Bolsa Chica Restoration Cost Soars

Restoring the Bolsa Chica wetlands in Orange County could cost $30 million more than expected, state officials said this week.

That potential shortfall could slow or halt one of the most ambitious efforts in state history to revive a coastal marsh. Officials overseeing the project remain confident, however, that funding will be found.

The price of restoring the wetlands near Huntington Beach could rise to more than $100 million, depending on the design chosen, said Jim Trout, Bolsa Chica restoration project coordinator and a State Lands Commission staff member.

Trout and others working on the project say they believe additional money can be found in the state budget and from public land trusts and federal agencies.

The state and federal agencies overseeing the project had hoped to finance it primarily with funds paid by the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in exchange for permission to develop projects in the outer harbor. But that may not work.

The California Lands Commission has now submitted a request for an additional $30 million in the 2001-02 state budget. Trout emphasized that the number is tentative, “based on back-of-the-envelope calculations.” He said it is intended to “get something out there to say we may need more money.”

The restoration, the largest and most expensive in Southern California, would return ocean tides to the 1,200 acres of salt marshes, pools and oil fields known as Bolsa Chica, or “little pocket.”

Lands commission officials say a number of factors are driving up costs:

* More detailed, expensive engineering studies than first planned, some in response to questions from the public.

* New studies to identify contamination, some left behind by oil drilling.

* Added features, such as a special drain to lessen the threat of saline ground water near homes abutting the wetlands.

* Potential improvements to a flood control channel that empties into part of Bolsa Chica. Those improvements, much desired by county officials, cannot be funded with port money, Trout said.

* The discovery that some sand to be dredged from the wetlands may not be suitable for depositing on the beach, since it contains too much silt and organic material.

Project planners say they are being cautious, assuming costs may run 20% over projections. Actual construction bids could prove lower than current estimates, they said.

When the deal for Bolsa Chica was struck three years ago, $78.9 million in port money was earmarked for the project, $25 million of which was spent immediately to buy the land. The balance, including interest, stood at $60 million on June 30 of this year.

“We’re trying to be conservative,” said Hugh Barroll, EPA assistant regional counsel. “In a sense, we’re doing a little bit of worst-case planning here.”

Some officials say the worst-case scenario is that the entire Bolsa Chica restoration project could be derailed by soaring costs. That could force agencies to look for other wetlands to fulfill the requirements of the deal with the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports.

In a system used up and down the California coast, developers such as the ports, whose projects damage marine habitat, must offset that loss by funding restoration of similar habitat elsewhere.

Developers typically are responsible for restoring habitat themselves. But at Bolsa Chica, state and federal agencies concluded that staving off home-building on the famous wetlands was paramount, so they took the ports’ millions and shouldered the restoration job themselves.

“We felt that given the importance of the site, it was worth assuming the risk of the project with a set amount of funds,” said Robert Hoffman of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The Port of Los Angeles already has used roughly half the credits it earned by funding the Bolsa Chica project. They went toward constructing Pier 400, a 60-acre cargo terminal in the outer harbor. The Port of Long Beach plans to use its credits for a variety of projects over the next decade.

Since the port expansion is damaging deep-water habitat, the mitigation money must be used to create similar deep-water habitat elsewhere. The project at Bolsa Chica qualifies, but only if an ocean inlet is built. The plans for an inlet have been strongly opposed by surfers and swimmers who believe it would cause sand erosion and worsen water quality at adjoining Bolsa Chica State Beach.

If the mitigation money is not spent at Bolsa Chica, it still must go to a qualifying project, said Tom Yocom, national wetlands expert at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

That could help another degraded wetland--the Los Cerritos wetlands in Long Beach is mentioned--but it would leave Bolsa Chica unrestored despite decades of planning. Since the wetlands area is now state-owned, it would remain protected from development.

Most Bolsa Chica project planners remain confident the wetlands will be restored.

“The amount of years and work that everyone’s put into this--I just can’t believe that we’re going to get to the end of this process and say, ‘We don’t have enough money,”’ said Hoffman at the National Marine Fisheries Service. “I just don’t think the public will allow it to die.”

The wetlands at Bolsa Chica were cut off from the ocean more than a century ago by duck hunters who wanted a more controlled area for their sport. Oil production became lucrative on the site beginning in the 1940s; later, home builders were attracted to the location near the ocean.

The wetlands became a cause celebre in recent decades as environmentalists fought against a series of plans to build there. Biologists took up the fight, noting that Southern California already has lost 90% of its coastal wetlands to homes and marinas. Without those wetlands, migratory birds lack key feeding grounds, and ocean fish such as halibut lose nurseries for their young.

The lobbying to save Bolsa Chica culminated in February 1997 when state and federal officials negotiated a deal to buy 880 acres of the wetlands from Koll Real Estate Group, preventing construction of 900 homes.

Seven plans for reviving Bolsa Chica are now on the table, with public comment due by mid-October. If a plan can be selected this winter, and adequate funding obtained, construction could begin in 2002 and be completed in 2005, state and federal officials said.