LAGUNA HILLS

The City Council tonight will consider awarding the final engineering contract for a wetlands restoration project to the Chambers Group. When completed, the restored wetlands, along Aliso Creek between Via Lomas Street and Moulton Parkway, will be home to the 30 pond turtles displaced last fall when the city began building the Community Center. The Chambers Group is the environmental consultant that has been working on the project.

Before the city began draining the wetlands for the center--expected to be finished in early 2001--it promised the California Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that it would create new wetlands at another site. Since the construction began, the turtles have been housed in a temporary home downstream from the site.