At Last, a Plan for Wetlands

Children grew up, married and had children during the three decades that Californians argued the fate of the remaining Bolsa Chica mesa and wetlands. But thanks to a dedicated cadre of supporters, the precious resource long sullied by oil drilling and other environmental assaults will be returned to a reasonable facsimile of the lush coastal estuary that existed more than 100 years ago.

The restoration promises an increasingly rare gift in a state that has lost an estimated 95% of its historical coastal wetlands to development. But in keeping with the decades-long court battle over Bolsa Chica’s fate, the environmental remediation won’t be easy.

Eight state and federal agencies are riding herd on the three-year, $100-million project that is the second-most expensive wetlands restoration effort in California history, behind the recovery of salt ponds in the southern end of San Francisco Bay. Traffic on Pacific Coast Highway will be disrupted when crews cut a channel across PCH and five acres of beach that separate Bolsa Chica from the ocean. Nearly 3 million cubic yards of soil will be bulldozed to create the inlet and a tidal basin, with dredged soil used to create levees and nesting islands. But in keeping with the project’s rationale, the heavy lifting will be done in between breeding seasons of the endangered Western snowy plovers and other shorebirds that call Bolsa Chica home.

Once the oil-drilling detritus is removed, visitors walking along pathways radiating from a parking lot off PCH will no longer need to use their imaginations to see what early Orange County residents saw generations ago before hunters walled off Bolsa Chica from the sea, creating ponds to draw more ducks into their gun sights.

Despite those intrusions, Bolsa Chica has managed to retain a natural grace, in large part because of the dramatic vistas provided by so much open space sitting so wonderfully close to the Pacific. And, despite decades of environmental assaults, nature continues to find precarious footholds in the form of nesting California least terns and Savannah sparrows.

Bolsa Chica’s many supporters deserve credit for winning this fight. The League of Women Voters is credited with writing an initial report that sparked the long battle for preservation. County and state officials wisely rejected the original development proposal for a marina, a hotel and as many as 5,700 homes. Neighbors and activists, including Amigos de Bolsa Chica, the Bolsa Chica Land Trust and Bolsa Chica Conservancy, fought hard to keep the land available. And funding will come from a statewide wetlands mitigation program and from remediation funds established by the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

The project undoubtedly will face challenges. A properly humble federal restoration manager acknowledges that “it’s so hard for man to create nature.” The resolution of the Bolsa Chica debate comes with an admittedly steep price tag. But it’s good that after 30 years of rancorous debate, government officials, developers, neighbors and environmental activists managed to come together to save this precious tract.