Creek Project Raises Environmentalists’ Ire

The dirt trucks have rumbled along Campus Drive near UC Irvine for more than a month, hauling away enough creek bottom to build a small mountain.

To Orange County public works officials, the decision to clear San Diego Creek of years of overgrown vegetation and river sediment represents good flood control management.

The riverbed, they reasoned, had become so congested with brush that there was a serious potential for flooding, which could inundate a nearby sewage treatment plant and cause raw sewage to flow into the creek and, eventually, into Upper Newport Bay.

But environmentalists say that when county workers ripped out native vegetation, including dozens of willows, they destroyed critical habitat for two endangered songbirds -- the California gnatcatcher and least Bell’s vireo. Jan Vandersloot, a Newport Beach environmentalist who said he was outraged when the trees and riparian habitat were “mowed down,” wants the county to halt and restore the vegetation.

But to date, Vandersloot and the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity have been unsuccessful in persuading county supervisors to rescind the project’s approval, which was granted on an emergency basis. Now he and the wildlife organization intend to sue the county for violating the Endangered Species and Clean Water acts.

Vandersloot is further angered because the state Coastal Commission initially had ordered a halt to the clearing, then reversed itself after it became clear that so much brush had been ripped out that huge expanses of sediment were exposed -- soil that could be swept into Upper Newport Bay.

The county’s permit for clearing San Diego Creek runs through April 15, said Herb Nakasone, the county public works director.

The project takes in a 2 1/2-mile section of the creek, a major urban channel that drains 112 square miles in central Orange County. The creek snakes through Tustin, Lake Forest and Irvine before it empties into Upper Newport Bay, one of the few remaining estuaries in Southern California.

The project is being closely watched by wildlife agencies and environmental groups, including the Coastal Commission, which has jurisdiction over the southernmost leg of the creek.

Clearing began on Jan. 6 but was suspended on Jan. 30 when the county was notified that it had failed to get permits from the commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The county’s “wholesale” removal of creek vegetation caused concern at the Coastal Commission, which was told the work would entail “selective clearance” of vegetation, which meant removing only troublesome nonnative plants, a commission spokeswoman said.

“That meant in our minds thinning and pruning. But what happened was much more wholesale removal of both native and nonnative plants,” said spokeswoman Deborah Lee.

Vandersloot and the Center for Biological Diversity said the county’s “so-called emergency” was not justified and “just bad government.”

Vandersloot said he believes the county failed to maintain the creek and then sought emergency status as a way to fast-track the permit and bypass the public input of a lengthy public hearing.

Nakasone denied the allegation. He said the county did routine creek maintenance as permitted by the Corps of Engineers until 2000. But after that year, the county discovered that a portion of its permit that allowed them to cut brush and trees with trunks more than 3 inches in diameter had been deleted.

“We have been trying since then to get permission to continue the maintenance like we had before,” Nakasone said.

Meanwhile, the vegetation “really started to grow,” Nakasone said, prompting an analysis of the creek last summer to determine its capacity before the winter storms.

What the study found was alarming. Heavy vegetation and sediment buildup had so reduced the creek’s capacity that it could no longer handle a major winter storm, Nakasone said. The creek is supposed to be able to handle a so-called 100-year storm.

But that argument didn’t persuade the Coastal Commission, which rejected the county’s request for an emergency application on Jan. 7 to clear a stretch south of Campus Drive. Peter Douglas, the commission’s executive director, blamed the county for failing to maintain the creek.

But with creek vegetation cleared, tons of creek bottom were exposed that could be washed away by a heavy rainstorm. This new assessment was included in the county’s permit applications to both the Coastal Commission and Corps of Engineers.

The county was granted its permit on Feb. 24. The decision made activists like Vandersloot see red.

“The county said, ‘Let’s declare an emergency and worry about getting permits later,’ ” Vandersloot said. “Then when they did remove the vegetation, they did it wrong, causing an emergency because they exposed sediment and there was concern about it going downstream.”

Other activists were equally alarmed. They contend the county took advantage of its emergency declaration and also cut into the creek’s west bank, substantially widening it -- a move Nakasone said was necessary to restore the creek to its originally designed capacity.

Environmentalists would like to see more of a balance in the county’s flood control network that allows for flood control and riparian habitat to flourish.

“It seems we put everything in concrete then try to go back and fix it,” said Jean Watt, a former Newport Beach mayor and member of Friends of Harbors, Beaches and Parks. “We want a better philosophy, something that strikes a balance. But changing the course of the public works department is difficult. It’s like changing the course of a big ocean liner.”