Panel Backs Buffer Zone for Wetlands : Thousand Oaks: Commission favors barring building within 50 feet. Development interests call limits too restrictive.

After an exhausting seven-hour debate, the Thousand Oaks Planning Commission narrowly approved an ordinance early Tuesday that would prohibit development within 50 feet of the city’s wetlands.

Developers and building interests vigorously opposed the ordinance at the marathon session, saying it conflicts with existing regulations and calling it too restrictive.

But at 2:30 a.m., three of the five commissioners said the desperate state of the wetlands in the city outweighs the financial concerns of a small number of developers, and they agreed to send the revised document to the City Council for a vote later this month.

“This is something we must do,” Planning Commissioner Linda Parks said. “If we wait another few years, this issue may become moot for a lack of any wetlands for this city to protect.”

If approved by the council, the ordinance would create a 50-foot buffer zone around any existing riparian or wetlands habitat, where development would be banned.

Commissioner Marilyn Carpenter likened the inclusion of riparian land--the banks and plant life adjacent to wetlands--to the canopy element of the city’s oak tree ordinance, in which the city protects not just the tree trunk, but the area immediately around it.

“We’re saying what we have said before. If you build right up to the edge of an environmentally sensitive area, it’s akin to destroying it,” she said.

Commissioners Mervyn Kopp and Forrest Frields said they agreed with the concept of protecting wetlands, but believed that the ordinance was being rushed and was too confusing to pass in its present form.

“We have spent an inordinate amount of time up here trying to figure out what we’re talking about,” Kopp said. “It seems to me that this has been rushed through.”

Kopp said he was particularly disturbed by the exemptions added to the ordinance.

The new version includes exemptions for the city and other government agencies, and for homeowners who have existing structures near a buffer zone.

“We have 10 gazillion exemptions, and that makes this ordinance look like Swiss cheese,” Kopp said.

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Speakers representing the few property owners that would be hurt by the ordinance also questioned the exemptions.

“If we’re here to protect the critters, why are the homeowners protected? Why is the city exempt?” asked R. David DiJulio, attorney for Ned Cohan, who owns a 47-acre parcel on a flood plain in Newbury Park.

In a flowery statement, DiJulio told the commission that passage of the ordinance would keep him busy for years, challenging it in court.

He argued that the restrictions so severely impact development on Cohan’s property that they constituted taking of the land.

But Thousand Oaks Assistant City Atty. Robert K. Rogers said he believed that the ordinance would stand up to legal scrutiny.

“We have a very legitimate government interest in protecting this property,” he said. “I don’t think it acts as a taking.”

The chief objection raised by opponents to the measure was that an outright ban on development near wetlands was needlessly restrictive, especially considering existing state and federal constraints.

Existing regulation by both the state Department of Fish and Game and the Army Corps of Engineers allows for the possibility of development on wetlands if the builder agrees to enhance a wetlands site somewhere else.

“The difference is between preservation of wetlands and management of them,” said Ellen Michiel, vice president of Raznick & Sons, which owns 40 acres in Newbury Park.

“Wetlands management says that you look at the quality of the habitat involved, you look at the location, the diversity of wildlife.”

Michiel said plans for her property, which were approved by state and federal regulators, would have allowed for the expansion of a rich and diverse wetlands at the expense of wetlands that are not worth preserving.

“We were working on a very flexible and imaginative conservation-oriented approach to the management of this critical resource,” Michiel said. “None of that is provided for in the city ordinance.”

But Gregory Smith, the Thousand Oaks senior planner who drafted the ordinance, said the city’s proposal takes wetlands protection a step further than the other agencies.

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“I see that as a preferred means of protecting these habitats, and I am told that it is the general opinion of the other regulating agencies that this type of no-loss policy is seen as supportive of their goals,” Smith said.

“If anything,” he said, “they see this as a means of streamlining the permitting process.”

Commissioners said that in the end the most effective appeal was that of Julie Clark of Newbury Park, who urged commissioners to consider the strength of the ordinance’s environmental goals.

“As I sit here and listen to the developers and builders, I wonder why we are here,” Clark said. “Are we here to protect the environment or are we here to worry about whether or not the developers make money?”

At the close of debate, Carpenter offered an answer to that.

“For me, it’s a matter of focusing on the major issue here,” Carpenter said. “The major issue is the massive loss of this precious resource. Adopting an ordinance of this sort is an imperative.”