Activism Springs From Forgotten Wetland

The moment that Cathy Beauregard-Covit stepped ankle-deep into the muddy marsh, she had a sinking feeling she was about to get way over her head in Los Angeles port politics.

The San Pedro homemaker was doing a good deed for her neighborhood that February afternoon: picking up trash that had accumulated in a vacant field near the entrance to Los Angeles Harbor.

She walked across a grassy patch and then made her way through a swatch of thistles and bushes. Suddenly she was standing in a hidden pond of water that seemed to materialize out of nowhere.

Glancing around, Beauregard-Covit noticed that she was surrounded by cattails and reeds and a thick stand of sawgrass . Birds startled by her presence exploded from the bushes and noisily flew away. Darting through the water at her feet were small fish.

“I had walked into another world,” said the 39-year-old mother of two. “There were bugs and birds, all sorts of life hidden in the heliotrope and marsh grass. And where had the fish come from? This little patch of land was alive and bustling.”

Beauregard-Covit had rediscovered a long forgotten natural freshwater wetland that helped form the saltwater marsh discovered 450 years ago by Portuguese explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo. He named the area Bahia de los Fumos -- “Bay of Smokes” -- from the fires set by Indians living on the hills above San Pedro Bay.

Workers began filling in the tidal flatlands in the early 1900s as Los Angeles officials dredged and enlarged the harbor. By the late 1930s, the Army Corps of Engineers had covered over the marsh near Crescent Avenue close to the mouth of the harbor.

The filled-in area was used by the Union Oil Co. for petroleum storage during the 1950s. When the firm’s lease ended, its huge tanks were removed.

These days, harbor officials are looking at redevelopment of the 33-acre site. Ideas so far range from construction of townhouses to development of a retail “boat mall” for sailors and yachtsmen to creation of an athletic complex, according to Doug Epperhart, president of the Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council.

But for now, the parcel, bounded by Crescent, 22nd Street and the southern extension of Harbor Boulevard, remains barren. Except for the acre or so at the southwest corner -- where Beauregard-Covit found herself last February.

After wading out of the marsh and cleaning the mud off her shoes, she excitedly set out to learn how a natural wetland and miniature wildlife habitat could possibly exist surrounded by homes on one side and by one of the world’s busiest shipping ports on the other.

She collected a sample of the pond water and took it to her 12-year-old son Daniel’s seventh-grade science teacher for analysis. It was fresh water, and it was loaded with some of the most interesting microorganisms he had ever seen, the teacher reported back.

She went to the neighborhood council, of which she is secretary, to suggest that cleanup of the tiny marsh be designated as a council beautification project.

She mapped out a proposal to build a pathway around a small berm that long ago had been constructed to keep the water from seeping into the old tank farm site. The path could be used by schoolchildren interested in viewing the wildlife and the freshwater pond.

The freshwater marsh is within walking distance of the Cabrillo saltwater marsh, and students could easily compare life forms in the two environments on one field trip, she decided.

Beauregard-Covit began researching the history of San Pedro, perusing old photographs to chart the harbor’s development and the in-filling of its tidelands. She tracked down San Pedro natives who remembered hunting frogs and playing in the spring-fed marsh.

She organized a larger clean-up of the wetlands in June. Neighbors and Girl Scouts pitched in and collected 30 bags of trash. Taking note, harbor officials promised to remove the remnants of an old homeless encampment at the edge of the marsh that the volunteers were unable to handle.

The marsh was now coming to life publicly. The Sierra Club approved a resolution in support of preservation of the freshwater habitat. Its Los Angeles chapter’s leaders praised what they labeled as “a one-woman wetlands restoration project.”

“It’s unique in the sense that here you have an individual with a very narrowly focused, pragmatic vision for the marsh that some might think is too small to be important,” explained Tom Politeo, founder of the club’s Harbor Vision Task Force. “Here, an individual has seen hope in a small parcel of land other people would overlook.”

The marsh restoration received a setback a month ago, however.

The bulldozer sent by harbor officials to clear away the encampment mistakenly graded over the wetlands as well. The cattails, reeds and native bushes were flattened and the earthen berm was knocked down and pushed into the ponds.

Beauregard-Covit and others were devastated. “I was with my boys when I saw what had happened. My littlest started crying. I thought, ‘Oh no! The community was right -- the harbor department just wants to destroy it,’ ” she said.

But harbor officials quickly apologized.

“The bulldozer operator was just overzealous,” explained Gilbert Flores, a consulting landscape architect for the port.

While some harbor officials have told Beauregard-Covit that steps will be taken to “fix” the marsh, aides to Larry Keller, the department’s executive director, said he was unavailable for comment this week.

But City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who represents San Pedro, said it may be up to the tidelands regulators on the state Lands Commission to act on preservation of the tiny wetlands. The port holds the land around the marsh in trust for the state.

She said protection of the miniature marsh fits with the desire for the preservation of open space around the port expressed last week in a “State of the Harbor” address by Mayor James Hahn. He said he wants to make it a destination for tourists and residents instead of an eyesore.

“I was extremely surprised we had our own little marshland until Cathy brought it to my attention,” the councilwoman said. “It’s a resource we should look to protect and enhance.”

The marsh, meantime, is oozing back to life.

Several ponds have re-formed, and the bulldozed cattails are starting to re-sprout. Tracks of raccoons, opossums and other animals can be seen in the muddy ground around the water, but none of the mosquito fish from the old ponds survived.

“We have such a gem right here,” Beauregard-Covit said this week, delighted to find herself also leaving tracks in mud once more.

“It’s an awesome place that’s been here longer than we know. And it doesn’t want to die.”