Disney Hits Impasse on Long Beach Bill : Entertainment: Talks on proposed legislation to facilitate a waterfront resort may be delayed until January. Mitigation of environmental damage is a sticking point.

Reaching an impasse in closed-door negotiations with lawmakers, Walt Disney Co. executives on Friday appeared close to dropping their proposal for a bill aimed at making it easier to build a $3-billion resort in Long Beach.

Two senators who participated in the talks said Disney officials told them they expected to postpone consideration of the legislation until January.

“We came a long way toward agreement, but we just couldn’t put the finishing touches on it,” said Sen. Henry Mello (D-Watsonville), who has opposed the measure.

Joe Shapiro, Disney senior vice president, acknowledged that “it’s uncertain” what will happen to the measure, but he left the door ajar to moving the bill through the Legislature this year.

Sources close to the negotiations maintained that if hearings on the bill are delayed until next year, it still would not slow the construction timetable for the resort. Long Beach is engaged in competition with Anaheim to become home to a second Disney theme park in Southern California.

The legislation, to be carried by Sen. Ken Maddy (R-Fresno), would clarify the authority of the state Coastal Commission to allow Disney to fill in about 250 acres of Queensway Bay in Long Beach for the resort, to be known as Port Disney, which would include a theme park called Disney Sea, hotels, a marina and a cruise ship terminal.

The measure has been stalled in the Senate Natural Resources and Wildlife Committee, where opponents have argued that state law does not allow landfill to be used for such recreation purposes as an amusement park. Disney has maintained that it is simply trying to clarify the commission’s authority.

The sticking point between Disney and members of the Natural Resources Committee has been a means to lessen environmental damage from the landfill. Mello has pushed Disney to restore 4 acres of wetlands for every acre of oceanfront it fills. He had proposed requiring Disney and the city of Long Beach to spend up to $100 million on environmental mitigation.

Sen. Dan McCorquodale, chairman of the natural resources panel, said Disney was prepared to spend about $50 million, and he and Mello had scaled back their request to $75 million and a mitigation ratio of 3 to 1. McCorquodale confirmed that the negotiations became snagged over this issue.

Disney’s Shapiro declined to discuss details of the talks but acknowledged that “we’re still trying to resolve the mitigation issue.”

Maddy said that the talks, which began Thursday, had reached an impasse, but that he thinks Disney is “entitled to a hearing in the public eye.”

But lawmakers said that because various deadlines have passed for a hearing on the Disney bill, Maddy would need to get Senate rules waived.

The roadblock in negotiations over the bill comes just three days after Disney received a boost when the Coastal Commission dropped its opposition to the measure.

But environmentalists remain opposed. Top Disney executives, including Chief Executive Officer Michael D. Eisner and President Frank G. Wells, met earlier in the week with representatives of the American Oceans Campaign, an environmental group opposed to the project, according to both sides.

Among those representing the American Oceans Campaign was one of its founders, actor Ted Danson. He could not be reached for comment, but Robert Sulnick, the group’s executive director, said he wasn’t necessarily opposed to Port Disney but was concerned that the bill “would create precedent for other projects.”

He said Disney “could do some wonderful things . . . but amending the Coastal Act isn’t a good way to start.”