ORANGE COUNTY VOICES : Now Sierra Club Threatens Wetlands : After the Amigos de Bolsa Chica group negotiated a restoration plan, a new ‘task force’ could scuttle the deal.

Sierra Club’s local activism threatens wetlands restoration in Southern California.

As an environmentalist fighting for wetlands restoration for 24 years, I always believed my opponents were land developers. However, with important conservation agreements in place at Bolsa Chica in Huntington Beach and the Ballona Wetlands in Los Angeles, it appears those standing in the way of restoration are “anti-growth” activists with unrealistic positions.

In 1989, the environmental group Amigos de Bolsa Chica successfully negotiated the coalition agreement, ending a 20-year battle over a Huntington Beach coastal area. Together with the city, the county, the state and the landowner (now Koll Real Estate Group), Amigos ensured that more than 1,000 acres of degraded wetlands would be restored.

Another citizens’ group, Friends of Ballona Wetlands, completed an agreement to restore a significant amount of the Ballona Wetlands that cleared the way for the Playa Vista project in Los Angeles County. Because the wetlands in question are degraded, each agreement ensured more wetlands would be protected than required by law (i.e., no net loss of wetlands).

In spite of their efforts, the groups’ successes are threatened by a self-appointed “task force” in the Sierra Club’s Angeles chapter. This group has chosen to attack the projects, the conservation agreements, and the credibility of the Amigos and Friends groups.

As a longtime member of Sierra Club, I support their broad policies. In 1992, its California chapter published a “Green State of the State Report,” which urged “policy before planning” as a growth management solution. They urged agencies to adopt policies encouraging urban in-fill developments instead of urban sprawl, and promoting affordability by planning varied densities instead of just large-lot single-family subdivisions.

The Bolsa Chica plan embraces the report’s policies. It is an in-fill development with varied densities, and 75% of the site will become a system of wetlands, parks and trails. Planners for Playa Vista also consulted Sierra Club policy extensively.

Unfortunately, activists at the Angeles chapter are either unaware of or have chosen to ignore the report’s recommendations, as they pursue identical strategies to block the two projects. The inconsistency between policy and the activists’ behavior calls attention to a major flaw in the Sierra Club’s structure.

Sierra Club allows individual members, regardless of their technical background, to organize a local “task force” on any particular issue. The local task force has authority to develop policy and represent Sierra Club without accountability to state or national policy. This leaves anyone trying to interpret Sierra Club policy in a quandary and has cost them credibility among public policy makers.

While the Amigos and Friends slugged it out with the landowners, Sierra Club stood on the sidelines. Only when resolution was near did the Sierra Club become involved. First, representatives offered to “take over,” renewing the fights that had ended. Met by a cool response, the task force attacked the groups as having “sold out” and being “in bed” with the developers. They have criticized both projects without offering a feasible alternative.

In 1979, a Sierra Club representative asked me if Amigos would relinquish its battle, as he was confident they could negotiate with the landowner to set aside 500 to 600 acres. Today, Amigos has an agreement to preserve more than 1,100 acres of wetlands for restoration. Yet the Sierra Club “task force” continues to attack that agreement and Amigos.

It is both curious and ironic that a Sierra Club task force would attack the very organizations that achieved protection of the wetlands in the first place. Especially since it claims to be an “environmental” group, yet fights against binding agreements to restore wetlands--even when the agreements exceed what regulatory efforts could accomplish. One has to ask if this amounts to “environmentalism” or “obstructionism.”

I believe there’s a place for Sierra Club in helping to set the nation’s agenda for the environment. However, groups such as Amigos de Bolsa Chica and Friends of Ballona Wetlands have a greater knowledge and commitment regarding local issues. After years of good faith negotiation with all of the interests, the groups’ agreements should be allowed to move forward.