A Pioneering Effort in the Interest of All : * Laguna’s Measure H Will Save More Than a Canyon

The very fact that Laguna Beach will vote Nov. 6 on whether to purchase land previously slated for development in Laguna Canyon represents the maturation of thinking about the environment in Orange County.

A long period of protest and antagonism between environmentalists and the Irvine Co., which proposed to build 3,200 units in the canyon, came first. As recently as a year ago, when thousands marched in protest, it would have been unthinkable that two opposed interest groups would agree to what is before the voters. Now, instead of being stuck with massive new development in the canyon, residents can choose to buy the land and set it aside.

In Measure H, the $20-million Laguna Beach bond issue that will go toward the $78-million purchase price, competing interests have intersected in a way that shows acknowledgement that unusual, imaginative steps may be necessary to preserve the county’s imperiled quality of life. After decades of unbridled and unregulated growth, and with much of the fate of the remaining land very much in question, here is one striking example of how a city, its citizens and a developer can find common ground.

The Irvine Co. is motivated first by its own perceived self-interest, but the Laguna Canyon agreement reveals something more than that Chairman Donald Bren is image-conscious and does not want to be embarrassed by people lying down in front of bulldozers. As a major developer, landholder and manager of properties in Orange County, the Irvine Co. has reached a stage where it has many of the same interests as the county at large. If the air is fouled, if nobody can move on the roads, if the natural beauty of the landscape is completely subverted by strip malls and housing tracts--if the very things that have prompted Bren to regard his vast patches of land as canvases on which to paint--then the value of the entire franchise will be greatly diminished. He made substantial concessions on the purchase price.

The environmentalists on the other side have come to this agreement through their own journey of raised consciousness. Those who first cried out about the rape of the land have been joined increasingly by an army of citizens, crossing the entire political spectrum, that looks around at things like the county’s smog-shrouded mountains and sees handwriting on the wall. For the rush to develop Orange County as a special place in the sun has come at a high price: more people, more traffic, more congestion and a threat to the overall quality of life.

Measure H in Laguna Beach represents a pioneering effort. Implicit is the notion that ordinary citizens must be willing to put more than bumper stickers on display to show their concern; they must be willing to tax themselves to buy land in order to set it aside, or else live forever with the consequences of lost wilderness.

That stark and inevitable choice is the essence of Measure H. By no means will the long-term financing of the purchase of 2,150 acres in the canyon be assured even if two-thirds of the city’s voters approve of the $20-million bond. There will be many hurdles to clear to make the series of payments outlined in the agreement.

Yet if voters shrink from this opportunity, they can be sure only of getting a pillaged canyon. If they act to save it, others in Orange County may be inspired to take similar steps to preserve their own dwindling acreage. Passage of Measure H will put Laguna Beach on a historic course. We urge a “yes” vote.