Proposal for RV Park Is Revised : Port Hueneme: City leaders hope that a buffer zone between the site and endangered birds on adjacent wetlands will quiet opponents of the project.

Port Hueneme officials on Monday for the first time acknowledged potential problems with the city’s plan to build a recreational vehicle resort at the southeast end of Hueneme Beach, proposing to move it 100 feet northwest to appease critics.

The new configuration would provide a buffer zone between the proposed 143-space RV park and endangered birds that forage on wetlands immediately next to the site, said Councilman Dorill B. Wright.

City leaders hope that the revisions will quiet critics, including officials with the state Department of Fish and Game and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who have stepped forward to oppose the project, Wright said.

“What we’re trying to do is be cooperative as possible with those who have true concerns about endangered species and the environment,” he said.

An array of environmental groups have long opposed the project, saying it will destroy habitat used by the endangered California least tern. But city officials were poised to seek approval for the park from the California Coastal Commission until a commission staff member wrote a report in July recommending that approval be denied.

Since then, a hearing before the commission has twice been delayed while city officials scrambled to craft a compromise that would be acceptable to all state and federal agencies involved.

Cat Brown, a biologist with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said a city consultant met with her recently to discuss the revised plans. Besides moving the RV park northwest, the consultant suggested that the city could scale down the size of the project and add more vegetation, Brown said.

Brown said she is encouraged by the proposed changes, but is concerned that dogs and off-road vehicles will still have access to the terns’ foraging and nesting grounds at nearby Ormond Beach in Oxnard.

Port Hueneme officials have suggested that they will beef up enforcement of leash laws and off-road vehicle prohibitions, but that is largely the jurisdiction of Oxnard officials, Brown said.

“My concern is that they may be making promises that they can’t keep,” she said.

Wright said the city will probably amend environmental studies done on the project to include the proposed revisions. Public hearings on the amendments will be held in coming months to allow the public an opportunity to comment on them, he said.

Finalization of the revisions and public hearings probably will push the date for a Coastal Commission decision past the first of the year, Wright said.

But if the changes will help the project win approval, it will be worth the wait, he said. City officials have said the 10-acre RV resort will bring $400,000 in revenue to the city each year. That money is needed to help pay the increased cost of such city services as police protection, recreation and parks programs and cultural offerings, officials have said.

“We have no other opportunity to bring in that kind of money,” Wright said. “There is no other location in the city where we can do this.”