Setbacks Dog S.D. Ecology Movement : Environment: Opening of urban reserve, Jackson Drive extension and threatened recall of Councilwoman Bernhardt hurt cause.

San Diego environmentalists and managed-growth advocates, who 14 months ago rejoiced over the promise of new-found power at City Hall, today find themselves pondering another year of setbacks in their effort to protect the city’s natural resources.

Instead of seeing their agenda enacted as city policy--a prospect that seemed tantalizingly close when a pro-environment majority was finally elected to the City Council in late 1989--environmentalists have watched as the council stalled growth management, opened the urban reserve to developers and approved the extension of Jackson Drive through Mission Trails Regional Park.

Far from consolidating control of City Hall, environmentalists in recent months have returned to their traditional last-ditch tactics by organizing a costly ballot initiative and filing lawsuits to overturn council decisions.

“This certainly hasn’t been the year of the environment we hoped it would be,” said Don Wood, who last week stepped down as president of Citizens Coordinate for Century III, a nonprofit environmental group that focuses on land-use and urban planning issues. “Count it up and down, it wasn’t a winner of a year.”

To make matters worse, the scheduled April 9 recall election of Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt threatens to eliminate one of the environmentalists’ top allies, and rob them of the bare five-vote majority needed for victory on the nine-member council--unless Bernhardt survives or a pro-environment candidate replaces her. In either case, working to save Bernhardt has sapped environmentalists’ energy and resources.

“The whole thing with Linda Bernhardt and her recall has been a huge distraction for the whole environmental community,” said Nina Parker, former editor of the Sierra Club newspaper, the Hi Sierran. “We suddenly find ourselves in the position of supporting her instead of supporting the environmental issues that we care about.”

And allegations by an ousted Sierra Club leader that the organization rigged its environmental report card of council members to aid Bernhardt and may have been involved in an aborted money-laundering scheme have at least temporarily shaken the credibility of the city’s most prominent--and politically active--environmental group. The charges by activist Mark Zerbe remain unproven.

“I think the Sierra Club took a black eye, but I don’t think it harmed . . . environmentalists,” said Dan Tarr, a member of the local Green Party Organizing Committee. “The organization probably suffered a little bit in credibility because they have held themselves out as being an objective observer of political decisions.”

The past year was not without significant environmental progress. The council continued to tighten protections for city hillsides, canyons and wetlands. It enacted a $900,000 water conservation program. It ended years of negotiating by purchasing the Famosa Slough.

Some consider the urban reserve vote to be an advance because it will preserve thousands of acres of undeveloped land as open space and because developers will contribute land to the proposed San Dieguito River Valley Regional Park.

Moreover, as the Sierra Club noted in its November report card, “we have seen the council change from one which was hostile to environmental concerns--which operated with a very clear, anti-environment philosophy--to a council that has a more community-based environmental leaning.”

But environmentalists expected much more when John Hartley and Bernhardt ousted pro-development incumbents Gloria McColl and Ed Struiksma in 1989 elections--with significant help from environmental groups.

With council members Bob Filner and Abbe Wolfsheimer joining Hartley and Bernhardt, environmentalists and growth-management advocates felt secure of four votes for their position and were confident that council members Wes Pratt, Ron Roberts or Mayor Maureen O’Connor could be counted as fifth votes on key issues.

“I think it’s a historic moment,” Ron Ottinger, chairman of the Sierra Club’s Political Committee, said after the election. “For the first time, we have an environmental majority on the council. It’s never happened before. . . .”

The new majority flexed its political muscle on the day Hartley and Bernhardt were sworn in, blocking Councilman Bruce Henderson’s appointment as chairman of the council committee overseeing city parks. Four days later, O’Connor proposed that the council enact Prevent Los Angelization Now’s stringent growth-management plan.

The council did adopt growth-management policies, but without some of the strong standards environmentalists felt were needed to make them work. It first enacted, but then rescinded, a plan to charge developers “impact fees” for construction of badly needed city infrastructure, saying that the declining economy made 1990 a bad time to hike builders’ fees.

In September, a 5-4 council vote cleared the way for eventual construction of luxury homes in the 12,000-acre urban reserve on the city’s northern fringe. Filner, Bernhardt, Wolfsheimer and Hartley were on the losing end of the vote.

In November, the council stunned environmentalists by approving the construction of a 2.4-mile extension of Jackson Drive through Mission Trails Regional Park, with Filner casting a surprise vote for the project in another 5-4 decision.

“I was absolutely shocked,” Barbara Bamberger, the Sierra Club’s conservation coordinator, said at the time. “This was the major environmental issue of the year, and we could have had it in the bag.”

For the environmental movement, 1990 has been another lesson in the well-recognized dynamics of the nonpartisan council, where coalitions are built and broken with each new issue, with swing votes often controlling the outcome. A single-interest coalition, especially one that is a bare majority, is never a sure thing.

“I think we learned how fragile a bare, five-vote coalition can be,” said Bob Glaser, former co-chairman of San Diegans for Managed Growth, who is directing a ballot initiative that could lead to reversals of the urban reserve and Jackson Drive votes. “On any issue, you can have any (council) member rationalize a vote in the other direction.”

In the council’s defense, Pratt, whose vote has proved decisive on a number of issues, notes that he never described himself as a member of an environmental coalition, or any other kind. “Those are labels that interest groups put on people,” he said.

Many environmentalists continue to subscribe to the traditional theory that volunteer activists are no match for well-financed developers and their attorneys who make a living lobbying the council full time.

“Developers are working full time, they have millions of dollars at stake, and who’s on the other side?,” Wood asked. “The trees don’t have money to say ‘hey protect us.’ ”

But there were new wrinkles as well. Jockeying for political position began earlier than expected when O’Connor announced a year ago that she would not seek reelection in 1992, and that has influenced council votes on the environment.

“Just about every politician in this county has higher office disease,” said Peter Navarro, chairman of Prevent Los Angelization Now, who estimates that developers finance about 70% of all political campaigns. “They are all afraid of biting the hand that will have to feed them to get where they want to go.”

Filner’s defection on Jackson Drive, for example, was widely viewed as an effort to win the support of Councilwoman Judy McCarty, who championed the road extention, in Filner’s bid for deputy mayor. Filner was elected to the largely ceremonial post two weeks later.

Council members’ continued focus “on short-term political gain, issue by issue, on a piecemeal basis, is killing us,” Wood said. “I don’t think it has to do with district elections. It’s about personal political agendas. It’s as old as politics, and it’s killing us.”

The council’s bitter battle over reapportionment, which led to the recall drive against Bernhardt and the Sierra Club’s determined efforts to help her hold onto her seat, have overshadowed the preservation issues that the club’s rank and file hold most dearly, say club members and political observers.

There are those who believe that the membership does not share the leadership’s zeal for political activity, and that the organization’s close links to Bernhardt have helped tarnish it. In a survey of Hi Sierran readers, the most popular part of the newspaper was its outings listings, Parker noted.

“There are people in the club who believe the club should focus more on traditional conservation issues,” she said, adding that “my personal feeling is that the club made a strategic mistake in appearing to be so close to Linda Bernhardt.

“When the heat came on Bernhardt, I think it reflected on us. It made us look bad,” she said.

Councilman Roberts accused the Sierra Club of playing politics with Proposition E, last fall’s ballot measure to raise $100 million for parks and open space. The Sierra Club withdrew its endorsement from ballot messages when Roberts refused to allow Bernhardt to sign on at the eleventh hour, claimed Roberts, who led the measure.

The measure lost by 1,688 votes out of the more than 256,000 that were cast.

“You had leadership of at least some of the environmental organizations which became far more concerned about politics than with the environment,” Roberts said.

Sierra Club leaders did not return telephone calls to their offices and homes for this story.

Wood, whose organization supported the bond measure, said some of Roberts’ antagonists on the council, including people sensitive to the environment, “sat on their hands” for fear that Roberts would profit politically if the measure passed.

In November and December, activist Zerbe further stirred passions about the Sierra Club’s political activity by publicly claiming that the group slanted its report card to aid Bernhardt’s cause, and that Bernhardt political operatives attempted to “circumvent” campaign laws by funneling contributions from the company operating the Hartson’s ambulance service through the club.

The Sierra Club leadership strongly denied the assertions, and they remain unproven. No one within the Sierra Club has corroborated the charges, though they apparently are being investigated by Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller’s office, which is probing Bernhardt’s campaign finances.

Nevertheless, Zerbe’s charges received wide coverage by newspapers, primarily because reporters considered the former Common Cause chapter chairman and Sierra Club leader a credible source.

That publicity has shaken the club’s chief asset, its credibility, at least temporarily, many say. But, if the charges remain unproven, the storm may quickly blow over. Zerbe himself noted that, when he led 40 people on a recent Sierra Club ski trip, only two mentioned his allegations.

“I think that there are a lot of loose, floating allegations, allegations against Linda Bernhardt, allegations that, for the first time in history, the Sierra Club has engaged in money laundering,” said Parker, who continues to write for the Hi Sierran. “That just seems incredible, not just to me, but probably to others in the club.

“I’m not sure what it’s going to do,” she added. “Nobody is calling in to cancel their membership. I think it’s going to blow over.”

Where does the movement go from here? For immediate solutions, environmentalists have continued to go to the electorate and the courts. San Diegans for Managed Growth is preparing a ballot initiative designed to give voters--not the council--the final say on either Jackson Drive, the urban reserve or both.

The Save Miramar Lake Committee, which in 1989 mounted a successful referendum petition drive to block early plans for the Miramar Ranch North residential development, is standing by to launch a second one if it is dissatisfied with McMillin Development’s compromise grading plans for the hills north of Miramar Lake.

Lawsuits have been filed to overturn council decisions on Jackson Drive and proposed California 56, a major east-west thoroughfare in the city’s north end.

But the long-term solution lies in helping Bernhardt retain her seat and replacing some council members with others more committed to environmental concerns, environmentalists said. Most environmentalists are targeting Councilman Bruce Henderson, who placed last in the Sierra Club’s council report card, in this September’s election, Glaser said.

“If there is any unifying force among the environmental coalitions, it may be Bruce Henderson,” he said.