REGIONAL REPORT : Tide Turning in Favor of Saving Wetlands : Environment: Although developers continue efforts to build on beachfront property, about a dozen coastal restorations are planned or under way in Southern California.

Tiny Carpinteria, a community so financially strapped that it recently dismantled its police force, has launched a wetlands preservation program that state authorities say could be a model for many richer coastal cities in Southern California.

The city has rejected developers’ offers to build a marina and condominiums on beachfront property and nearby wetlands, giving up millions in expected profits and eschewing the kind of economic growth that might have forever altered the sleepy character of this Santa Barbara County coastal hamlet.

Instead, city leaders have garnered $1.3 million from county and state agencies to purchase a three-acre parcel of the 230-acre Carpinteria Salt Marsh. Later, they plan to apply for more funds to restore the parcel and buy another small adjacent lot.

Carpinteria’s hope is to eventually build a small “interpretive center,” where families and schools can bring children to learn about the beauty and value of wildlife and its disappearing habitat.

In pursuing this modest dream--and in refusing to trade away some of its wetlands to developers in exchange for restoration of remaining marshes--Carpinteria stands apart from some other coastal communities trying to reverse the decline of salt marshes from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border.

Although Carpinteria alone has taken this high road, biologists say they see signs elsewhere in Southern California that the tide is beginning to turn in favor of preserving one of the Earth’s most diverse and important ecosystems.

From the salt marshes of southern Santa Barbara County to estuaries near Baja California, about a dozen coastal wetlands restorations are planned or under way in Southern California--more than ever before.

Biologists say such efforts are long overdue. Of more than 100,000 acres of wetlands that graced the Southern California coast at the turn of the century, only about 13,300 acres remain, according to 1991 estimates by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In Southern California, where valuable coastal properties are coveted for beach homes, estates, hotels or other developments, the losses amount to 90%--compared to 50% statewide.

But regardless of whether wetlands restorations are funded by public or developers’ dollars, they can be almost unbelievably expensive and take years or decades to come to fruition. The delays are often the outcome of some of the most contentious environmental battles in the state.

Until recently, those battles were almost always won by the developers. Before the California Coastal Act of 1976, wetlands were considered a nuisance, dredged out for harbors, filled for farming or paved over for construction. The loss of wetlands continued through the 1980s, but at a slower pace.

Now, the notions of preservation and restoration are becoming “ingrained and institutionalized” in government agencies and in the minds of the public, said Jack Fancher, supervisory biologist for wetlands and endangered species with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“It’s a shift toward winning the battle to preserve wetlands,” said Fancher, one of the state’s experts on coastal and inland wetlands.

Regulatory agencies charged with protecting California’s coast are digging in their heels to ensure that development does not proceed without an approved plan to restore at least as much property as that being destroyed, said Virginia Gardner Johnson, an analyst with the California Coastal Commission in the Santa Barbara office.

Moreover, “the sophistication of the public has increased,” Johnson said. “Instead of complaining that something is not right, they are doing something useful to stop it.”

The tenacity of citizens groups is matched by that of developers seeking to exercise their rights to build on valuable beachfront land. Despite the California Coastal Act and a provision of the federal Clean Water Act that forbids building on wetlands in most cases, developers are persistent in their efforts to win building rights through exceptions to the laws.

Melanie Denninger, a project analyst with the State Coastal Conservancy, the agency that funds many of the public restorations, said a “tremendous amount of taxpayer money” is spent evaluating landowners’ proposals for developments on marshes.

“It’s not enough that the laws are enacted,” Denninger said.

While some of Southern California’s most famous marsh battlegrounds, such as Ballona Wetlands in Los Angeles County and Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve in Orange County, are privately held, targeted for development and far from being restored, neither have they yet been paved over for condos or dredged for marinas, said Jack Liebster, a Coastal Commission spokesman in San Francisco.

“It’s a bloody battle,” he said. “But at least we are holding the line. We’ve kept builders away while we’re coming up with comprehensive plans to provide for wetlands restoration that will still allow development to occur.”

The future of coastal wetlands restoration is “hopeful and frightening,” said Melvin Nutter, chairman of the nonprofit League for Coastal Protection and former chairman of the California Coastal Commission.

Nutter is optimistic, on one hand, because of increased public awareness of the value of wetlands and state funding for coastal restoration projects. But two things cloud his outlook.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in a controversial move to redefine wetlands, plans to remove thousands of acres of coastal marshes from federal protection--about half of the acreage remaining in California.

In addition, a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a South Carolina case worries Nutter. The ruling supported a landowner’s right to be compensated after he was refused permission to build on beachfront property because of a state law designed to prevent erosion.

“There is lots of uncertainty in the next 10 or 15 years,” Nutter said.

Many wetlands in Southern California are fragmented, sometimes used as dumping grounds and often overrun by non-native plants. And several marshes, including large expanses considered among the most significant in the state, are targeted for development.

At the Bolsa Chica wetlands near Huntington Beach, efforts to restore the salt marsh have been mired in a stalemate with the developer since the mid-1970s. The Koll Co. wants to build 4,884 houses and condominiums on 450 acres near the coast there.

“The coastal act supposedly will not allow houses to be built on a wetlands,” Fancher said. But the Koll Co. “won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

In exchange for permission to build, Koll Co. officials say the company will contribute up to $35 million toward the estimated $102 million needed to restore about 850 acres of degraded marshes.

The developer has also discussed, but not committed to, donating some of the restored area to the nearby state-owned Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve, home to five species of endangered birds.

Fancher is still skeptical, though. “They say they will restore the wetlands,” he said. “But they still haven’t said how or when.”

A similar standoff has held up restoration at the Ballona Wetlands, the subject of a 15-year battle between developers and preservationists.

In a settlement last year of a 1984 lawsuit, developer Maguire Thomas Partners agreed to spend $10 million toward restoring 260 acres of wetlands, which are wedged between Marina del Rey and Playa del Rey. In exchange, the developer wants permission to build 13,000 residences, 5 million square feet of commercial buildings, 1,050 hotel rooms and a marina with 848 boat slips at its proposed Playa Vista project.

An environmental impact report on the development is due this month.

But Southern California also has enjoyed success with some of the developer-funded and publicly funded restorations along the coastline--and biologists have hopes for more on the horizon:

* About 700 acres of the Upper Newport Bay in Orange County, a once-degraded saltwater marsh, is now a state ecological reserve. Money for its restoration came as compensation for damage to shorelines during the 1969 Union Oil Co. spill in the Santa Barbara Channel.

* About 150 acres of wetlands on the San Dieguito River in San Diego County are slated to receive millions of dollars toward restoration from the Southern California Edison Co., which had to make up for fish losses at its San Onofre nuclear power plant.

* At the Batiquitos Wetlands in San Diego County, restoration will result from an influx of funds from the Port of Los Angeles, which must compensate for marsh losses that will result from a proposed port expansion.

* At the Tijuana Estuary at the Mexican border, the largest intact tract of wetlands in California, preliminary work has begun on portions of the 2,531-acre National Esturene Research Reserve, most of which is publicly owned by state and federal agencies. Workers carved channels so ocean tides can reach about 400 acres of the estuary. So far, no source has been found to pay the more than $20 million required for the remaining 500 acres in need of aid.

By far, the big money for restoration comes from developers or corporations swapping dollars for the chance to build--or making up for other damage to the environment.

But the outlook for publicly funded restoration projects such as the Tijuana Estuary or Carpinteria Marsh is still positive, said Reed Holderman, resource enhancement manager for the California Coastal Conservancy.

The conservancy pays for restoration projects with public bond money and is not dependent on the state’s deficit-ridden general fund for cash, he said. Soon, voters will be asked to approve another bond measure to continue the funding.

The bond measure, which contains about $60 million for the Coastal Conservancy, has yet to be placed on the November ballot. But it has the support of Gov. Pete Wilson and a good chance of passing even in the present economy, Holderman said, because of public concern over the environment.

Holderman predicted that projects like the Carpinteria Salt Marsh will continue to move forward, occasionally slowed by the economy or an unsupportive administration, but generally remaining on track.

State wetlands experts say that the Carpinteria marsh is one of the 20 most significant salt marshes on the Southern California coast.

On the first lot the city purchased, a developer had proposed to build a marina with boat slips and shops. On the adjacent lot that the city would like to purchase, H. Lynn Cadwell, whose family has lived in Carpinteria since his great grandfather settled there in 1867, would like to build a small group of condominiums. He proposed to donate three acres of marsh to the city in exchange for the right to build the condominiums right on the beach.

The city rejected the plan.

“It could have saved the city a lot of money,” Cadwell said. “But they don’t seem to want to look at the practical solution.”

Though it is now degraded, with suburban shrubs choking out native grasses and artificial channels carrying pesticide runoff, the Carpinteria marsh remains a home and foraging grounds for several endangered species and provides a resting place for thousands of migratory birds every year.

The grassy marsh also offers a treat for those who cherish the sight of great blue herons, brown pelicans and snowy egrets in flight, silhouetted against a setting sun over the ocean, said Wayne R. Ferren Jr., a biologist at UC Santa Barbara who manages the Carpinteria reserve.

“The Carpinteria Salt Marsh is one of the most important wetlands on the coast of California,” Ferren said. “Realizing that 90% of the coastal wetlands in Southern California have been filled or dredged, the 10% that are left become even more valuable, even if they are degraded or fragmented.”

Likewise, Holderman praises the Carpinteria project, which the California Coastal Conservancy helped fund.

“The idea there is that we add something to the wetlands system rather than trying to compensate for a loss somewhere else,” he said.

Saving Our Wetlands

Ninety percent of coastal marshes in Southern California have been destroyed by development or farming. Coastal wetlands are among the most important habitats on earth, providing diverse ecosystems that support myriad plant and animal life. Each marsh has a specific set of problems. Here is a simplified overview of how experts go about restoring them:

1. Crews bring in truckloads of sand or mud to raise the level of marshland that has subsided. In another scenario, crews remove earth and trash from clogged marshes.

2. Roads sometimes must be moved or raised. To protect homes, water control gates are added to regulate tidal flow into the marsh. Levees are built to contain the tidal waters.

3. Bulldozers knock down obstructions and clear out channels to reopen the marsh to the oceans. Crews can also tunnel beneath houses to carry ocean water to the marsh.

4. Biologists plant native vegetation--cordgrass, pickerelweed and saltgrass--to control erosion and they monitor the restored marshes, ideally for five years.

Key Sites

Some of Southern California’s most significant coastal wetlands are shown here.

Carpinteria Marsh

Ventura

Ballona Wetlands and Lagoon

Bolsa Chica Wetlands

Upper Newport Bay Ecological Reserve

Batiquitos Lagoon

Tijuana River National Estuarine Sanctuary

A Healthy Wetland

In a working marsh, plants take moisture from the sea. They provide nesting and foraging habitat for birds and other creatures. Birds and fish find plenty of small marine animals to eat in the shallow channels created by the tides.

Inlets allow seawater to flow in and out of a marsh with the tide, replenishing nutrients.

The Costs

The cost of restoring a wetland varies, but the price tag is usually high, as illustrated here by a breakdown for the 850-acre Bolsa Chica Wetlands project in Orange County--now estimated by the developer at $102.1 million. (State officials differ, setting preliminary estimates at half that figure.) Oil pumping would be phased out as the restoration is done over 20 years.

* Oil reserve buy-out and removal of wells, tanks and pipelines: $29.7 million

* Earth moving, grading, berm construction, channel cuts to bring in fresh water before ocean access is restored: $43.3 million

* Planting of native vegetation: $9.4 million

* Cutting new inlet to sea, raising a portion of road and building a pedestrian bridge: $15.7 million

* Monitoring and maintenance for about five years for each phase: $4 million.

* Total: $102.1 million

SOURCE: The Koll Co.