Activists Deal, but Who Wins?

Last year, when runoff from development at Crystal Cove had local activists and state water officials concerned, one environmental group was discouraged by its attorney from presenting expert testimony to the California Coastal Commission. The reason? Several settlements to prior lawsuits might be jeopardized if a hydrologist gave testimony.

Recently, a new round of activism from Amigos de Bolsa Chica triggered an attempt by landowner Signal Landmark to question whether a confidential settlement agreement on Bolsa Chica had been violated. The landowner claimed that Amigos previously had ended an antidevelopment lawsuit by supporting a particular plan in exchange for hefty attorney’s fees. The Coastal Commission again was in the picture. This time it was because Amigos had testified last November in the latest round of sparring over the fate of the mesa.

Environmental groups have been finding that old settlements may come back to haunt later protests. Compromise has been in the air on land-use development in Orange County over the past decade. This trend has had its benefits, but things may change over time.

Habitat preservation has provided both environmentalists and landowners with increased certainty about what can and cannot be on the table on particular development proposals. This has relieved some of the endless litigation over species protection. Buying open space and setting it aside, as happened near Laguna Beach, also has spared land that otherwise might have fallen to the bulldozer.

Agreements such as the one at Crystal Cove in 1987 have been significant compromises. That one arguably spared Coast Highway between Corona del Mar and Laguna Beach from a swath of office buildings and hotels. Another agreement in 1997 added more open space and set fewer homes in sensitive areas, even though today many lament the bulldozing of coastal hills and the emergence of new expensive housing.

For environmental activists, the question always will be whether negotiation and compromise to preserve what can be preserved really amounts to a deal with the devil. Ultimately, landowners will have powerful arguments on their side about the right to develop land. The oversight of the Coastal Commission, and the interest in water quality of regional agencies have been showing, brings a welcome new layer of review to coastal development issues. But the hearings that result from this oversight also may prove tempting occasions for old litigants to stir their activism anew because what they thought they agreed to might have changed.

The pragmatism that brings environmental groups to the point where they sign certain agreements does not necessarily have to result in a complete disavowal of interest in what may come next. But the challenges they are now facing make it clear that they should know what they are agreeing to in the first place. And developers rightly should be able to count on a clear set of rules and expectations arising from negotiated settlements.

The experience of these cases shows combatants that they later might regret having signed away certain prerogatives to challenge development. There also is an important public component. One has to ask, for example, whether the public interest is served if a hydrologist’s testimony goes unrecorded in the deliberations of an important public agency like the Coastal Commission. Individual groups may make their own assessments of the need for compromise, but the question always will remain whether the larger public interest is served. If important information is left out of the public record, then the public may stand to lose in the end.