Surfrider Foundation Vows to Stay Vigilant : Environment: Runoff from Pelican Hill’s two golf courses concerns coastal watchdogs.

Nancy Gardner started riding horses on the beach and bluffs south of her home in Corona del Mar before there was any development on what was then called the Irvine Coast.

It was the mid-1950s, and Gardner clearly remembers the dry canyons that cut through the cliffs of what is now Crystal Cove State Park.

So when Gardner walked along the base of the cliffs as a member of the Surfrider Foundation during the spring of 1992, she was surprised to see a waterfall.

“I was amazed because now there is water 24 hours a day in a couple of these canyons,” Gardner said.

At the time, Gardner and other members of the Surfrider Foundation, a environmental group that bills itself as a guardian of the coastline, were being given a tour of the area below the Pelican Hill Golf Club’s Ocean course, which had been open about four months.

Officials from the Irvine Co. led the tour, which also included parts of the golf course and was intended to assure Surfrider that the runoff wasn’t harming the environment.

It’s not easy dropping a couple golf courses and several housing developments onto one of the last pieces of undeveloped coastline in Southern California.

The 9,000-acre parcel was first marked for development in 1964 when the Irvine Co. proposed building 21,500 homes and 200,000 square feet of office space. Two similar plans were approved in 1976 and ’81 by local agencies, only to be blocked by the California Coastal Commission and a suit by the Friends of the Irvine Coast, respectively.

Finally in 1988, after years of negotiations with environmental groups, a plan was approved. It was the first plan to include golf courses.

More than 7,000 acres of the development will be dedicated to open space, including 451 acres to golf.

After Pelican Hills’ first course opened in November 1991, some beach-goers started noticing changes.

During winter rains, runoff from canyons seemed murkier than usual. During the summer months, those usually barren reaches sprouted vegetation. Surfers complained of bad smells emanating from the runoff.

“It concerned us enough to ask why is this going on,” said Matt Gadow, chairman of the Newport Beach chapter of Surfrider. “Why is this different? Different isn’t necessarily bad but it piques your interest.”

The Irvine Co., which already had an extensive water quality monitoring system in place, paid for a team of researchers to dive off the coast to see whether any harm was being done. The researchers didn’t discover anything amiss, and the water monitoring system has not found anything hazardous in the runoff, said Bernard Maniscalco, vice president in charge of the development.

The Irvine Co. employed Rivertech, a river engineering firm in Laguna Hills, to build a system of catch basins to control runoff from the course.

With its own testing of the runoff, Surfrider discovered coliform bacteria levels higher than are safe for human contact, but Gadow said such levels are common even in canyons that don’t drain from the course.

Gadow said he is satisfied that the Irvine Co. is interested in mitigating the bacteria levels whatever their source.

“To their credit, Irvine Co. officials have come to the table and said they want to do the best job that they can,” Gadow said.

“They’ve spent a lot of money and a lot of time to control that, but it’s an inexact science.”

Gadow, who like many in his organization is a surfer, says although no one he knows has become sick because of anything in the water in Crystal Cove, he plans to be vigilant.

“We’re the canaries in the coal mine,” Gadow said. “We’re the ones who have to swim in the stuff when it comes out, so we’re more concerned with monitoring it than most people.”