Group to Challenge Bolsa Chica Homes Approval

An environmentalist group decided Tuesday to legally challenge the California Coastal Commission’s approval of a plan to build 3,300 homes in the Bolsa Chica area within Huntington Beach, home to one of Southern California’s largest coastal wetlands.

The Bolsa Chica Land Trust, which has led the opposition to the Koll Real Estate Group project, argues that the commission violated its mission to protect wetlands when it approved development on the 1,600-acre, ecologically sensitive site last week.

The Coastal Commission “abdicated its responsibility to the citizens of the state,” said Connie Boardman, trust president, who discussed the decision with the group’s board of directors and attorneys Tuesday night.

Boardman said the group plans to meet with other environmental groups, including the Surfrider Foundation and the Sierra Club, this week to consolidate lawsuits against the project.

Koll company officials said they can’t comment fully until a lawsuit is filed. But they expressed confidence that litigation would not derail their project.

“After 30 years of study and legal research, it’s going to be difficult to imagine any cause of action would prevail,” said Lucy Dunn, the Koll Group’s senior vice president. “I feel very solid about our project.”

The commission’s 8-3 vote represented the last major governmental hurdle for the company’s plan to build 900 homes on 185 acres of wetlands and the other 2,400 homes on an adjacent mesa. The commission also approved a plan by the company to spend $48 million to restore another 1,100 acres of wetlands along Pacific Coast Highway.

The commission’s vote ignored a recommendation from its planning staff that would have eliminated the 900 homes from the wetlands to preserve its ecosystem and would have allowed Koll to build 2,500 homes on the mesa.

The plan now goes to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. If they approve it, construction could begin within two years.

Bolsa Chica includes an oasis of salt marshes, home to brown pelicans, snowy egrets and terns. Southern California once had 53,000 acres of wetlands, but that number dwindled with coastline development. Thirteen thousand acres of coastal wetlands remain.