Edison Will Share Some of Its Green Stuff With Planned Irvine Park: 50,000 Trees

When planners looked over the barren El Toro Marine base and tried to envision a sprawling park, one thing was clearly missing. Trees.

The center of the closed base is flat, crisscrossed with runways and planted sparsely, a utilitarian piece of land that looks nothing like a park.

Today, Southern California Edison officials will join representatives from Irvine to announce the donation of 50,000 trees to help transform the former base into what park enthusiasts hope will someday be a green oasis.

The gift of 5,000 trees a year for the next 10 years marks one of Edison’s largest single donations from its tree farm in the Sierra Nevada, officials said. The utility giant owns 20,000 acres of woods around Auberry, northeast of Fresno.

The seed-grown trees will be cultivated from a list of desired species developed by Orange County Great Park designer Ken Smith. Most will be pines and oak, with a sprinkling of ornamental varieties such as maple and walnut.

“This is a really neat challenge for us,” said John Mount, Edison’s natural resource manager in Auberry. “Usually we just donate forest trees. This is the first time we’ve been given a list.”

Though he declined to estimate the value of the gift, the retail price for a young tree ranges from $20 to $50, according to local nurseries.

Park officials estimate that from 65,000 to 100,000 trees will be needed for the park, to be built on 1,300 acres. The property for years was slated for a commercial airport until Orange County voters killed that plan in March 2002.

The center of the base will be sculpted into a 2-mile-long canyon with clusters of trees, meadows and sports fields.

The park is part of a 3,700-acre development by national home builder Lennar Corp. that will include 3,400 homes and millions of square feet of commercial buildings.

Lennar bought the base, which closed in 1999, for $649.5 million from the U.S. Navy last summer. It is donating the parkland to Irvine.

Details of Edison’s gift will be unveiled during a ceremony on the old runways. “These trees will be of great benefit for us, our children and our grandchildren,” Mike Chrisman, secretary of the California Resources Agency, said in a statement praising the gift.

Edison has owned its forest acreage since 1919, when the company bought it from Fresno Flume and Lumber Co. for a hydroelectric reservoir around Shaver Lake. In 1979, the company began growing ponderosa and sugar pines to replenish the forest with native species.

Edison now grows about 150,000 trees a year, planting 30,000 pines on the property and selling the rest to cities, counties and the public. The cost of running the farm is covered by timber sales, company officials said.

After wildfires devastated Northern California forests in 1987, Edison donated 150,000 seedlings to the U.S. Forest Service.

The trees heading to Irvine will be grown from seeds for a year, then transferred to nurseries in Orange County that lease land under Edison transmission lines. The trees may grow there for another three or four years before being moved to the park, Mount said.

The gift comes after considerable controversy in Irvine over the sale of electricity and trees for the Great Park.

The City Council scrapped a plan in late 2004 to create its own electric utility company -- which would have competed with Edison -- after spending $400,000 and two years on studies. The idea had been promoted by Councilman Larry Agran, whose chief political backer had lobbied city officials to support it.

Agran is also chairman of the Orange County Great Park board.

Around the same time, an Irvine councilman accused Agran’s political supporters of creating several companies to sell trees and plants to the park for profit.

Then-Councilman Chris Mears branded the activity unethical, though Agran defended the arrangement, saying any company could bid on business at the park.

The Edison trees will make up at least half of what is needed to transform the land into what officials consider a park-worthy landscape. Company officials said they broached the idea with park board officials several months ago.

The company also is exploring building an energy technology center at the park.