Public Places : Bolsa Chica: Last Ditch Save

Bolsa Chica wetlands has been the subject of legal battles for over 20 years. It encompasses more than 1,300 acres, most of which are heavily degraded by decades of oil drilling operations. A 300-acre State Ecological Reserve contains just 185 acres that have been restored and surrounded by a 1.5-mile walking path. The rest has sat neglected during the land use battles.

Amigos de Bolsa Chica, an environmental group, sued the state in 1979 for selling tidelands to a private developer with a plan to build a large marina, commercial development and up to 11,200 homes. That plan was stopped.

Today the battles may be near an end. In one scenario, the major owner of Bolsa Chica’s land, Koll Real Estate Group, will be allowed to build up to 900 homes on 185 lowland acres, 55 of which are classified as wetlands, in addition to 2,500 on a mesa would give the balance of its wetlands property to the public and spend $48 million on restoration. The Orange County Board of Supervisors has approved that plan, which goes to the California Coastal Commission in January.

Simultaneously, in another scenario, the U.S. Department of Interior is trying to purchase the wetlands. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have agreed to spend $62 million on restoration as mitigation for further port development. But funding to purchase the property is mired in the budget stalemate in Congress.

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JOY ZEDLER who studies the restoration of wetlands as a professor of biology and director of the Pacific Estuarine Research Laboratory at San Diego State University. She spoke with Public Places columnist JANE SPILLER.

Question: Litigation has become synonymous with wetlands. How does the public know whose claims about the health and the needs of the ecosystem to believe?

Answer: That’s where scientists are most helpful. We can’t help with the politics but we can look at the evidence about the plants, animals, soils and water given by both sides and evaluate it.

In California we have the nation’s highest rate of wetlands loss. Only 9% of our historic wetland area is left. Seventy-five to 90% of coastal wetlands in Southern California are gone. The Los Angeles port area doesn’t have much left because of dredging for navigation and marinas and filling. Then there’s dissection with flood control channels and filling for the 5 freeway, the Pacific Coast Highway and railroads.

Q: When you visit Bolsa Chica in winter you see so many migrating birds. Is the wetlands there really in such bad shape?

A: It is in real bad shape. What you see is a tiny fraction of the wetlands that is near the Pacific Coast Highway and has been improved by the Fish and Game Department. The rest has been diked off and it no longer has a direct tidal entry. A channel has to be replaced and engineered so that it will stay open to tidal flushing.

Q: Do we really know how to restore wetlands.?

A: It’s relatively new. Twenty years ago, people still thought of wetlands as wastelands to be used as dumps and filled and drained. The tide turned with the Clean Water Act in 1972. Today they’re valued for their function in improving water quality and for the support they provide for biodiversity--they’re like a library full of information.

It can be extremely difficult to restore wetlands. We have perhaps the most difficult job here in Southern California because our wetlands have diminished so much that we have species endangered with extinction. They are species that are quite particular and it’s very hard to figure out exactly what they need and how to replace it.

To restore a wetlands I look at the way the system functioned historically. That often means restoring the tidal influence, figuring how to keep the connection with the sea open and removing fill.

Q: What are the prospects for the future of wetland restoration?

A: I’m hopeful because restoration is becoming more of a science than a trial and error procedure, but it’s a little early to be able to promise that if I damage a wetland over here, I can replace it over there. It’s better to save the natural sites because we can’t guarantee we can replace them.

Public Places columnist JANE SPILLER welcomes suggestions for places of interest. Contact her c/o Voices or by E-mail at Jane.Spiller@latimes.com