This year’s newest environmental battle in California is not with developers or even politicians. Neither does it have good guys and bad guys.
The combatants today are the environmental allies of yesterday who no longer agree whether it is possible to work with landowners to achieve our goals. At stake is the heart, the soul, the very idea of what it means to achieve environmental ideal of better places to live, work and play.
The latest conflict was touched off by new hardening of attitude among those who believe environmentalists have cut too many deals at the cost of too much habitat. They are seeking to undo 10 years of practice and precedent of working with landowners and local governments to ensure new roads, houses and schools were created to the highest standards of sustainable development.
Traditionally, these deals require landowners to give up land in exchange for rights to develop other land. Under this system, hundreds of thousands of acres of habitat and wetlands have been set aside throughout California, at no cost to the taxpayers — while a fraction of that amount was used for housing and infrastructure.
But that is changing now. This new attitude of non-cooperation fears development, and is marked by an unwillingness to accept growth or change irrespective of environmental benefits.
And it comes at about the worst possible time: Just when landowners and local governments all over the state were getting used to the idea that ecologically sound practices were also good for business.
Now they are being told that environmental building practices are a contradiction in terms. That no amount of land, however important, however large, can justify the loss of a piece of habitat, however small. And nowhere is this struggle better illustrated than at Bolsa Chica in Orange County.
Five years ago, when the owner of a large swatch of Orange County wetlands received development permits, I was the executive director of a group that fought them to court. And won. Or so we thought.
“We” were the American Oceans Campaign, an environmental group that worked for better beaches and oceans. We knew that healthy wetlands were essential to healthy coastal waters and that coastal wetlands were rapidly disappearing. So, working with the landowner, the California Coastal Commission and the State Lands Commission — led by then Lt. Gov. Gray Davis — we worked out a deal to restore the 800 acres and add them to the existing 300 acres of Bolsa Chica Wetlands.
We did it by convincing state officials that the Bolsa Chica wetlands were worth buying. And by convincing the landowner these lands were worth selling. In the process we agreed to drop our lawsuit and allow the property owners to develop their land above the wetlands.
We did this after learning from state, local and federal officials that this land was not considered environmentally important enough to acquire with public funds. In the end, 90 percent of the land originally planned for marinas and shopping centers at Bolsa Chica was preserved as habitat and wetlands, and 10 percent was set aside for the landowners’ development.
It was a great deal, and received statewide accolades from Gray Davis and national acclaim from the Department of Interior. It was so good that we hoped it would become a model for landowners and environmentalists to work together to create new habitat, preserve wetlands and give property owners incentives to be more environmentally conscious. And it did.
But no sooner was the ink dry on this agreement when another legal challenge emerged to the plans for the remaining 10 percent of the original Bolsa Chica property.
It’s a tragedy because there is simply no longer any environmental reason to oppose the landowners’ plans for this site, and every reason to support, — even applaud them. But this legal challenge stopped plans for a regional park as well as the expansion and restoration of the Bolsa Chica wetlands.
The plans for the remaining 10 percent of the Bolsa Chica property — none of which are wetlands — are some of the most environmentally-friendly plans in California. This much needed urban-in-fill development includes energy conservation measures, non-toxic and recycled materials, and clean water designs to protect the ocean from urban run off. The proposed development is a model for sustainable design.
As environmentalists, we asked the landowner for a lot. And we got it all. But for some, that it is not enough–opposition persists. But today, it is simply not accurate to call this opposition “environmental.” The real arguments being raised at Bolsa Chica are “Not In My Back Yard” and No Growth in the Coastal Zone irrespective. These arguments are being made at the expense of wetlands restoration and a model for much needed sustainable development.
Such arguments are regressive and, more importantly, much too simple to effectively deal with 21st Century environmental problems. California’s population is burgeoning, sprawl leads to more driving, more pollution, more energy consumption. Conventional, as opposed to sustainable building practices, lead to more depletion of precious non-renewable natural resources.
At some point the environmental paradigm has to adopt a holistic perspective or become anti-ecology. And, we cannot improve our environment without the active participation of landowners willing to commit to sustainable practices that also increase and restore degraded habitats like the Bolsa Chica wetlands.
That’s environmentalism for the next century. That’s what we asked for and got four years ago at Bolsa Chica. And that’s what we must deliver today at Bolsa Chica and all over California if we are going to preserve and restore our environment for the next generation.
Robert Sulnick