Dissent Growing Over Rancho Mission Viejo

Whither Rancho Mission Viejo?

Even as the owners of the historic ranch dance an elaborate tango with government regulators to try to begin development of up to 14,000 homes, a groundswell of opposition is growing.

More than 500 residents showed up at the latest “scoping” session, at which more than a dozen or so maps were displayed with competing visions of how to subdivide the largest parcel of undeveloped land left in southern Orange County.

Angry grandmothers, high school students, homemakers toting babies and others rejected them all, vowing to stop the bulldozers by buying the land outright if necessary.

“It’s sacred land, we all know that,” said Molly Walsh, 28, a lifelong resident of San Clemente, fighting tears as she spoke at the Oct. 30 meeting in San Juan Capistrano held by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Army Corps of Engineers, state Department of Fish and Game, and the Orange County Planning and Development Services Department.

“Coming here tonight has made me sad, it has made me disgusted, but it has also made me excited,” she said. “Orange County is the richest county in the world.... I think the solution is to buy the land. But everybody has to do their part.”

Rancho Mission Viejo company officials bluntly rejected that notion.

“The ranch is not for sale, the ranch is not for sale, the ranch is not for sale,” said spokeswoman Diane Gaynor.

At the heart of the debate is nearly 23,000 acres, including cropland, rolling hills grazed by cattle, paving and cement quarries, canyons filled with increasingly scarce coastal sage scrub and 300-year-old trees, and the last undammed watershed in Southern California. At least seven endangered or threatened species call the area home.

The land stretches from the southern end of Coto de Caza to Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, from the Cleveland National Forest to San Onofre State Beach. For decades, hikers and Sunday drivers have enjoyed the rural landscapes and dramatic open space stretching along both sides of winding Ortega Highway, all of it part of Rancho Mission Viejo.

The ranch owners, including the family led by Dick O’Neill and Tony Moiso and developers from Arizona, have offered to set aside nearly two-thirds of the acreage as permanent open space, in exchange for permission to build half a dozen communities similar to Ladera Ranch and other planned communities.

Along with federal, state and local regulators, they are trying to implement an unprecedented series of concurrent approvals that would win them exemptions from the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and other project-by-project permit laws, while donating large blocks of habitat.

“It isn’t easy, but I think if everyone recognizes that this is a special opportunity, a unique opportunity, and recognizes the need to seek balance and accommodate everyone’s points of view, we can wind up with something in this ... part of the world that hasn’t been done in any other location,” said Dan Kelly, vice president of governmental relations for the company.

“The prospect of change is more difficult for some people than others,” he said. “What we prefer to focus on is that while there are strong feelings about how we are all going to live here in Orange County, how do we take advantage of the opportunity to plan this place together?”

Company spokeswoman Gaynor added: “We have a clear need for homes in Orange County, we have a clear need for jobs, and we have a clear need to protect the environment, so the key is, how do you balance those and make it all fair?”

But the prospect of more tract homes covering the hills is what is galvanizing environmentalists and area residents. Everyone has a concern, including the loss of mountain lions and the ability to see stars at night.

“There’s a huge new mall proposed. Can’t you just picture it?” said Erin Sill, a Santa Margarita High School student. “But as a spokesperson for the younger generation, I would like to see this land preserved forever. Can’t you just picture that?”

Bill Corcoran, with the Los Angeles field office of the Sierra Club, acknowledges the housing need but added: “Does [California] need housing in some of its last, best natural open space? We need housing near where people already live, near existing roads, near existing job centers.”

Corcoran said he was shocked -- and delighted -- by the turnout at the public meeting. Friends of the Foothills, a South County group devoted to stopping the construction of the Foothill South toll road through Rancho Mission Viejo land, sent out hundreds of postcards reading “Stop the Sprawl” before the meeting, and members are keeping up the battle.

“This is democracy in action,” Corcoran said. He and others say there is money available in recently passed statewide Proposition 50 -- a $3.4-billion clean water bond, which provides funds for protecting wetlands and water sheds -- as well as federal funds to buy the land, if the owners can be persuaded to sell.

But some environmentalists who have been pushing for a compromise for years worry that drawing battle lines could torpedo any reasonable deal.

“The crowd was like an animal that night; it had a sense of its own power,” said Dan Silver, director of the Endangered Habitats League. “I would love to work with the Rancho Mission Viejo company and collaborate. But unless we can bring solutions, events may run away with themselves.... I believe there’s a win-win [solution] out there for everyone.”

Silver wants a carefully negotiated Natural Communities Conservation Plan -- a statewide version of federal land-swap programs -- based on the best scientific surveys, with creeks and other prime ecological resources preserved. That, in turn, would limit development to less sensitive areas. Critics say the ranch’s proposed open space plan would bulldoze some of the rarest habitat.

“But if [Rancho Mission Viejo’s] position is in totality that the land is not for sale, and if the conservation position is ‘Don’t give an inch,’ that’s a train wreck. You’re heading into a Bolsa Chica, an Ahmanson Ranch, with long-term uncertainty, protracted litigation and potentially a lose-lose situation for everyone.”

Proposed developments at Bolsa Chica, on the Orange County coast, and Ahmanson Ranch in Ventura County near Los Angeles have been stalled for years.

Silver said that while he would like to see all the land preserved, he is worried that valuable pieces could continue to be lost by attrition.

He noted that the 8,100-home Ladera development was supposed to be part of the Rancho Mission Viejo reserve plan; instead, he said the company won “temporary” permits from the wildlife service to kill threatened gnatcatchers after company officials promised that they would implement a plan for the rest of their land.

Efforts to negotiate the land’s fate have dragged on for a decade. The company first requested a conservation plan in 1992. The recession of the mid-1990s, extensive technical surveys and other factors caused delays, company officials said.

Silver said that ranch officials were concerned by the Irvine Co.’s problems with the state Coastal Commission at its Crystal Cove development, and decided that they should press for a Special Area Management Plan to iron out problems with federally protected streams and wetlands upfront, as well as the imperiled species issues.

Jane Hendron, spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Carlsbad, said that while the federal, state and local processes were being done concurrently, a possible first nationwide, that didn’t mean they were all one process.

“They’re different trains leaving the station at the same time, that’s all,” she said.

The next move appears to be up to the regulators. Federal army corps and wildlife officials have not released data about the ecological resources on the land, but hope to do so soon. Next, a land use task force convened by Orange County 5th District Supervisor Tom Wilson will make recommendations, and competing proposals will be winnowed. Combined federal and state environmental reports will be completed, and formal public hearings will be held.

Foes promise that those hearings will be packed. In the last year, attendance at the informal sessions surged from about 100 to more than 500, and a drumroll of e-mails and other organizing continues.