HUNTINGTON BEACH : Panel Opposes Dune Project in Split Vote

In a disagreement pitting environmental concerns against property rights, the Planning Commission this week opposed the state’s plans to restore a row of dunes flanking a section of Pacific Coast Highway that is to be widened.

The commission, by a 4-to-2 vote, recommended that the State Coastal Commission not require the dune restoration along with the planned highway widening.

Planning Commission members, however, endorsed plans to add a third lane in each direction to Pacific Coast Highway between Brookhurst Street and Beach Boulevard. The Coastal Commission is scheduled next month to consider the highway widening and the dune improvement project.

The state Department of Transportation, which has already widened the coastal highway between Beach Boulevard and Golden West Street, owns enough land to continue the widening to Brookhurst Street.

To compensate for the additional land to be paved, the Coastal Commission staff has recommended that Caltrans acquire a narrow strip of adjacent, undeveloped property for the dune restoration.

Restoring the dunes would help buffer the inland region, a 66-acre degraded wetland area, from stiff ocean winds and traffic noise and exhaust. Specifically, the enhanced dunes would protect the Belding’s savannah sparrow, listed by the state as an endangered species, which has created a habitat on the land. Restoring the dunes would also be necessary if the wetlands are restored, as environmentalists are hoping.

But the targeted three-quarter mile strip of dunes, between Brookhurst and the Southern California Edison plant, is owned by a Rancho Cucamonga-based development partnership that is resisting any effort to carve up its property.

So the state, which is considering bidding for the entire 66-acre property to restore it as an active wetland, plans to invoke eminent domain to acquire the 1.6-acre strip needed for the dune enhancement project. Pacific Enviro Design plans to fight the state in court to keep its property.

The Planning Commission majority sided with the landowner’s concerns over the environmental issue.

“It’s not that we don’t want to restore . . . that area of dunes,” said Jan Shomaker, the commission’s vice chairman. “We agree with the widening, but we didn’t want to be in the position of supporting the taking of private property.”

Commission members Shirley Detloff and Victor Leipzig, both longtime environmental advocates, dissented from the majority vote.

“The Coastal Commission staff is correct in saying that those dunes need to be restored,” Detloff said.