Bolsa Chica’s Die-Hard Pals, Immortalized

It’s not exactly easy reading, but the epic account of one of Orange County’s most critical environmental battles ever has been memorialized in book form.

The 733-page tome, “Saving the Bolsa Chica Wetlands,” chronicles the dramatic 22-year struggle over the wetlands that has played out time and again in the courts and the chambers of the Huntington Beach City Council, the county supervisors and the state Coastal Commission.

Not to give away the ending, but the real-life story provides inspirational fodder for anyone who believes that there are things in life worth fighting for. While developers have won some battles through the years, the environmentalists have essentially saved about 1,200 acres of natural coastal habitat that would otherwise have been paved over.

That, in my book, is a victory.

James A. Aldridge of Huntington Beach thinks so too. A minor player in combating developer efforts to turn Bolsa Chica into another Marina del Rey, Aldridge nonetheless became the official scribe of the struggle and the book’s author.

His purpose: so politicians, environmentalists and others could see how a successful citizen effort was launched.

Aldridge spent scores of hours over several years interviewing the players on all sides.

“A lot of people made great personal sacrifices for something they truly believed in,” Aldridge said.

Many of them formed the activist group Amigos de Bolsa Chica, and their first adversary was the Signal Oil Co., which planned a marina, hotels and shops, a housing development and a new boat channel on the wetlands. It would be the kind of pleasure zone that would have reduced the natural Bolsa Chica wildlife habitat from about 1,200 acres to less than 200 acres.

But Signal underestimated the Amigos’ commitment. People like Rhoda Martyn, Amigos’ first co-president, and her husband, Ken. She told Aldridge in the book: “After my family, the thing I cared most about was Bolsa Chica.”

When Amigos de Bolsa Chica was founded in the mid-1970s, it was an offshoot of the League of Women Voters. Herb Chatterton, league president at the time, saw the wetlands as sacred ground.

It was at his house that the league agreed that a special group should be put together to take up the cause. Attorney Mary Ellen Houseal drew up the bylaws and articles establishing it as a nonprofit corporation.

“Today, there is a great deal of concern about the wetlands; 20 years ago, there was complete ignorance,” Aldridge quotes Houseal as saying.

So the Amigos group began a public campaign, complete with fund-raisers and tours of the wetlands. Former Huntington Beach Mayor Peter Green told Aldridge about conducting some of those tours:

“My son would gather some pickleweed or some ice plant, my daughter would pick up some shells, and then we’d tell people about life in the mud. More and more people began to realize the resources that are there.”

Those first years, membership jumped to some 3,000. The first of several lawsuits filed by the group was against Signal. The two sides agreed to a settlement that preserved most of the wetlands, but it took years of bitter wrangling.

Aldridge was careful to make sure Signal was represented in his book. There is a telling quote about the two sides’ rivalry from Jeffrey Holm, a senior vice president at Signal in those days: “It was common in the development industry to ask, ‘Have you ever seen a dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist smile?’ The typical response was, ‘No.’ ”

Many of the tensions eased after the settlement, Holm said. “I saw some real friendships grow with people I had previously detested,” he said.

Among them was Shirley Dettloff, a former Amigos president, who told Aldridge, “Developers were king in this county. Signal had come into town with its dog-and-pony show. But we said, ‘This doesn’t look right. These are wetlands. They cannot be traded.’ ”

And thanks to her and so many others, they weren’t.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling (714) 564-1049 or by e-mail at jerry.hicks@latimes.com