IRVINE : Marsh Renovation Plan Under Review

City officials will consider a plan in March aimed at making the San Joaquin Marsh a better home for wildlife.

The Irvine Co. submitted the plan to the Planning Commission on Thursday, but commission members said they need until March 7 to study the matter because of a competing proposal from a water district.

Officials from the Irvine Ranch Water District asked for the delay, arguing that the plan would destroy their own vision of the marsh as a public park.

The Irvine Co. proposes to upgrade 55 acres of the 580-acre marsh by pumping ground water to the surface, creating artificial wetland areas and building a system of dikes and levies to move the water more effectively through Orange County’s largest wetlands. In exchange for creating more wetlands, the company would receive permission to build on wetland areas elsewhere in Irvine under a 1987 agreement with the city and other regulatory agencies.

But Peer A. Swan, president of the water district’s board of directors, said the company’s plan collides with the water district’s proposal to make the San Joaquin Marsh more accessible to the public through trails and wildlife observation areas.

The Irvine Co.’s plan calls for planting more trees, replacing some non-native plants with wetland varieties and adding a well to bring ground water to the surface. The area of the marsh near Michelson Drive is on the highest end of the marsh and often is dry. The well would be supplemented with a series of berms, dikes and other systems to retain water and also move it through the marsh.

Stagnating water in the marsh has created an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes.

The company’s marsh enhancement plan is the first phase of a cooperative effort by several agencies to upgrade the entire marsh, said Steve Haubert, a principal city planner for Irvine.

A committee made up of officials from the city, the Irvine Co., the University of California, state and federal regulatory agencies, as well as environmentalists, is working on a plan to increase the size of the wetland areas of the marsh to improve the wildlife habitat. The marsh, of which 202 acres are managed by the university as a wildlife preserve, is Orange County’s largest wetlands and home to the endangered Belding savannah sparrow, light-footed clapper rail, California least tern and the California brown pelican.

The committee should have its upgrade plan finished in the spring, Haubert said.

If the improvement to the 55 acres succeeds, the Irvine Co. will be allowed under the 1987 agreement to develop an industrial complex near Irvine Center and Lake Forest drives. That plan includes building roads and realigning others, which would destroy wetland areas, Haubert said.

“They cannot destroy that habitat unless they have a functional habitat going elsewhere,” Haubert said.

The Irvine Co. hopes to improve other company-owned land in the marsh to trade it for future rights to develop other properties, company spokesman Michael Stockstill said.

Once the trade-off takes place, the company will deed the improved wetlands to the public as permanent open space.

The Irvine Ranch Water District would like the Irvine Co. to move its proposed improvements north, away from the district’s sewage treatment plant in order to possibly create a marsh more open to the public, Swan said.

The Irvine Co.’s proposal was approved by the marsh steering committee last September even though the committee was aware of the water district’s competing plan, Haubert said.

San Joaquin Marsh The Irvine Co. proposes to enhance a 55-acre section of the wetlands