Settlement Saves Hellman Ranch Wetlands, Slices Golf Course

Last year’s controversial Coastal Commission approval of a golf course that would destroy nearly 18 acres of wetlands in Seal Beach has been sidestepped by a legal settlement, officials said Tuesday.

Environmentalists, the site’s developer and an attorney for the state commission have agreed to send the Hellman Ranch development back for approval--without the golf course.

“It’s a compromise that makes the best of the situation that we have,” said attorney D. Wayne Brechtel, who represents developer Hellman Properties LLC.

While the 18-hole public golf course will be dropped from plans for 70 homes on 196 acres in Seal Beach near the San Gabriel River, so will plans for restoration of nine acres of wetlands and creation of another 30 acres that were offered as mitigation for the environmental damage, Brechtel said.

Environmentalists called the settlement a victory that recognizes the significance of a dwindling coastal resource.

“All of our wetlands . . . need restoration work, but it’s not OK to fill in and destroy some wetlands and restore some others,” said Marcia Hanscom, executive director of the Wetlands Action Network, one of the three groups that sued the Coastal Commission. “We don’t have enough left to do that.”

The settlement “ensures that the developers are going to come back to the Coastal Commission with a project that includes absolutely no destruction of wetlands,” she said.

The Coastal Commission narrowly approved the developer’s plans, which included filling 17.9 acres of wetlands for the golf course, in September 1998.

The vote came over the objections of environmentalists. Under the state’s 1972 Coastal Act, wetlands can be filled only in eight specific situations, such as restoration--and only if the wetlands affected are being restored.

The decision prompted two lawsuits charging that the commission violated the Coastal Act. The commission’s own staff had written that it saw no legal basis that allowed the filling of wetlands for a golf course.

Under the settlement agreement announced Tuesday, the project will go back to the commission, which will likely hear it again in January or February.

Commissioner Sara Wan, who voted against the project last year, was pleased to learn the lawsuits resulted in a settlement and a modified proposal.

“A settlement is the best way to go, rather than having to go through the court process, which is expensive to everyone and a waste of time,” she said.

Although she declined to say how she will vote when it comes before the commission next year, Wan said, “The original problem I had was with the filling of wetlands. I didn’t have a problem with the housing part of it or other proposals of the developer.

“In the end, [the developer] will probably get what he should have applied for in the beginning,” she added.

Under the settlement the developer can try to build under the previously approved plan if the commission does not approve the revised plans. But a recent court decision involving another Orange County wetlands hot spot make such a move unlikely, participants said.

The state Supreme Court in August upheld an appellate court’s ruling against the Coastal Commission that said under the Coastal Act residential development is inappropriate in the Bolsa Chica wetlands even if it financed wetland restoration elsewhere.

The decision helped hasten the new settlement agreement, according to Brechtel, the Coastal Commission’s attorney and environmentalists.

“It’s very clear to me that all of the parties entered into the settlement against the backdrop of the Bolsa Chica [decision],” said Mel Nutter, chairman of the League for Coastal Protection, another group that sued the Coastal Commission.

“It made the Hellman Properties folks recognize there was a serious impediment to their proposal as approved by the Coastal Commission in the last go-around,” said Nutter, former chair of the Coastal Commission. “I think that’s progress.”

Ellen Stern Harris, coauthor of the proposition that led to the landmark Coastal Act, was devastated last year when the commission approved the Hellman Ranch proposal as consistent with the legislation that she helped create. But when she learned of Monday’s settlement, she was thrilled.

“Generations to come will be thanking all of those who helped save this because we have so few acres of wetlands left, especially in Southern California,” said the former vice chair of the Coastal Commission. “Most of all, what’s significant is that we’re beginning to recognize the importance of wetlands in our ecosystems.”

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Wetlands Supplant Golf Course

Under a settlement agreement, developer Hellman Properties LLC has agreed to drop plans for an 18-hole golf course on its 196-acre project at Hellman Ranch. The golf course, which would have involved filling nearly 18 acres of wetlands, had been approved by the California Coastal Commission and prompted two lawsuits against the state body by three environmental groups.

Source: Hellman Properties, California Coastal Commission, Times reports