Charity Run Picketed for Its Sponsors : Environment: Amigos de Bolsa Chica’s allowing potential wetlands developers to donate to the preservation group’s annual fund-raiser draws complaints.

HUNTINGTON BEACH — Some protesters picketed the annual 10K run put on by Amigos de Bolsa Chica on Saturday, complaining that potential Bolsa Chica developers were being allowed to help sponsor the event, which is aimed at preserving the wetlands.

“It’s like working for the lung association and selling cigarettes,” said Tom Pontac, a Huntington Harbour commercial salesman who organized the small group of protesters.

The developers, he said, “are sponsoring the run to wrap themselves in an environmental cloak; there’s no profit in saving the birds, but big profit in bulldozing the Bolsa. It’s a little like the Amigos sleeping with the enemy.”

Amigos de Bolsa Chica, a nonprofit environmental group dedicated to preserving Bolsa Chica, a natural 1,700-acre wetland bordering Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach, organizes the 10K run along the beach as one of its major annual fund-raisers.

Included among the sponsors listed in this year’s program--each of whom donated up to $1,000--were the Koll Co., Fieldstone Company, Tillitson Company, Shell Western E & P and Southern California Edison.

Adrianne Morrison, executive director of Amigos de Bolsa Chica, said she saw no contradiction in allowing development companies to sponsor the 10K run because such sponsorship does not require or imply her organization’s agreement or support of the companies’ plans.

“This is a bogus complaint,” she said of Pontac’s protest. “(Sponsorship) by companies does not imply that we support their positions. I think what it does mean is that we are talking to a lot of people. We communicate with these companies, we work with them and we are now part of the planning unit. We are at the table with them and we can have input.”

One of the companies cited by the protesters--the Koll Co.--is planning an as-yet unapproved development that would put 4,800 new homes on about 25% of Bolsa Chica’s total acreage.

Lucy Dunn, the company’s senior vice president of real estate services, said the company became a sponsor of the 10K run because “we consider the Amigos an active part of the community and we both have a goal of protecting the wetlands in a feasible manner. These are good people; just because you’re in development doesn’t mean that you are contrary to the environment.”