Developer Seeks to Reclaim Toxic Dump Area for Housing

Much of the 91-acre site is a former dump contaminated with oil sludge.

Five hundred feet away sits the Mandalay Bay power generating plant and its landmark red and white stacks.

And yet a Newport Beach-based developer wants to transform the parcel at the northeast corner of Harbor Boulevard and West 5th Street into a gated community of 364 homes with a lake, park, hiking trail and bicycle path.

Tonight, people have their first chance to comment publicly on the development called North Shore at Mandalay Bay when the city Planning Commission discusses the project’s draft environmental document.

Oxnard planner Deanna Walsh describes the project’s environmental and regulatory problems as the most complex any proposed housing project has faced in her 15 years with the city. But developer Ron Smith calls his proposal a “real winner,” despite those obstacles.

“We’ll have views of the ocean, views of the mountains and views of the lake,” he said. “This is taking a diamond in the rough and ending up with a good project.

“It would certainly be something to take a piece of ground like that--that’s sterile and ugly, that you can’t even grow brush on most of it--to clean it up and put in a pristine neighborhood.”

Smith has invested seven years and up to 4 million to get the project to this stage. He anticipates spending at least $3 million more to remove and clean up contaminated ground water and as much as 400,000 cubic yards of soil--the legacy of 28 years of oil industry dumping.

Then he must shepherd the development through more than half a dozen government agencies before the first shovel can be plunged into the dirt 14 months from now.

Further complicating matters is that the parcel is home to what is believed to be the last surviving colony of Ventura marsh milk-vetch. The species was declared extinct in 1967 until almost 400 plants were discovered on the land last year.

Smith proposes creating a 3 1/2-acre fenced preserve within the development to protect about 75% of the plants and relocate the remainder in an effort to establish additional populations.

But not everyone shares Smith’s enthusiasm.

David Magney, an Ojai-based environmental consultant and conservation chairman of the local chapter of the California Native Plant Society, would prefer the site be rehabilitated and the plants left undisturbed.

“99.9% of the time trying to relocate rare plants has failed,” he said. “Do we take that chance for expensive housing? I think not.”

But so far, little opposition to the project has surfaced.

Walsh said she has received four written comments on the environmental analysis so far, all from local government agencies. The public has until Sept. 21 to submit written comments concerning the development.

Moreover, the project must receive approvals from several county and state agencies.

The Local Agency Formation Commission must agree to annex the land to the city. The California Coastal Commission must give the subdivision its blessing. And the California Integrated Waste Management Board, which is responsible for the oversight of waste disposal sites, must ensure the land is cleaned.

Smith said he is undeterred by the problems and dismisses concerns potential homeowners may be averse to spending up to $600,000 on a house built on an abandoned waste disposal site.

“This is not a toxic waste dump,” he said. “We’re going to clean this to levels where nobody will ever have a problem. It will be cleaner than any land in Oxnard.”

But Magney questions the wisdom of even trying to rid the tract of its poisons.

He wonders if the rediscovered marsh milk-vetch is able to flourish precisely because the contaminated soil helps reduce competition from other plants.

He wants to ensure that efforts to propagate the plants and clean the tract don’t inadvertently harm them. And he is suspicious the developer is playing a political game to convince regulatory agencies of the necessity of cleaning up the site under the guise of getting the homes built.

“I believe the developer is trying to make a bigger case out of contamination than there really is,” Magney said. “There’s nothing wrong with the site. It’s only when you want to put houses on there that [the contamination] becomes inappropriate.”

Smith rejects such arguments.

Furthermore, he contends, people who won’t live in the development will also benefit since Harbor Boulevard will be widened from two lanes to four in front of the subdivision.

“We’re not hiding anything,” he said. “This is a great area, it has great potential.”