Mailbag: There is still time to stop Banning Ranch development

Aug. 5, 2016 3:31 PM PT

Bordered by Talbert Regional Park to the north, the Santa Ana River to the west and Coast Highway to the south, Banning Ranch is one of the last remnants of Orange County’s native coastal open space.

Yes, it’s an operating oil field, and yes, parts of it need cleanup, but those represent a small portion of the ranch. The far larger portion is a natural preserve, rich with endangered native plant and animal species.

The prospective developer talks about “restoring” the land and has co-opted the opposition’s decades-old “Save Banning Ranch” and “Save Newport Banning Ranch” slogans to make people think it’s the developer who has best interests of the public and the California coast in mind. They don’t. They only have profits in mind.

They say they’ll make Banning Ranch “natural” when they’re done, but it’s ultimate hubris to believe they can re-create nature.

What they will do is scrape away the native habitat, build hundreds of houses and condos, a resort hotel, roads and infrastructure, then stick native plants in the ground between the buildings and call it nature.

But that isn’t nature. It’s a native plant garden. A one-dimensional, theme-park version of nature, devoid of the habitat and species that make a place truly natural. And once those things are gone, they’re gone forever.

And I haven’t even touched on the massive increases in traffic from the Banning Ranch development, or the additional water that will be used every year, the new oil wells applied for under a separate Coastal Commission permit, or the developer’s cynical attempt to repackage Bluff Road as some kind of life-giving route to the coast for underserved residents of Westside Costa Mesa.

But here’s the good news: All that has to happen to save Banning Ranch from a disastrous development plan is for the Coastal Commission to uphold the Coastal Act it has been empaneled to enforce.

So the clock is ticking on Banning Ranch and the entire coast as we approach the key Coastal Commission hearing in Newport Beach in early September.

That hearing will determine the ranch’s fate, so we need public support to convince the commissioners to simply do their job, represent the people of California and deny the developer’s permit. Not roll over for whoever comes before them with the biggest bankroll.

Bill McCarty
Costa Mesa