A View From Above Aids Battle Below

Folks around Trabuco Canyon insist they’re not rebellious by nature. It’s just that the stakes are high in their fight against a neighbor who bulldozed four acres of oaks and coastal sage scrub without state and federal permits.

To assess the extent of the grading, they hired a biologist to videotape the work. After all, the residents said, the area was possible habitat for endangered or threatened species. But the biologist was shooed off the property.

Undaunted, the residents borrowed an idea from the war in Afghanistan and hired Larry Fleming, who strapped a 35-millimeter camera to a remote-controlled model airplane and flew it over what residents consider a battle zone. The images were not CIA quality, but residents were happy with their “reconnaissance drone.”

And they succeeded in getting the grading stopped.

The offending neighbor in this case is the Orange County Probation Department, which has locked horns with residents over construction of the 90-bed Rancho Potrero Leadership Academy at Joplin Youth Center. The center sits on 338 acres above the community of Trabuco Canyon.

A lawsuit filed in January by the Rural Canyons Conservation Fund and the Saddleback Canyons Conservancy seeks to halt the construction. The suit alleges that the county created a special planning district “to bypass environmental protections” for the land.

It also alleges that a proposed paved road leading to the facility across Trabuco Creek could cause extensive environmental damage--charges that Probation Department officials dispute.

The county says the academy is needed to ease overcrowding at Juvenile Hall in Orange and other facilities. In addition, county officials said, placing boys and girls in a rural setting helps their rehabilitation because it gets them out of their daily routine.

The Probation Department must complete construction of the academy by Dec. 31, 2003, or it could lose a state Board of Corrections grant that covers $8.4 million of the estimated $18 million in construction costs.

When the Probation Department applied for the money in 1998, its officials believed they could finish the project by the deadline, said Thomas G. Wright, chief deputy probation officer.

Wright said through a spokesman that although the grading has been halted, “It has not interfered with the [construction] timing of the Rancho Potrero Leadership Academy.”

The department plans to chose a contractor before June 30.

Probation officials initially had said they had sufficient permits from the county to grade a slope at Joplin to reinforce a sewage pond on the property. A county planning department spokesman told residents not to worry, that “everything’s fine.”

But when it was determined that the Probation Department did not have state Fish and Game and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service permits, as residents had insisted, the planning department ordered the grading stopped immediately. The mistake was attributed to “miscommunication” between the two agencies.

Robb Hamilton, the biologist hired by residents to survey the area, reported that it contains coastal sage scrub and other vegetation that provides a “habitat to be potentially suitable for nesting by the federally threatened coastal California gnatcatcher.”

Probation Department officials now must meet with state Fish and Game and federal Fish and Wildlife Service officials to talk about mitigation measures before resuming the work. The probation officials have repeatedly said that the grading and other work is not related to the academy construction project, though residents have insisted otherwise.

“This is still being investigated and a full assessment has yet to be completed,” said Mervin Hee, state Fish and Game’s regional patrol chief in San Diego.

When coastal sage scrub is bulldozed with the required permits, Fish and Game typically requires a 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 ratio of substituting habitat elsewhere. But because the county did not have a permit, the penalty could be stiffer: about 20 acres, or at least a 5-to-1 ratio, Hee said.

The grading has angered residents already wary of any county activity in their community.

When some residents logged onto the county’s Web site last week to check permits for the work already underway, they were aghast to read that a grading plan described the work as “Precise Grading For Rancho Potrero Leadership Academy.”

“Immediately, we wanted to know what was going on,” said Richard Gomez, a spokesman for the Saddleback Canyons Conservancy. “We had been told the grading had nothing to do with the academy.”

A subsequent power interruption made accessing the Web site impossible. But even when power was restored, the site couldn’t be viewed. The turn of events only served to solidify one thought in the community: “You can’t trust the county,” Gomez said.

County planning department spokesman Brian Murphy said Joplin’s maintenance work--including road widening, and slope and sewage-pond repair--is separate from the Rancho Potrero proposal.

He said the wording for the grading plan was a “clerical error” by someone who confused the two projects and put the wrong title on the document. At a recent Board of Supervisors’ meeting, many canyon residents who attended to voice their opinions on another issue chastised the county for getting caught “with its pants down.”

Supervisor Todd Spitzer, whose district includes the Joplin site, has called on Michael Schumacher, the county’s executive officer, to investigate the illegal bulldozing.

“I’m beyond upset by the illegal grading,” Spitzer said. “Schumacher needs to investigate, and he must take appropriate disciplinary steps against any person responsible.”

Andrew Lichtman, an attorney who represents the community, said in an interview that Joplin’s maintenance project coincidentally covers the same drainage area, road and sewage pond that will be used by the county when it builds the academy.

“The county hasn’t taken into account the accumulative environmental impact,” Lichtman said. “They argue that the Joplin area is separate from the Rancho Potrero area. Well, tell that to the gnatcatcher.”

Probation officials say existing facilities such as Joplin and Juvenile Hall in Orange are too crowded and won’t be able to meet the projected need in coming years.

They estimate they will need 726 “secure” beds in a locked, guarded facility such as Juvenile Hall by 2005; it has 538 now. They say they will also need 605 “non-secure” beds, such as those at Joplin, by 2005; they have 314 there now. Rancho Potrero would go far toward easing the crowding, officials said.

Trabuco resident Gloria Sefton, who confronted a truck driver when the grading began last month and was told the work was for the new facility, hopes the county understands how adamant the community is against the academy.

She and other residents will use the aerial photographs of the illegal grading as part of a stepped-up public relations campaign against the county. The pictures may also end up as evidence in the pending lawsuit.

“We discussed chartering an airplane to fly over and take pictures but settled on the model airplane because the other was too expensive,” she said. “I hope we’re making an impression on the county that we are not going away. We are not giving up.”