Project Begins to Restore Bolsa Chica

After a 30-year fight to save the Bolsa Chica wetlands from development, work began Wednesday on a $65-million project to restore the degraded salt marsh where builders once hoped to construct marinas and thousands of homes.

“This marks the end of a lengthy and tedious process, and the beginning of a rebirth,” Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante said at a groundbreaking ceremony at the Huntington Beach wetland.

Attending the event were several hundred local, state and federal officials, and the dogged community activists who led the fight to preserve more than 1,200 acres of the salt marsh.

They included Herb Chatterton, the first president of Amigos de Bolsa Chica; Flossie Horgan, executive director of the Bolsa Chica Land Trust; and Shirley Dettloff, a former Huntington Beach mayor and board member of Amigos de Bolsa Chica.

“This is a marvelous testament to what ordinary citizens can do when they set their minds to a goal,” Horgan said. “Orange County has grown up environmentally. Developers don’t have a free ride anymore.”

In the late 1970s, Signal Landmark had planned to build 5,700 homes, marinas, canals and commercial centers on roughly 1,500 acres of Bolsa Chica, which had been degraded by years of oil operations, urban runoff and encroaching housing developments.

But after three decades of lawsuits, political maneuvering and grass-roots organizing, the only thing that remains of Signal Landmark’s plan is a proposal for 379 homes and a park on 105 acres above the wetlands.

The rest of Bolsa Chica -- about 1,250 acres -- has been set aside as open space and habitat for sea life and migratory and marine birds.

The restoration is the largest project of its type in Southern California, its first phase involving an estimated 584 acres. About 2.7 million cubic yards of sediment will be dredged to create a contoured tidal basin through which ocean water can flow in and out of the wetland.

In conjunction with the basin, an inlet to the sea will be carved under Pacific Coast Highway on the southeast end of Bolsa Chica State Beach. Duck hunters sealed the original inlet in 1899, which disrupted the wetland’s tidal action.

The restoration includes the removal of 64 oil wells and 98,000 feet of oil pipelines. About 20 acres of nesting areas will be created and 19 acres of dunes will be rehabilitated with native plants.

Nearby residential areas will be protected from extreme high tides by a new network of levees, drains and pumps. The project is scheduled to be completed in 2007.

Much of the funds to buy Bolsa Chica and pay for the restoration has come from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. In 1997, the harbors agreed to contribute $90 million as compensation for the loss of wetlands caused by port expansions.