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Wetlands Give UC Merced Growing Pains

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Times Staff Writer

With its first year tucked under its belt, the University of California Merced -- which cost more than $500 million and took nearly 20 years to plan -- still lacks federal permission to build on wetlands near the fledgling campus.

UC Merced is developing 105 acres as part of Phase I of the campus and plans to build Phase II on 805 adjoining acres it purchased near Lake Yosemite. But that second parcel includes 86 acres of federally protected wetlands.

Now, university officials are hoping for an environmental permit to destroy the vernal pools on those wetlands and build, among other things, institutes to study the environment and energy. The officials have preserved land elsewhere in Merced County -- 25,000 acres sprinkled with vernal pools -- in hopes of offering it in exchange.

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UC Merced opened last September as the first new UC campus in 40 years. The school is near Merced, a town about 120 miles east of San Jose.

So far, the San Joaquin Valley campus has built a library, two classroom buildings and housing for 600 students. University officials hope to build more classroom complexes in the first and second phases. They anticipate that Phase II construction could begin in 2009.

There are four potential sites for Phase II under consideration. Two are in Merced, a couple of miles south of the campus along Lake Road, which leads to the school’s first phase. City and county officials have already invested millions to build a “University Community” of Starbucks, bookstores and shops in that area south of the campus.

If either of those options is selected, the University Community’s apartments and commercial buildings would link the Phase I and Phase II areas and form a contiguous community, university spokeswoman Patti Istas said.

A third alternative, mentioned in an early analysis, even suggested moving the school to Livingston. University planners called that scenario ludicrous. Not only is Livingston 20 miles away, but farmers probably would protest because the campus would pave over prime agricultural land.

Either way, Istas said, the university faces an environmental dilemma.

“You’re either going to have problems on the wetlands,” she said, “or you’re going to have problems with the agricultural land.”

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The fourth possibility -- building on the wetlands -- is the university’s preferred option, though Istas acknowledged that “we’re going to have some impact on the environment.”

It could take several months before the Army Corps of Engineers decides whether it will issue a permit. It must first release an environmental impact report, then allow 60 days for public comment before it can hold a public hearing on the matter.

So why didn’t the university secure permission to build the entire campus before beginning work?

“It’s easy to criticize after the fact,” said Bob Carpenter, a Merced resident who has helped with university planning for 18 years. “But you could argue that if you wait until all the I’s are dotted and all the Ts are crossed, probably no projects would ever get done.”

That’s true especially in the era of the federal Clean Water Act, which demands permits before wetlands can be destroyed, said UC Merced Chancellor Carol Tomlinson-Keasey.

“I think we’ve shown that this is a very reasonable site,” Tomlinson-Keasey said.

The vernal pools at the university’s preferred site are seasonal wetlands that, when filled with water, often contain endangered species and other plants and animals. The pools usually dry up in summer. More than 90% of California’s vernal pools are already gone, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

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There would still be vernal pools elsewhere in the county if the university were granted permission to build, Istas said.

The Corps released -- and then swiftly rescinded -- a draft environmental impact statement detailing concerns about losing the vernal pools. Corps officials said the draft was incomplete and had been released prematurely. They expect to issue an official draft in a few months.

But the draft has already created a buzz in Merced, where the Merced Sun-Star and Fresno Bee ran stories July 29 in which a Corps official said a permit for the university’s preferred expansion plan “will not likely be granted.”

Kevin Roukey, the Corps’ senior project manager, was quoted in the Sun-Star as saying the site’s vernal pools have “basically been determined to be the best in the state, and maybe even the country.”

Some local environmentalists, such as Carol Witham, have threatened to sue if the Corps grants the permit despite what she calls the university’s “flagrant disregard for federally protected land.”

“They assumed that by having the campus there, that they can force their way into building the rest of the site,” Witham, founder of the website vernalpools.org, said of university officials. “We advised them early on that they should’ve done all of their permits ahead of time. They’re essentially gambling with the taxpayers’ money.”

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On the day the stories about the permit appeared -- a Saturday -- the chancellor released a statement saying that Roukey’s evaluations “represent the personal opinions of a single individual” and don’t foretell the Corps’ final decision.

Corps officials later agreed and said it was too early to predict what would happen at UC Merced. They added that concerns found in the report wouldn’t necessarily be a deal-breaker for the university’s proposals.

Carpenter, who has helped in university planning, isn’t worried.

“After working on this thing since 1988 ... this is just one more thing to deal with,” he said. “No one said that building something great would be easy.”

Indeed, the university expects only about 650 freshmen this fall, a number that falls below the 800 anticipated. The newcomers will bring total enrollment up to 1,450, just 450 more than university officials had hoped for in its first year alone. They still hope to reach 25,000 in the next 30 years.

Still, university officials said the school was growing and in July noted that it had hired 23 additional faculty members.

For years, the chancellor said, the Central Valley has been “underserved.” She expects the Merced campus to infuse the area with a smart-growth population and jobs.

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“We’re contributing enormously to the community,” Tomlinson-Keasey said. “We believe we deserve an Olympic gold medal, and not have every bump being foreseen as some Mt. Everest to climb.”

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