Oxnard’s Biggest Project Might Revive Wetlands : Ormond Beach: Any approved plan would set aside the 200-acre area and clean up what has been damaged by industrial and agricultural use.

Along a wide stretch of wind-swept Ventura County beachfront lies one of the area’s last significant wetlands, white sand dotted with ponds where tall reeds flourish and scarlet grasses where endangered birds nest.

But the several hundred acres of beachfront also have pockets of industrial development--factories, chemical plants, a city sewage-treatment facility and a power plant.

This land of contrasts is Ormond Beach, where the largest development in Oxnard’s history is proposed.

City leaders and the Orange County developer who wants to build more than 4,000 homes at Ormond Beach say the development will be the salvation of the wetlands.

In exchange for rights to develop, the builder would pay for restoration of the area’s complex salt-marsh ecosystem, an expensive process that the city says it cannot afford on its own.

Houses, hotels and stores would be clustered away from the most sensitive areas, with golf courses or green areas serving as buffers, and dirt trails allowing nature walks through the wetlands.

But environmentalists and wildlife biologists fear that such a development would not bring salvation but would destroy Ormond Beach as a natural habitat.

“I stood there and looked out at the sunset over the ocean and wondered . . . if there would be a hotel built in my lifetime, right there where I stood,” said Roma Armbrust, who heads the Ormond Beach Observers, a coalition of 12 environmental and civic organizations.

Armbrust hopes to incorporate the group next year and compete for state and federal grant money to buy at least a portion of the wetlands and preserve it as public land. Meanwhile, she hopes that the city of Oxnard and the developer will keep their promises to protect the area as it is developed.

“Life is a compromise from beginning to end,” said the retired elementary school teacher from Ventura.

Wayne Ferren, a wetlands biologist and botanist who serves as curator for UC Santa Barbara’s experimental garden known as the Herbarium, said a compromise could destroy the wetlands if they were not properly protected from people and pets.

“This area can’t be treated as Disneyland,” Ferrin said. “As a restored natural area, Ormond Beach would have a much greater value than as a boating area or promenade. Further generations will thank the visionaries of Oxnard for preserving this area for them.”

But the Baldwin Co. is committed to restoring and preserving the wetlands, said Steven Zimmer, executive vice president of the Irvine-based builder.

“The area has been extremely abused,” he said. “I think we can put together a very nice educational use down there while still providing a buffer for the wetlands and protecting the endangered species and their habitat.”

Zimmer acknowledged that some believe that the wetlands should be restored and the area returned to a natural state, despite the city’s 1990 General Plan that slates the area for development.

“But there is such a thing as a General Plan and property rights,” Zimmer said. “What you have to do is work within the system and try to create a balance of the environment and other property rights.”

Oxnard leaders already have forced the developer to dramatically scale back his plans since 1987, when Baldwin proposed a 2,970-acre project with 10,500 houses, condominiums and apartments, a pair of marinas, golf courses, hotels and shops.

At Tuesday’s Oxnard City Council meeting, city planners are scheduled to present an array of alternative plans calling for a maximum of 4,100 homes on 1,200 acres, with one luxury hotel, one golf course, possibly a pair of lakes, a school, a park and in one plan, a marina. The development would be clustered on about 400 acres of the property.

A significant part of any approved plan would include a provision to set aside the 200-acre wetlands and clean up what has been damaged by 30 years of industrial and agricultural use, City Planner Matthew Winegar said.

“We’re talking millions of dollars and the bulk of that responsibility will fall to the developer,” Winegar said. Mere promises from the developer will not be accepted; the money has to come upfront, he said.

“The restoration of the wetlands would have to be done in the early stages of building while the rest of the development will go on over at least 20 years.”

Experts are still uncertain whether the relatively new practice of wetlands restoration can work, said Cathy Brown, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist.

“It is probably possible to replant with some of original plants from nearby,” she said. “But wetlands are very complex systems, and we can’t really rebuild what was lost.”

George Moore, a Ventura environmental consultant and arborist, said he doubts that large developments and natural areas can coexist.

“Any time development encroaches on something as complex and sensitive as a wetlands, you’ll end up losing some of it,” he said. “A wetlands system includes things like mosquitoes, which hotels just don’t like.”

The Baldwin proposal includes 1,200 acres of now-unincorporated land bordered roughly by Hueneme Road to the north and the Southern California Edison property to the south, Edison Drive to west and Arnold Road to the east.

Before the turn of the century, the entire area was wetlands and coastal marsh, Winegar said. Since then, thousands of acres of the wetlands, which can be dry in places but identifiable by certain species of plants, were drained, cleared and planted with celery, berries and cabbage.

The city operated a dump where garbage was burned in the area until the 1970s, when industry was allowed to move in, Winegar said. Industrial development or even filling in wetlands for farming would never be allowed today, he said.

“Many years ago, what we now call wetlands were considered swamps and weren’t valued,” Winegar said. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t until the ‘70s that the value of wetlands was discovered and, by then, 80% of the wetlands in the United States had been destroyed.”

During weekdays at Ormond Beach, the calls of terns and mallards are drowned out by the heavy clank of forges stamping out metal for offshore oil well heads and the crunching of steel at a metal-recycling plant nearby.

“On a clear day with an east wind blowing, they say you can hear the drop forge at Arcturus Manufacturing on Anacapa Island,” he said.

The recycling plant, Halaco Engineering at the end of Perkins Road, produces a fine dust from incinerating metal that settles on the nearby sand, leaving it a strange shade of pearly gray. A 30-foot-high slag heap of discarded metal forms part of the wetlands’ southern border.

The city is contracting with an engineering company to study whether the metals may have leached into nearby ponds or otherwise polluted the area.

Halaco officials have said they are interested in selling the 40-acre beachfront property to the city’s Redevelopment Agency, but an acquisition of the Halaco property could prove tremendously expensive if extensive pollution were discovered, Winegar said.

Winegar said it would be to Baldwin’s advantage to pay for the cleanup at Halaco. And Baldwin Co. officials said they are considering purchasing and cleaning up the site.

The city and Baldwin Co. face a potentially more difficult obstacle to development from the hazardous wastes stored in the area.

A recent survey by the Oxnard Fire Department showed that the 14 businesses that would be within half a mile of the proposed development store more than 2 million gallons of liquid hazardous materials and more than 6 million pounds of solid hazardous substances.

The city’s sewage-treatment plant alone has 232,000 pounds of hazardous chlorine and sulfur dioxide on its property.

“That’s part of what makes the area a planning challenge,” Winegar said.

Oxnard officials will have their first chance to vote on a portion of the Baldwin proposal this spring when the developer’s Village West project comes up for a vote. Village West, a 460-home development south of Hueneme Road and east of Perkins Road, will be considered apart from the rest of the 3,500 homes in the Ormond Beach development.

Although no wetlands restoration will be required with that project, Baldwin must provide funds to restore a run-down strip mall on the north side of Hueneme Road, Winegar said.

Al Sanders, a member of the Ventura County branch of the Sierra Club, is skeptical of the city’s stated intentions at Ormond Beach. Oxnard has not successfully protected the beach from off-road vehicle riders who have torn through nesting areas of the endangered least terns, he said.

“The city has chosen to turn its back on what’s going on down there,” he said. The destruction of sensitive areas “is much more significant than what the city has taken responsibility for.”

Richard Burgess, a member of a Channel Islands branch of the statewide California Native Plant Society and planner for the city of Thousand Oaks, said the Baldwin Co.’s promises have become suspect, as well.

Baldwin recently graded a 16.7-acre portion of the wetlands near the Halaco plant to build a nursery, replacing the natural grasses with pots filled with garden plants. Baldwin officials said their documents indicated that the area was not part of the wetlands.

“That makes their whole program suspect and makes me question their sincerity,” Burgess said. “They have graded a significant area, and I don’t think anyone expected that.”

Oxnard City Councilman Michael Plisky also said he distrusts Baldwin because of the grading incident. But he said Baldwin represents the city’s best shot at restoring the wetlands and cleaning up the area.

“Right now, there is a big mess down there, and there is no way we’re going to get it cleaned up unless we have a funding mechanism,” he said.

Alternative Plans

On Tuesday, the Oxnard City Council will consider the following five alternative plans for development at Ormond Beach. All call for 4,100 houses, condominiums and apartments, the maximum allowed under the city’s General Plan, except for No. 5, in which Baldwin Co. is asking for permission to build up to 5,000 homes. All include a golf course, a hotel, commercial areas and preservation of wetlands. The council will also consider leaving the area unchanged.

* 1. Large homes built around lakes similar to the community of Westlake Village. One lake could be set aside for public use.

* 2. A large, rectangular canal, possibly with a public promenade or homes backing up to a portion of it that could look similar to Ventura Keys.

* 3. A development modeled after F Street in downtown Oxnard, with parkways and tree-lined streets and houses with porches.

* 4. Higher density neighborhoods with smaller lots and more housing, including a marina, two hotels and more commercial areas.

* 5. Some lake-front homes with golf-cart paths to connect homes to neighborhood shops and golf courses, possibly with a marina.