The Political Game Is On, and Coastline Is the Loser

Is Peter Douglas the only person in the state capable of directing the California Coastal Commission? Obviously not. But the Wilson administration’s determined effort to fire Douglas, the commission’s able executive director for 11 years, has disturbing signs of a broader effort to undercut the agency’s mandate to protect the state’s 1,100-mile coastline and to punish its staff for trying to do so.

Last Monday, in an unprecedented move, acting Commission Chairman Louis Calcagno called a special meeting of the commission for this Friday in Huntington Beach, a meeting at which it probably will fire Douglas.

What’s disturbing is not that the Wilson administration seeks a change in executive directors at the Coastal Commission; that is a political prerogative. What is disturbing is why the administration wants a change. Douglas has taken to heart the text and spirit of the laws protecting California’s unique coast. The commission he directs was created by Proposition 20, passed by voters in 1972, and enforces the 1976 Coastal Act, passed by the Legislature. Together, these measures specifically guarantee maximum public access to the coast. They delegate the commission to control development on and near the coast in order to protect sensitive beaches, wetlands, agricultural lands, scenic vistas. This is what California voters--directly and through their elected representatives--clearly want to achieve.

But Douglas Wheeler, the state resources secretary, says there is “a crisis of confidence” at the agency. Wheeler was angered by Douglas’ refusal to support a planned 3,300-home development in the Bolsa Chica area near Huntington Beach. Commission staff members led by Douglas recommended eliminating 900 homes that would be built on wetlands; the remaining 2,400 homes would be built on a nearby mesa. Douglas said last week that building the homes “in the wetlands was not consistent with the Coastal Act.”

Wheeler and the Wilson administration are also sore at Douglas for his refusal in November to allow Southern California Edison to scale back an expensive program required to offset damage to the marine environment caused by the cooling water intake and hot-water discharge from the San Onofre nuclear plant. Douglas correctly insists that the Coastal Act “has certain standards that have to be met.”

The governor can surely count on support this week from new commissioner Arnold Steinberg, whose interpretation of that act would seem to be quite at odds with Douglas’. Indeed, Steinberg, who once tangled with the commission over his own development plans, can barely disguise his contempt for the very notion that the public has a legal right to use the state’s coastline. Addressing the panel last month, Steinberg likened the easements that beachfront property owners are required to donate to ensure public access to the shoreline--which is public property--to “involuntary servitude” and urged the commission to “undo them if we can, and stop doing any more.”

Wheeler is anxious to emphasize the administration’s environmental credentials. Indeed, Wilson can point to some important coastal accomplishments, such as his help in the creation of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary in 1992. Those accomplishments are greatly diminished by the hardball effort to oust Douglas and cast his efforts to enforce the Coastal Act as obstructionist, and by Steinberg’s unanswered rantings.

California’s irreplaceable coast is not a political pawn. The coastal commissioners and the administration should remember that they are charged first and foremost with protecting the coast for public, not private, benefit.