Oil Company Honors Ballona Wetlands Activist

Ruth Lansford, a founder of the environmental group Friends of Ballona Wetlands, has won a conservation award from Chevron Corp. for her 15-year effort to save and restore the largest remaining coastal wetlands in Los Angeles County.

Lansford was one of 25 people nationwide chosen to receive this year’s Chevron Conservation Awards, which are given in recognition of efforts to find creative and practical solutions to environmental problems.

Chevron cited Lansford’s work in building a grass-roots volunteer organization dedicated to preserving and restoring 260 acres of the Ballona Wetlands, south of Marina del Rey. The area provides a stopover for thousands of migrating birds each year.

Lansford and Friends of Ballona Wetlands were instrumental in a lawsuit filed in the mid-1980s against Summa Corp. that blocked development of the high-rise Playa Vista project in and around the wetlands.

Since then, Lansford and the group’s attorneys have negotiated a settlement with developer Maguire Thomas Partners that would save the wetlands and allow construction of a redesigned Playa Vista project on the adjacent land under certain circumstances. Approval from numerous government agencies is still needed before construction can proceed.

In honoring Lansford, Chevron said, “Through patience and hard work she forged agreements among property owners, developers, government officials and conservation groups that ultimately created a win-win outcome for all parties and allowed development nearby, yet preserved and restored the wetlands.”

The awards, accompanied by $1,000 and a bronze plaque, were presented last week in Washington.

In a brief interview, Lansford said she felt “a little discomfort” receiving the award from the oil company, but was assured that the panel of judges who selected the winners were “totally independent” of Chevron.