Batiquitos Battle : Environment: Sierra Club, Audubon Society oppose plan to dredge stagnant lagoon in Carlsbad to let ocean tides flush out area that is one of 19 high-priority wetlands designated by state.

This is, depending on the time of year and one’s aesthetic tastes, either the ugliest or the most beautiful battlefield around.

When there’s seasonal rainfall, Batiquitos Lagoon in Carlsbad is a shimmering lick of water, a 2 1/2-mile long, half-mile wide wetland, one of the few majestic places left along Southern California’s coast for shore birds and waterfowl.

Often though, especially in this latest drought year, much of the lagoon is as parched and cracked as a vanished lake, a bleak and seemingly barren specter from the high-priced homes that overlook it.

Wet or dry, the lagoon is in danger.

Experts say it’s filling up with sediment and slowly dying. But, after seven years of study, planning and negotiation, a $30-million compromise plan to save the channel is under serious attack.

Behind closed doors, the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society are wrangling with government agencies over the plan to dredge 2.2 million to 3.1 million cubic yards of material to let ocean tides flush out the stagnating 600-acre lagoon.

If a settlement can’t be reached, the environmental groups intend to press ahead with a lawsuit filed in Vista Superior Court to block the dredging. So far, talks have failed, and the suit remains the last major obstacle to starting the lagoon restoration plan approved by the California Coastal Commission in September.

Despite all the years of planning and $2 million in environmental studies--and with much effort in vain in pursuit of a consensus--the dredging project still has fiery defenders and adversaries who say they will fight to the end.

“If this suit wins, the lagoon will sit there and stagnate until it dies,” said Anne Olmstead, who is a founder and past president of the Batiquitos Lagoon Foundation. She now sits on the Encinitas City Council.

Joan Jackson, spokeswoman for the Sierra Club’s local chapter, said, “This plan calls for going in and doing it in one brutal action and walking away. . . . This is basically taking a shallow-water habitat and destroying it (by dredging) in hopes of creating another kind of habitat.”

As if the life or death of the environmentally fragile lagoon that supports some rare wildlife species isn’t enough, there are other issues at stake.

The Port of Los Angeles is a critical force behind the dredging plan, having offered to pay for the $30-million lagoon restoration as a trade-off for being allowed to dredge millions of cubic yards of material from San Pedro Bay.

Because the bay project will cause environmental damage to fish habitat, state law requires the port to offset the impact by improving marine habitat elsewhere. The port wants to do so at Batiquitos Lagoon, prompting criticism that the extensive dredging would be done more to benefit the port than the lagoon.

“What’s driving this whole thing is the Port of Los Angeles’ need for mitigation,” said Karen Messer of the local Buena Vista Audubon Society. She calls the dredging “extremely risky” to the lagoon’s existing habitat. The Coastal Commission and the city of Carlsbad, among others, disagree.

There is another special interest group worried about the suit.

Hundreds of homeowners with lofty views of the lagoon favor dredging that would let ocean flows keep much of the lagoon under scenic, glassy water.

Ann Merdinger, who has gazed upon the lagoon in dry and wet times for 13 years, said, “It’s a lovely view. The property values were escalated because of the view here. We paid $30,000 extra to get this lot.”

“We live here. Why can’t we look at water rather than mud flats? That doesn’t seem too unreasonable,” said Merdinger, who added that homeowners also believe the dredging would preserve the lagoon’s environment.

Both nature and man are responsible for the continuing battle of Batiquitos Lagoon.

In the 19th Century, the lagoon periodically opened and closed to the sea, allowing natural, if somewhat erratic, tidal flushing. Urbanization changed that as transportation projects such as Interstate 5 helped choke off the tidal inlet. And agriculture and development has been depositing fine sediment into the lagoon.

“The lagoon is dying because natural runoff into the lagoon is carrying fine particles that settle into the lagoon, and it is filling up,” said Gary Wayne, assistant planning director for Carlsbad.

Although the lagoon remains an important bird habitat, it is feared that, in 40 or 50 years, the sedimentation will change it into upland vegetation rather than the existing shallow wetlands that give wildlife a habitat to feed and nest.

Batiquitos is vitally important to wildlife. An environmental study estimates that 75% of the coastal wetlands in Southern California have been lost, and some experts believe the percentage is higher.

The lagoon, the nesting area of the California least tern, the Western snowy plover and Belding’s savannah sparrow, among others, is one of 19 high-priority wetlands designated by the state Department of Fish and Game.

The obvious question became not only how to restore the lagoon’s natural tidal flushing but how to increase habitat and wildlife populations. In 1984, the Coastal Conservancy, charged with protecting the state’s coastal resources, began studying the matter.

But the blockbuster event came the following year when the Port of Los Angeles and Pacific Texas Pipeline Co. offered to pay for dredging Batiquitos to compensate for loss of marine fishery habitat caused by the San Pedro Bay project.

(The bay dredging was proposed to create a 115-acre landfill to support a 1,060-mile oil pipeline from Texas oil refineries. That project is now on hold, but the port still seeks to dredge San Pedro Bay to make landfill for container facilities.)

At first, environmentalists and other parties devoted to saving the lagoon were excited about a funding source for improving Batiquitos, but the budding coalition soon began bickering.

The divisions that exist today deepened as the state Coastal Commission started crafting alternative plans to restore and enhance the lagoon. Last March, the commission overruled its own staff and approved a dredging plan to remove up to 3.7 million cubic yards of material from the lagoon to ensure adequate tidal flow.

Although that decision has since been modified, it came amid intense lobbying from the city of Carlsbad and property owners near the lagoon, including Hillman Properties, which is developing the phased 2,800-unit Aviara project on the lagoon’s northern slopes.

That lobbying effort was first directed at the Carlsbad City Council, where 100 homeowners from La Costa, largely organized by Merdinger, packed a meeting and urged the council to back the more extensive dredging plan.

“There was a tremendous lobbying effort by the La Costa community to have the biggest body of water possible,” said city planner Wayne.

But, three months after Carlsbad and the property owners got their way and the commission voted for the greater dredging plan, the city was pressured by federal and state agencies to back off and ask the commission to approve the more modest plan to dredge 2.2 million to 3.1 million cubic yards.

The commission passed the compromise dredging plan in September, but that action has done nothing to mollify the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society, which filed suit against the Coastal Commission, Carlsbad, the port and other agencies.

The dispute over dredging remains as intense as ever.

Under the plan, material would be removed from the lagoon, allowing tidal action to create marine habitat to offset environmental damage at San Pedro Bay. However, the plan’s proponents insist that dredging would not significantly interfere with existing habitat that supports vegetation and wildlife.

“It’s balancing an area’s competing needs,” said Paul Webb, a Coastal Commission analyst. “We’re not eliminating one kind of habitat in favor of another.”

Yet it is conceded that converting some habitat might reduce some bird populations.

“I don’t think you’re going to lose any species, but you may lose some numbers,” Wayne said.

That’s part of what concerns the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society, which regard the dredging as threatening to the lagoon’s intricate environment.

“What they’re proposing to do is turn it into valuable fish habitat,” Messer said. “It’s like they would mow down a redwood grove to have a meadow . . . (this) is extremely risky. It’s very high quality habitat now, and (they would) dredge it down to nothing.”

Environmentalists argue that dredging is too large-scale and that the potential effect on nesting, feeding and plant growth can’t be predicted. They urge further study and a staged plan to observe how the lagoon reacts to restoration measures.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think we have a good understanding of how Batiquitos functions,” said Joy Zedler, professor of biology at San Diego State University.

“We’re groping in the dark,” she said.

Still, the dredging plan has the solid support of agencies that include the federal Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries, the California Department of Fish and Game, and the State Lands Commission.

“Some of the best scientific minds around have looked at this stuff,” said Wayne, who faults the Sierra Club and Audubon Society for failing to understand the complex aspects of the plan that would avoid environmental danger.

“It’s a complicated project that’s poorly understood, especially by opponents,” he said.

Although Wayne is convinced that the restoration will succeed, Batiquitos Foundation co-founder Olmstead, while supporting the dredging, concedes that there is an element of peril.

“I believe there are some risks and dangers, but we should proceed because, if we don’t, we’ll have a dead lagoon on our hands,” she said.

So far, talks to settle the lawsuit haven’t led to a breakthrough, and the Sierra Club has hired a hydrologist to provide independent conclusions about the dredging plan.

Meanwhile, the Port of Los Angeles is looking on with uncertainty. “It’s a very important project to us, no doubt about it,” said Ralph Appy, the port’s project manager for the Batiquitos Lagoon effort.

He expressed confidence that the dredging plan “will go forward,” but said the port is investigating other sites where it could fund environmental projects to compensate for dredging at San Pedro Bay.

“There are other available wetlands around,” he said.

Wayne also is optimistic that the litigation will be settled, and that work at Batiquitos can begin in fall, 1993.

However, the environmental groups, insisting they are not being obstructionists, publicly take a hard line on their legal effort to prevent the large-scale dredging.

“We are not trying to stop any enhancement or restoration. We are not advocating that we walk away and let nature take it’s course,” local Sierra Club spokeswoman Jackson said.

But Jackson noted that the suit is serious, and that it is backed by the Sierra Club’s national board of directors. “If this project goes through, it’s going to be repeated, and probably not just in California,” she said.