Bolsa Project Slashed Again?

The 30-year battle over development near the Bolsa Chica wetlands heated up again Thursday when the California Coastal Commission’s staff said it will recommend slashing by more than half the amount of land that can be used to build homes.

In a report scheduled to be released later this month, the commission’s staff will strongly advise that development be limited to 1,235 homes on 65 acres rather than the 183-acre limit set earlier, said Steve Rynas, Orange County area supervisor for the staff. That would mean either smaller or fewer houses than Irvine-based Hearthside Homes had proposed.

The staff recommendation is not binding, but if the commission accepts it, that would be a major victory for environmentalists and yet another setback for Hearthside. Since the Bolsa Chica project’s inception in 1970, it has won Coastal Commission approval three times--in 1986, 1996 and 1997--but has been dramatically scaled back after a series of court challenges by environmentalists.

“This is totally outrageous,” said Lucy Dunn, executive vice president of Hearthside Homes. “We’ve made concession after concession. Ninety percent of our original land holdings are parks, wetlands and open space. This is totally unfair and uncalled for.”

Environmentalists said they will not stop fighting until the whole project is dead.

The land consists of a two-tier mesa west of a 1,249-acre wetland area that provides habitat for a number of native and migratory bird species.

“This is an important first step in the preservation of the entire Bolsa Chica mesa,” said Eileen Murphy, a member of the Bolsa Chica Land Trust board, formed in the early 1990s to preserve the property.

“Margaret Mead said it all: Never doubt that a group of concerned citizens can change the world,” Murphy said.

The Coastal Commission gave permission in 1997 for the project to proceed, but the Land Trust filed a lawsuit that resulted in three new restrictions: that two environmentally sensitive habitat areas, or ESHAs, be preserved and that no construction be done on the lowlands.

That ruling limited the project to the mesa and meant that the Coastal Commission had to reconsider the entire development, prompting the latest staff review.

Though the commission gave permission for sensitive habitats to be destroyed as long as similar areas were created elsewhere, the court ordered the developer to preserve the 2-acre Warner Pond and a 49-acre eucalyptus grove on the mesa.

The staff is now recommending that the area in between also be preserved, Rynas said, because “the animals that utilize the ESHA areas need a larger upland area to forage and use as habitat. You need to have adjacent habitats.”

Dunn said that is illogical.

“That’s counter to all the science that has previously existed on the site. No endangered species are there, and the birds that use the trees forage over square miles, not square feet,” she said.

The Coastal Commission was to have approved or rejected the latest Bolsa Chica plan at its February meeting in San Diego, but the pending staff report may delay any action. Orange County planning director Thomas Mathews said Thursday that he has requested a postponement until the commission’s April meeting in Long Beach.

“We want more time” to study the latest proposal, he said. “I know the coastal staff is under a lot of pressure from a lot of different sides.”

Officials in Huntington Beach, which is adjacent to Bolsa Chica and aims eventually to incorporate the development, will not comment until they have read the commission’s staff report, Deputy City Administrator Rich Barnard said.

The project has undergone a series of transformations over the years.

In 1986, the Coastal Commission approved a plan for 5,700 homes and millions of square feet of commercial space, hotels and restaurants on about 700 acres. The latest plan has no commercial development and about a fifth of the housing.

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Times correspondent Eron Ben-Yehuda contributed to this report.

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Another Cutback in the Works

Originally approved by the California Coastal Commission at 5,700 homes plus commercial development on about 700 acres, a project planned for the Bolsa Chica mesa near Huntington Beach has been repeatedly scaled back. Under a new commission staff recommendation that the developer strongly opposes, the project would be limited to 1,235 condominium units on 65 acres.

Approved by Coastal Commission in 1986

2,500 units on 355 acres

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Current 183-Acre Proposal

1,235 units on 183 acres

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Source: Hearthside Homes; California Coastal Commission