Plans Due for Last Big South O.C. Open Space

Rancho Mission Viejo Co. will unveil a preliminary development proposal today for the last large parcel of privately owned open space in south Orange County, angering environmentalists who had expected to be included in the planning from the start.

“We don’t even know what biologists surveying the land have found out there,” Bill Corcoran, a conservation coordinator with the Sierra Club in Los Angeles, said Wednesday. The 25,000-acre parcel is home to several rare plant and animal species and is one of the last pristine watersheds in Southern California.

“If the goal were to engage the entire community as stakeholders in preserving open space, clean water and livable communities, then the way to go forward is not to say, ‘We’re throwing out 20,000 homes, and we’ll talk to you about it later.’ ”

Company officials said the logical procedure is for a developer to present its preferred plan first, then negotiate with the community.

Spokeswoman Diane Gaynor said the company has committed to two innovative planning processes that meet the rigorous requirements of the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act.

“This has never been done like this before in Orange County,” she said. “What we’re looking at is a milestone plan that includes preservation of vast amounts of open space based on scientific data.”

The company agreed several years ago to develop the land under guidelines of the Natural Communities Conservation Plan, a federal program to give builders assurances that if they set aside considerable acreage to protect endangered habitats, they will be permitted to build on other environmentally sensitive sections of their property. The program allows landowners to avoid “bush by bush” scrutiny.

The federal plan was intended to head off decades-long battles like that over plans to build homes in the Bolsa Chica wetlands near Huntington Beach.

A landmark plan involving Irvine Co. land in central and coastal Orange County was approved in 1996, resulting in 37,000 acres being preserved. The plan was the first of its kind. Now such plans are being implemented across Southern California.

The Rancho Mission Viejo land is also part of a special area management plan, which allows developers to alter or fill waterways in exchange for preserving other waterways.

The watchword for both federal programs is consensus, so no rules state how the parties involved are to proceed. Environmentalists’ complaint about Rancho Mission Viejo Co. is that it drafted a proposal without first releasing environmental studies and hearing public comment. Company officials say that will come later.

“To keep everything moving, we are stepping forward with our preferred project proposal,” Gaynor said. “The bulk of the biological work is done. . . . We have used that surveying to create a biological blueprint, which we’ve used as the basis of our project proposal.”

Gaynor said environmentalists were warned the preferred plan would be announced today.

But Andrew Wetzler, a staff attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council in Los Angeles, said the company, by presenting its preferred alternative so early on, is sidestepping the process.

“By putting out a land-use plan, they’re figuring out what they want to build and then negotiating the NCCP around that,” he said “They’re essentially reverse-engineering the NCCP.”

The ranch land, now used for mining, farming and grazing, has been owned by the O’Neill family since 1882. Rancho Mission Viejo Co., headed by Richard O’Neill, his nephew Anthony Moiso and other relatives, recently began contacting community leaders and seeking public comment on the future of the northern part of a vast ranch that once comprised 230,000 acres and stretched from Oceanside to El Toro.

Moiso, president and chief executive officer, sent a letter in November to Orange County Supervisor Tom Wilson saying family members are getting older and need to “establish the future legacy of Rancho Mission Viejo.” The goal is a balance of preservation, ranching and development, he wrote.

Some preservationists regard the land as virtually sacred. Extending from the coast near Dana Point to the mountains of the Cleveland National Forest, it contains expanses of healthy coastal sage scrub, imperiled species such as the coastal California gnatcatcher--a tiny songbird that mews like a kitten--and the pristine San Mateo Creek watershed.

“South Orange County looks like what all of Orange County used to look like,” said Wetzler. “It’s home to some of the last undeveloped watersheds in the county. It is home to very concentrated numbers of endangered species and wildlife and home to some of the cleanest water and cleanest beaches in Southern California.”