Ancient Human Remains Found at Building Site

Ancient human remains have been found at a development site on the Bolsa Chica mesa, adding to the furor over the controversial housing project.

Skeletal fragments were unearthed last week during grading at a six-acre site where homes are planned on a bluff overlooking the Bolsa Chica wetlands.

Archeologists who have been monitoring the project are concerned that an entire burial ground may have been destroyed.

“This is a big deal,” said activist Juana Mueller of the Bolsa Chica Land Trust, which is seeking a temporary restraining order to stop bulldozing at the site. The bones, she said, could be as old as 8,000 years. “That’s way before the Pyramids, that’s real prehistory.”

Hearthside Homes plans to build 16 houses on the site, near Los Patos and Bolsa Chica avenues in Huntington Beach. Officials at the company did not return calls Tuesday seeking comment. Hearthside is the company formerly known as Koll Real Estate Group.

News of the find came on the eve of a hearing scheduled for this afternoon in Orange County Superior Court on the land trust’s request to stop the bulldozing, which also has drawn the ire of environmentalists. But the grading is already completed, several officials said.

Further complicating the issue are conflicting accounts of who has the bones, which were uncovered by a scraper blade.

David Belardes, chairman of the Juaneno Band of Mission Indians, says the remains have been turned over to him for reburial. But Lisa Woodward, a staff archeologist for the firm that has been monitoring the construction site, said she has them under lock and key.

Judy Myers Suchey, the consulting forensic anthropologist who viewed the remains last Thursday, said in a report for the coroner that the bone fragments are prehistoric. “It’s quite possible,” she said Tuesday, that a whole burial ground has been destroyed by the grading. But Woodward said she does not think that is the case. The only remains found, she said, were cranial fragments and a tooth.