Developer Agrees to Restore Part of Oxnard Wetlands

The Orange County development company that illegally graded 16.7 acres of wetlands habitat at Ormond Beach in Oxnard has agreed to restore part of the area in time for the arrival of migratory birds next spring.

The Baldwin Co., which proposes to build a community of more than 4,000 homes on nearby beach property, graded the area in May, turning the field of salt marsh and native pickle weed into a flat bed for potted garden plants.

Baldwin company executives have said they were unaware that the area was considered a wetlands. But in a meeting last week with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Army Corps of Engineers, Baldwin representatives agreed to hire a biologist to write a restoration plan for seven acres of the graded land.

Once the restoration plan is approved, the developer will be required to return the area to its original elevation, restore the water access to the area and replant native grass, said Cathy Brown, a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist.

“This is a happy ending,” Brown said. “They want to undo the bad relationship they stumbled onto with the corps.” The Baldwin company will submit the plan in January and should complete the work by March, Brown said.

“We don’t want them mucking around in the area when the birds are there,” she said. “We hope the plan will be in place before the growing season for the grasses begins.”

But corps officials said it is unclear how much of the area Baldwin can be required to restore. Maps on file with the corps show that less than half of the area meets all of the federal criteria for a wetlands, said Liz Varnhagen, a corps biologist.

“We have told them they can resolve their violation by restoring the entire site,” Varnhagen said. “If we don’t get full restoration, we still haven’t made up our minds about (whether to impose) administrative fines.”

Fines for the violation could run as high as $25,000, Varnhagen said. Restoration of the area will probably cost thousands of dollars per acre, officials said.

Baldwin graded the area without a corps permit, which is required before any wetlands area can be altered. No city permit was required because the amount of dirt moved fell below a threshold level, Oxnard city officials said.

The grading came to light this fall when the corps deliberated over whether to fine the developer, order restoration, or both. The salt marshes that were graded support rare or endangered species of plants and animals and are among the last 1% to 5% of coastal wetlands that remain in the state, officials said.

Robert Burns, president of Baldwin’s Los Angeles-Ventura division, said the company is willing to restore seven acres of the area that are legitimate wetlands.

“It’s unreasonable to ask us to restore an area that is not a wetlands area,” Burns said. “We said to the corps and the community that we would do our best to respect any legitimate wetlands in the area. This is a good-faith gesture.”

But Wayne Ferren, a UC Santa Barbara biologist who serves as curator of the university’s Herbarium, a museum of plant specimens used in research, said the area once was a wetlands.

“It’s rather obvious that it was a wetlands when you have wetlands plants dominating the habitat right up to the fence and salty soil that now has pots on it on the other side of the fence,” said Ferren, considered a top wetlands expert by federal authorities.