NEWS ANALYSIS : County Takes a New Path to Save Canyon

When the Orange County Board of Supervisors voted last week to spend up to $10 million to help save Laguna Canyon, the action shocked many in the environmental movement who say it breaks with a 10-year county practice of crying poverty when it comes to parkland.

While some residents see it as a hopeful sign of the environmental movement taking hold in a county that has seen vigorous development, others to the north, with park projects long on hold, are crying favoritism. They contend it’s simply easier to say no to a town like Orange than chic Laguna Beach.

“The beach area’s kind of a sexier place than the North County, I guess,” said Dorothy Hudecek, a longtime resident of Orange. Hudecek has been fighting for years to get a 137-acre gravel pit across from the Santa Ana River turned into a park.

The county dropped plans to buy the pit for what was to be known as Five Cove Regional Park in 1979 in the wake of Proposition 13.

“For year’s we’ve all been told there’s no money. Where have they gotten the money all of the sudden?” Hudecek asked. “If they’ve got $10 million for the South County, there should be some for the North County.”

County officials’ answer to that question is that, in fact, there may well be more money ahead for parks.

In what many saw as a surprising departure last Tuesday, the board unanimously agreed to ante up an average of $2 million for each of the next five years toward purchase of one of the last undeveloped coastal canyon areas in Southern California. The canyon has become a cause celebre for environmentalists throughout the region and prompted a demonstration that drew 7,000 residents last fall.

The county offer represents only a portion of the anticipated purchase price for the Laguna Laurel area of Laguna Canyon, which is currently slated for development by the Irvine Co. The city of Laguna Beach, now negotiating with the developer over the price, will have to come up with the balance in order to save the canyon.

Still, even some of the board’s most vocal critics were pleasantly surprised by the action, spearheaded by Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, whose district includes the canyon.

“Frankly, I was shocked,” said Sherry Meddick, an environmental activist in the Trabuco Canyon area of the county.

The board’s action may seem all the more puzzling for some county residents, coming only weeks after the supervisors raised fees and slashed county services, hitting hardest the sick and poor, in order to avoid a $40-million budget deficit this year.

County park planning official Robert Hamilton explains, however, that the board has no say over how much of taxpayers’ money is spent each year on the county’s Department of Harbors, Beaches and Parks. That money is set aside by a state funding formula that currently allocates $27 million a year for harbors, beaches and parks in Orange County, Hamilton said. Even if so inclined, the board would have no authority to shift the money to pay for other services, such as indigent medical care.

The board does, however, determine how the money is spent on parks. And in 1980, at the height of budget tightening and in the midst of massive development in Orange County, the board decided that it would no longer buy parkland, Hamilton said. Instead, it would require developers to donate land for parks and open space in exchange for the right to develop land.

The “post-Proposition 13 policy” is beginning to change, as demonstrated by last week’s board vote, for three reasons, Hamilton said:

* First, funding for parks has stabilized over the past few years, making it easier for officials to plan acquisitions, such as the one proposed in Laguna Canyon.

* Second, most of the developable land in South County is already developed or approved for development, and thus few additional donations of land can be expected. From here on out if the county wants parks, it will have to buy them, Hamilton said.

* Third, the environmental movement is gaining political clout in Orange County.

“I’d call it part of an evolution,” Hamilton said.

In the summer of 1989, the board directed Hamilton’s department to start spending at least $2 million a year in the acquisition of new parkland, he said. The Laguna Canyon purchase would be by far the largest such acquisition since the board adopted that policy.

Under the proposal approved last week, the department would spend as much as $1 million a year out of its general acquisition fund for purchase of the canyon. It would raise the other $1 million a year by delaying other park projects in Riley’s district. Precise details are still to be worked out and presented to the board for approval in the next 30 days.

Lauren Ficaro, an environmental activist in Orange who is pushing for completion of the county’s bike trails and the “greening” of the Santa Ana River, worries about whether the county will have enough left over for those projects. Still, she says, she applauds the board’s action.

“They had to get the ball rolling somewhere. It may as well have been Laguna. They had a hot topic down there.”