Controversy Grows Over Wetlands Restoration

Controversy is growing around a massive $100 million project that would return ocean tides to the Bolsa Chica wetlands, in the largest and most expensive wetlands restoration project in Southern California history.

The plan would carve a 360-foot-wide channel through the popular Bolsa Chica State Beach, allowing tides to rush into the wetlands for the first time in a century.

Seven plans have been proposed, and will be discussed at a public hearing in Huntington Beach on Thursday.

Many naturalists applaud the vision of a restored Bolsa Chica, replete with hundreds of shorebirds and burgeoning marine life, in a region that has sacrificed more than 90% of its coastal marshes to development. But some park officials, surfers and swimmers fear that tampering with the beach could spew tons of sand into the Pacific Ocean, and taint the surf with urban runoff.

Funding for the restoration is further complicating the debate. Money to buy and restore Bolsa, 1,247 acres of lowlands in Orange County, came largely from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which together gave nearly $80 million in 1997 in exchange for permission to build over marine habitat in their port expansion plans.

The port money must be used for marine tidal habitat, the type created by carving the channel. Without it, Bolsa Chica would not qualify for the port funds, a scenario that clearly has some officials nervous.

But beach advocates fear a 360-foot inlet would alter permanently the sands and waves of Bolsa Chica State Beach, one of the cleanest in the county. It also ranks as one of the most popular regional beaches, drawing 2 million visitors a year.

“We don’t want to see a wetland saved and a beach destroyed,” said Don Slaven of the Huntington/Seal Beach chapter of Surfrider Foundation, a coastal environmental group.

Others call the inlet essential to revive true ocean influences in the marshes.

“The sea is life in this case. It creates the habitat,” said Jack Fancher, biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

That debate will play out Thursday at a hearing on a $400,000 draft environmental review of restoration plans. Project skeptics are angry that portions of three engineering studies accidentally were omitted from review documents, including data on key topics such as water quality. In response, officials will extend the public comment period 35 days, to Oct. 16.

Bolsa Chica has long been the site of some of the most fractious conservation fights in the state. Residents fought for decades to halt home building on the wetlands, succeeding in 1997 when the state purchased 880 acres for $25 million from Koll Real Estate Group.

Now state and federal officials are moving ahead with plans to restore a motley mosaic of marsh and oil fields to a stately expanse of pools and mud flats, resembling the historic wetlands that lined the coast before freeways and oceanfront condos. They talk eloquently of Bolsa as a critical oasis in the Pacific Flyway, the main path followed by migratory birds traveling the coast from Alaska to Latin America.

Fancher, the federal biologist, calls the return of Bolsa’s tides essential to sheltering rare birds and boosting marine fish populations.

“To get back the missing pieces of the ecosystem, you have to have full tidal influence,” he said.

Today, portions of Bolsa Chica contain no saltwater at all, said Robert Hoffman, Southern California environmental coordinator for the National Marine Fisheries Service. Those areas fill up with winter rains and then dry out. Even a picturesque state ecological reserve alongside the highway is a so-called “muted tidal” system, its pools too shallow and warm to support most species of ocean fish.

The cooler, deeper water contained in ocean tides could turn Bolsa Chica into a fish nursery for California halibut, experts said.

The key mechanism for creating such a vision is cutting an inlet from the wetlands across Bolsa Chica State Beach to the sea.

And that inlet could prove the project’s Achilles heel.

Critics fear it could permanently alter one of the region’s most popular beaches. Yet without the inlet, the entire restoration project would collapse.

“Without the ocean inlet, it isn’t going to happen. I can tell you that now,” said Hoffman.

The local chapter of Surfrider Foundation on Tuesday wrote to request a 60-day extension of the comment period, noting the missing data and complaining that many members active in the Bolsa Chica planning did not receive comments of the environmental review.

“After 100 years of human intervention throughout the greater Bolsa Chica [ecosystem], we feel that you are rushing the ‘public process,’ ” the letter stated.

At the California Lands Commission, environmental planning chief Dwight E. Sanders said he believes the current 35-day extension is sufficient. He added that the research in the documents is credible and supportable. Sanders said the omission of data was not intentional. Once comments are received, the agencies will produce a final environmental review. More hearings will follow in January or February to decide which restoration plan is best suited for Bolsa Chica. If the project stays on schedule, construction could begin in 2002 and finish in 2005.

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Restoring the Tide

Experts are weighing how best to restore the Bolsa Chica lowlands near Huntington Beach. State and federal overseers favor allowing ocean tides to flow into the wetlands through a newly dug inlet. Key features:

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PROS

* Seawater flows into wetlands, improving ability to feed, shelter waterfowl.

* Restores wetlands’ role as nursery for ocean fish.

* Fosters diverse population of small marine creatures, such as starfish, crabs and clams.

* Creates nesting grounds for rare birds such as the California least tern and western snowy plovers.

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CONS

* Increases ocean water turbidity caused by dredged sediment during construction.

* Makes wetlands vulnerable to potential offshore oil spills.

* May raise saline groundwater in nearby residential areas. Engineers believe a special drain could address this problem.

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Public Review

A public hearing will be held Thursday 8/31, 3-5:30 p.m. and 7-10 p.m. in Huntington Beach City Council Chamber, 2000 Main St.

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Sources: EIR/EIS for the Bolsa Chica Lowlands Restoration Project, California State Lands Commission, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Graphics reporting by DEBORAH SCHOCH and RAOUL RANOA / Los Angeles Times