preserve the wetlands area, which is home to thousands of birds, mammals and small sea life. Developers fought to build homes on the valuable, beach-view land.

A compromise was reached by both sides in 1989, calling for preservation of most of Bolsa Chica in its natural state but allowing Signal Landmark to build up to 5,700 homes on 412 acres of land in the mesa and bluffs area.

Before the compromise, both the company and environmentalists had resisted Huntington Beach’s prior efforts to annex the area. In the 1970s, for instance, environmentalists successfully blocked the city’s move to annex 1,460 acres of the Bolsa Chica. They argued that the city would allow too much development if the land was annexed.

Signal Landmark had likewise opposed annexation of the Bolsa Chica until this year. But in March, the company sent a letter to the city urging the City Council to start procedures to annex the area.

“We always knew that ultimately we would be joining with the city of Huntington Beach,” Carl Neuhausen, vice president for planning at Signal Landmark, said Friday.

Neuhausen added that annexation will make it simpler for the company in preparing state-required coastal plans. Otherwise, he said, the company would be duplicating its detailed coastal-development plans before both the county and the city.

Neuhausen said Signal Landmark expects the first new homes to be completed in 1994.

The new homes will generate added property taxes for Huntington Beach, and new residents will add to local sales-tax revenue, according to city officials.

A city staff report, to be given the council on Monday night, reads: “The Bolsa Chica project will have significant positive impacts upon the city. . . . Not only will the project generate sufficient revenues to cover all project-related municipal service costs during the development period and at build-out, but it will also generate substantial surplus revenues, which can be used by the city for other projects and purposes.”

The annexation must ultimately be approved by the Orange County Local Agency Formation Commission, but city officials said they expect no problems. The commission has already granted the city “sphere of influence” over the Bolsa Chica--the first major step toward annexation.

Green, a biology professor at Golden West College, was elected to City Council in 1984, scoring an upset win after campaigning on environmental causes that included preservation of the Bolsa Chica.

Green said Friday that he is pleased a solution has now been reached on keeping most of the wetlands as a nature preserve, while still allowing Signal Landmark to develop some of the land.

Bringing the area into the city limits, Green added, will give the area city police and fire protection, and will also ensure that all new homes be built according to city building codes, rather than to county standards.