Board Could Vote Today on Wetlands Development Plan : Bolsa Chica: Proposal for as many as 3,300 homes in sensitive area is part of restoration compromise. Latest version of project has divided environmentalists.

HUNTINGTON BEACH —  The fate of the largest unprotected stretch of coastal marshland south of San Francisco may be decided today by the Board of Supervisors.

Meeting during a special session scheduled for the purpose, the board is expected to take a brief respite from the financial crisis to consider, and possibly vote on, a long fought-over plan for the development of the Bolsa Chica wetlands.

“We feel confident that we’re ready,” said Tom Mathews, the county’s planning director. “We appreciate the concerns that have been voiced and we are ready to make our recommendations.”

Those recommendations include the construction of as many as 3,300 homes on 1,600 acres of land in and around the ecologically sensitive area, which forms a natural habitat for dozens of species of fish, mammals and birds including some considered endangered. In exchange for permission to build the houses, the landowner--Koll Real Estate Group--has agreed to spend about $48 million to restore 950 acres of degraded wetlands, much of it now used for oil production, by, among other things, constructing a functioning tidal inlet connecting the marsh to the ocean.

“This is a milestone in a 24-year public planning process,” Lucy Dunn, Koll senior vice president, said of today’s meeting. “The process works in that development has been minimized and the environmental gains maximized.”

That view doesn’t sit well with some.

Among them is Connie Boardman, president of the Bolsa Chica Land Trust, an environmental group that has led opposition to the development.

“The land trust doesn’t believe that Bolsa Chica is the appropriate site for 3,300 homes,” she said. “This is not the appropriate place for a small city; it’s the last remnant of the way the coast of Southern California used to be and we would like to see it remain that way.”

Today’s discussion and possible vote by the supervisors has been a long time coming.

Since 1970, when Signal Landmark, now a subsidiary of the Koll company, acquired the property, no fewer than 100 development plans for the 1,600-acre Bolsa Chica site have been prepared and discussed, according to Dunn. Only one of them, however, has previously made it as far as the supervisors’ boardroom: an ambitious plan, first proposed in 1972, that included 5,700 homes, a 1,300-slip marina, two 2,000-foot jetties and an array of oceanfront hotels, shops and restaurants.

Then, as now, the development was strongly opposed by many environmentalists. So, after winning approval from the supervisors in 1985, the project got bogged down in legal and political challenges, most notably from a group called Amigos de Bolsa Chica, which at the time was the voice of the environmental community.

Finally, in an attempt to break the logjam, Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder and then-Huntington Beach Mayor John Erskine formed a coalition that included representatives from the developer, state, city, county and Amigos de Bolsa Chica. Meeting regularly for six months--from November, 1988, until May, 1989--the group developed an agreement that eliminated the proposed marina, hotels and restaurants, significantly reduced the number of planned houses and sharply increased the number of wetland acres the developer would restore.

It was from that 1989 agreement, called the Bolsa Chica Planning Coalition Concept Plan, that the current proposal evolved.

“The balance has tipped to where the environment is the key part and the housing is only a small element,” said Adrianne Morrison, executive director of Amigos de Bolsa Chica, which now supports the development plan. “The whole scale has shifted; there have been adequate public hearings and adequate testimony, and the board now needs to make a decision to move forward.”

Not all environmentalists agree, however.

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In 1992, opposed to what they saw as the Amigos’ capitulation to developers’ interests, other environmentalists formed a new organization called the Bolsa Chica Land Trust with the goal of eventually raising enough money to purchase the wetlands and preserve it as open space.

Since then, supported by many environmentalist groups, the trust has held discussions with the Department of the Interior regarding the possible federal purchase of the area or a land swap to save it from development. The trust wants to preserve the marsh and surrounding upland in part because it is habitat for five endangered bird species: the light-footed clapper rail, Belding’s savanna sparrow, California least tern, peregrine falcon and brown pelican.

Environmental reasons are not the only ones cited by critics of the plan. Opponents have raised a host of other objections ranging from the destruction of ancient Native American burial grounds to the existence on the site of historic World War II military bunkers.

And the Koll company itself may have contributed to a long delay in the planning process by switching its development application two years ago from the city of Huntington Beach to Orange County.

According to Dunn, the change was made to utilize the county’s greater expertise in wetlands restoration, but critics charge the company with jilting Huntington Beach in the hopes of getting a better deal from the more developmentally minded supervisors. The switch was possible because Bolsa Chica, though close to the city, is in unincorporated county territory.

Whatever the reasons for the change, the plan has generated at least eight public hearings--some of them highly emotional--in the last two years, as well as two environmental impact reports prepared by the county.

If the Board of Supervisors approves the development today, Mathews said, it will still need the approval of the California Coastal Commission and the Army Corps of Engineers before bulldozers could begin digging, perhaps as early as 1996.

But today’s consideration by the supervisors, both sides agree, is a major step.

“It will kill the wetlands,” Bruce Monroe, a spokesman for the Sierra Club’s Save Bolsa Chica Task Force, said of the board’s possible approval of the massive project.

Countered the Koll company’s Dunn: “We’re ready and the project is ready. It’s time to stop planning and start restoring.”