SAVING THE BAY : Newport Couple Waged Epic War Against Developer, Government

If he had known then what he knows now, Frank Robinson muses, he wouldn’t have done it. He spent the money, he withstood the abuse, he persevered, because he didn’t know the costs going in.

And yet, he says, if he hadn’t battled the Irvine Co., if he hadn’t fought against the marina that was announced and the houses that were likely to come later, if he hadn’t vied against other forms of encroachment onto the sanctuary known as Upper Newport Bay, his marriage probably wouldn’t have lasted.

“If someone had told me at the beginning, when I was making about $12,000 a year, that I would put the equivalent of two years’ salary in this thing, that it would affect my professional life--which it did, I did lose time from work, no question about it--that it would take thousands of hours, I would have a hard time with that price in front.”

He didn’t know the cost, so for 20 years and more the aerospace engineer paid it in dribs and drabs, getting sucked all the way in, finding himself unable to turn back even when he wanted to, finding what he calls “miracles” that kept him going when things looked most bleak.

If he didn’t go through with it, “it probably would have destroyed the marriage,” Robinson says, adding that his wife “felt so strongly about this thing. . . .”

It’s Friday morning on the Back Bay and a falcon soars overhead. Clusters of smaller birds fly from the ground and wheel into the air toward a falcon, chasing it off before they or their eggs become snacks for a bird of prey.

Fourth-graders from the Capistrano Unified School District tumble off two yellow buses, divide into groups of a dozen each and are herded to the four stations staffed by naturalists from the Orange County Education Department.

At the “mud station,” lead naturalist Janet Yamaguchi, holder of a biology degree from Cal State Fullerton, retrieves clam, mussel, scallop and oyster shells that the students have dug from buckets of mud plopped on the ground. She explains which of the shellfish live beneath the mud and which live atop it. The children listen intently.

Several hundred yards away, naturalist Beverle Barnes distributes binoculars to students and directs their gaze to a signpost across the bay. Atop the post a great blue heron perches.

The Education Department has offered county school districts the chance to bring students to Upper Newport Bay since 1985 as part of its environmental field study program. This school year nearly 7,000 students went from station to station at the bay on all-day programs.

Greg Schuett, manager of the field study program, says the tours are designed to increase students’ appreciation of nature and their knowledge of the concepts of science. He says the instructors also hope “to foster (the students’) commitment to protect the outdoors.”

Frank and Frances Robinson’s two children were students on the day the family’s battle for the bay began.

When the Robinsons moved to Newport Beach in 1962, Frances remembered, “we were told that there was going to be a public beach down the hill. I walked down to see it, and they were just doing the filling. . . . I said, ‘That’s marvelous. I won’t take (the children) always down to the peninsula. They can swim right down here.’ ”

But the following summer, the children trooped back to the house one day and sadly reported that there were now “private” signs on the beach.

Frances Robinson has told the story many times over the years, and her voice grows dramatic at the appropriate moments. As she sits in her living room, wearing tennis shoes and a powder blue jogging suit that sets off her curly red hair, she spins the tale again.

“I was born in Los Angeles, and I just considered it my birthright” that people have access to the oceans and the beaches. A political science professor whose name she has now forgotten taught her the same at what is now Los Angeles City College.

When her son was 2, “I took him one day over to our favorite beach, over near Point Dume. And I couldn’t get down to the water. Some developer had bought a couple of miles of shoreline along there and it was all fenced off. It was a blistering hot day, and we couldn’t get down there to swim. That’s when I said, ‘I don’t know about this. If I ever live where it’s happening, I will do something. I don’t know what I will do, but I will do something to stop it.’ And that was the moment of truth, when the kid came back and said, ‘There’s a “private” sign on that beach, Mom.’ ”

Frances Robinson dug out a newspaper article detailing the planned development that she now realized would cut off her access to the bay. The article said the company would essentially trade land with the county in order to build, and required permission from the county supervisors, the state court system and the State Lands Commission.

The Robinsons geared for battle.

What is now known as the Upper Newport Bay Ecological Reserve is 752 acres of coastal wetlands, an estuary where the fresh water running down San Diego Creek mingles with the salt water coming in from the Pacific Ocean.

Back Bay Drive skirts the bay, a one-way, gently curving paved road that runs for nearly three miles, populated by bicyclists often doing 30 miles an hour, automobiles driven at 15 miles an hour, joggers of various speeds and an occasional wheelchair.

Planes from nearby John Wayne Airport soar overhead, leaving trails of sound and vapor. But mostly it’s quiet, providing a shelter from the urban madness surrounding the refuge.

The county is now planning a regional park to surround the reserve. There will be an interpretive center, explaining the birds, plant life and fish that are home in the marshes. There will also be walking trails. What else there will be is as yet undetermined.

When the Irvine Co. in the 1960s wanted to build its marina in the bay, the supervisors gave the go-ahead. A court test was needed to make sure that the county could hand the land over to the Irvine Co. in exchange for other land.

The deal had been discussed since the 1940s. In the 1950s, special legislation cleared the way for the swap, in which the county would give 157 acres of tideland to the Irvine Co. in exchange for more than 457 acres of other land.

Over Irvine Co. objections, the Robinsons and two other couples were allowed to join the lawsuit and argue against the swap.

The county argued that it would gain about $8 million worth of land in the trade; opponents said that the figure was far too high and that the development of a boat harbor would destroy an important habitat for fish and migratory birds, would lead to residential and commercial development and would be a giveaway of public land of uncalculated worth.

The Lands Commission, under a Democratic governor, turned down the exchange. Under Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan, a new commission approved it. A Superior Court judge said it was constitutional. But in 1973, an appeals court said it was unconstitutional, and the next year the Irvine Co. began settlement talks with the county, eventually agreeing to sell land it owned in the area to the county.

People who were there at the beginning, 25 years ago now, say that initially it was the Robinsons against everyone else--the county, the Irvine Co., everyone.

The Robinsons began circulating petitions against the swap, enlisting help. An architect friend criticized the planned development architecturally. A tax specialist challenged the county’s financial figures. Others told the Robinsons and their supporters how to scour public records and dig out what was needed.

One group of Robinson supporters hammered at the potential loss of wildlife areas. That freed the Robinsons to work other angles.

“In the beginning, we had superb advice from the lawyers,” Frank Robinson says. “Don’t be identified with a kooky bunch of little old ladies in tennis shoes watching birds.”

He didn’t. Robinson challenged the constitutionality of the deal and called it “a hundred-million dollar giveaway of public land to a private corporation.”

Judy Rosener, who looked into the land swap as a grand juror in 1969 and later became a member of the California Coastal Commission for eight years, remembered her next-door neighbor, the then-president of the Irvine Co., referring to Robinson as a “stupid little engineer.”

Rosener, a professor of management at the UCI Graduate School of Management, said the company just wanted to develop its land. “They were doing what they were supposed to do,” she said but added that the Robinsons and others who shared their views “coalesced to form a very formidable opposition to what was . . . an alliance between the Irvine Co. and county government.”

Groups like Friends of Newport Bay helped enlist support. The oil spill off Santa Barbara in 1969 spurred concern about the ocean. Earth Day the next year increased awareness of the fragility of the environment.

Environmentalists noted that before 1900, California’s coastal wetlands covered 381,000 acres. After three-quarters of a century, the figure was down to about 105,000 acres, most of them in San Francisco Bay. The Department of Fish and Game said that in Southern California, below Point Conception, only about 11,000 of the original 50,000 acres of coastal wetlands remained.

For the past year, John Scholl has operated out of a trailer on Shellmaker Island, one of three islands in the upper bay.

A 44-year-old “fish and wildlife interpreter” for the Department of Fish and Game, Scholl is part of a new California Wildlands Program run by the department to improve environmental education.

So far he and a ranger working for Orange County have helped train 28 volunteer naturalists who will guide the public through the reserve and explain what they’re seeing--some of which can be dramatic.

Scholl recalled being with a group earlier this year that noticed a clapper rail, an endangered species of bird, periodically jumping off its nest into the air. With the help of binoculars, the group could see that the bird “had a snake wrapped around its neck.” After debating whether to interfere with nature, the group approached and scared the gopher snake away.

Scholl and others also try to keep tabs on the reserve’s coyote population. He said there are at least three dens populated by the animals, who help keep down the population of skunks, raccoons and other mid-size predators who could pose more of a threat to nesting birds than the coyotes.

As wetlands have been lost over the years, Scholl said, endangered species such as the least tern and clapper rail have been forced to concentrate their nesting areas in fewer and smaller regions, making them “easier targets for predators in the area.”

Scholl also tries to keep humans from blundering out into the salt marshes, tearing up nesting areas and “loving the place to death.”

Frank Robinson props up his Reeboks on the glass top of a coffee table in the living room of his home and says he doesn’t want to speak ill of the Irvine Co.

“I don’t want to chew on the Irvine Co. anymore; we’ve won,” he says simply. But there still appears to be rancor there, always submerged, sometimes breaking the surface. He and Frances joined with the Sierra Club in suing the Irvine Co. again in 1979, charging that it never owned the land it traded to the county. They lost the suit in 1987.

Now 71, like his wife, and retired for four years, Robinson still talks to people who come to view the bay and take the nature tours offered from October through March by the Friends of Newport Bay. He estimates that over the years he and his wife have spoken to more than 40,000 people: among them the neighbors whom they asked in the 1960s to sign petitions opposing the Irvine Co.’s plans, college students and all those people who come each year to wander the ecological preserve.

He tells of a last-minute discovery of an attorney willing to help out on the original suit, after their first lawyer dropped out; of how the money deemed too little for a lawsuit just managed to cover costs; of other events he calls “miracles.” And his sub-text is the belief that at the darker moments of the battle it was his wife who provided the steel in his spine.

And though he now says he wonders if he would have fought the fight if he had foreseen its cost, Frances has no such doubts.

Part of the reason she was willing to fight on was her “impoverished childhood,” dating to the death of her father when she was 6.

After his death, “we were dependent on the things that were free and available to children.”

“And my greatest joy was being able to go to the beach once in a while in the summer if someone was kind enough to provide transportation,” she says.

“My mother always had me out in that water at 6 o’clock in the morning. We had that beach to ourselves. No other footprints on it. That meant a lot to me.”

Forty years later, it “meant a lot to me that they were going to freeze people out of the use of this bay just because they didn’t have enough money for million-dollar homes. (The beach and water) supply not just a physical need, but an emotional need.”

She credits her failure to finish college with steering her on her later course, too. She left UC Berkeley either because of mononucleosis, as Frank tells it, or, as she says, because “I had too darn much fun dancing every night.”

“So if you want to know why I’m hanging in here, it’s because never again will I not complete something, never again. If I start it, I finish it, if it’s the last thing I do.”

Frances has always been a Democrat. Frank, born in Charleston, S.C., was a Republican until the State Lands Commission switched its vote and approved the swap. Then he, too, became a Democrat.

At the end of April, Buck Johns, one of the more prominent Republicans in heavily Republican Orange County, opened his home on the Back Bay to a party celebrating the million-dollar donation by Peter and Mary Muth for the interpretive center to be built in the regional park alongside the bay.

Robinson likes to joke that “my definition of a good environmentalist is a multi-multimillionaire, member of the (Republican) Lincoln Club, a developer, a member of the Republican Central Committee, threatened with a freeway in his back yard. Now there’s a perfect environmentalist.”

It’s a description that fits Johns perfectly, though Robinson mentioned no names. And both men were happy when the county dropped from its plans a proposed extension of University Drive, which they felt would have brought too much traffic along the Back Bay.

Despite their political differences, Johns calls the Robinsons “marvelous people. They’re very dedicated to the Back Bay.”

“He’s a tree-hugger, and I’m a developer,” Johns laughs. “I call him a tree-hugger and he calls me a concrete head. I’m a Republican of the first order, and he’s on the other side of the aisles.”

But for the Back Bay, Johns honors the Robinsons.

So does Judy Rosener, a Democrat.

“I think they ought to call it the Frank and Frances Back Bay,” Rosener says. “As far as I’m concerned, that bay today, there would be no public access” without the Robinsons’ fight. It would be “ringed with apartments and condos and boats,” she says. “Yet I see people riding their bikes and enjoying it. It’s going to be the oasis in the middle of this cement patch.

“As far as I’m concerned, they are the back bay. It could never have happened without them. Never. Never. Never.”

“It’s a story of David and Goliath,” says Rosener. And as happens once in a very great while, this time “David won.”

WEB OF LIFE: Back Bay’s Delicate Balance The bay’s health relies on an intricate web of life; if one part is disturbed, the whole ecological balance is affected. A. Seawater brings phytoplankton (floating algae), which is nourished by nutrients from San Diego Creek. This enrichment of nutrient-poor seawater is essential to an estuary. B. Algae floats into the mudflats, providing food for large populations of invertebrates, such as isopods, worms crabs and clams. C. Smaller fish feed on the algae and invertebrates. More than 70 species of fish inhabit the bay, many using it for spawning grounds. D. Cordgrass is able to “breathe,” using air tubes in its stems. Pickleweed is able to survive by concentrating salt in segmented stems, which then break off. E. More than 165 species of birds can be observed. Shorebirds and floaters (such as sandpipers and grebes) feed on abundant invertebrates and plants. F. Larger fish--such as bass, stingrays and shark--enter the bay at high tide to feed on smaller fish found in the bay. G. Predatory birds--such as hawks, falcons and pelicans--feed on smaller fish and birds. Marsh dwellers include herons and egrets. There are about 20 species of mammals (including rabbits and coyotes) and numerous reptiles and amphibians.

BACKGROUND: BAY HISTORY Pre-1900: In the 1880s, first survey of bay marsh area completed. In 1889, Finley sell most of subdivided swamp. 1900-1920: Construction of Backbay Road completed. It is major access road to Corona del Mar. 1926: County and Irvine Co. complete joint “boundary determination,” which gives Irvine Co. area surrounding bay. 1930s: During 1930s, Newport Harbor undergoes extensive improvements: major dredging creates landfill for home construction: jetty built to protect harbor. 1963: O.C. Board of Supervisors approves 5-to-0 an Irvine Co. plan to build recreational harbor in back bay at no cost to public. 1968: Conservationist group “Friends of Newport Bay” founded 1969: Legality of bay development challenged by conservationists, who maintain that county cannot trade away state-owned tidelands. 1970: Court rules that development of tidelands is legal. Conservationists appeal ruling. 1971: In major turnaround, county supervisors vote 5-to-0 to rescind deal with Irvine Co. and oppose back bay development. 1973: Court of Appeals overturns 1970 ruling and finds in favor of conservationists. Tidelands cannot be traded. 1975: Irvine Co. sells 527 acres to state for $3.5 million. Combined with 215 acres of tidelands, the Upper Newport Bay Ecological Reserve is formed. 1980: During 1980s, more than $13 million is spent on three dredging operations, which restores tidal flow to congested back bay. 1989: Irvine Co. trades 114 acres overlooking bay to reserve for the right to increase development at Newport Center. 1990: County removes plan to extend University Drive into reserve.

DREDGING: RESTORING VITAL TIDAL FLOW 1. Tides bring organisms which replenish the bay. Salt water reaches incoming fresh water, resulting in an extremely fertile mixture. This fosters numerous invertebrates, which in turn attracts thousands of fish and birds. 2. Massive development increased the amount of sediments that drain into the bay-depositing the same level of silt in 10 years that had taken nearly a 1,000 years before development. Silt blocked the tide, allowing plants to grow on the exposed ground which seawater could not reach. 3. In three dredging operations (1982, 1985 and 1988), almost 3 million cubic yards of silt were removed. Three sediment basins were added to San Diego Creek to catch silt and debris that once clogged the bay. Tidal flow has returned to the upper bay, with its effects seen a mile up San Diego Creek.

Sources: Frank and Frances Robinson, Greg Gerstenberg, John Schooll