Carlsbad Backs Off on Batiquitos Plan : Lagoon: Fear of lawsuit and likelihood of not winning federal permit prompt officials to favor modified dredging.

Carlsbad officials, under attack by environmentalists and doubtful of getting federal approval, announced Friday that they now support a more modest plan to dredge the ecologically threatened Batiquitos Lagoon.

The city had strongly advocated a $30-million state-backed plan to dredge 3 million cubic yards from the lagoon in an effort to restore ocean tidal flushing to the dry, stagnating area.

But the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society filed a lawsuit last month in San Diego Superior Court to block the dredging, claiming that flooding the fragile wetlands with sea water would endanger the shallow nature habitat.

Now, learning that the city-favored plan wouldn’t win a federal permit, Mayor Bud Lewis said Friday that Carlsbad will “abandon” the plan and immediately seek approval of an alternative involving less dredging.

He described the alternative, under which 600,000 fewer yards would be dredged, as “the best and only regulatory permissible enhancement scheme” for the lagoon.

Lewis said it had become clear that there was strong opposition from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries, the California Department of Fish and Game and the State Lands Commission.

As Dwight Worden, a special attorney hired by the city, put it Friday: “The handwriting was on the wall. We’re not going to get approval from the U.S. Army Corps (of Engineers)” to undertake the first dredging plan.

City officials hope their new position will persuade environmentalists to drop their lawsuit.

However, Sierra Club spokeswoman Joan Jackson said Friday that there’s little difference between the initial dredging plan and the newly embraced alternative. “We’ll pursue our lawsuit,” she said.

Jackson said environmentalists agree that something must be done to improve the lagoon, but that existing dredging alternatives should be junked and new studies undertaken on how to save the delicate coastal resource.

“There’s no quick fix, that’s what this (dredging) is designed to be, throw money at it and walk away,” Jackson said.

Agencies fearing the lagoon’s wetlands will nearly vanish over the next 50 years have labored since 1985 to find a solution. “We are told by the experts that Batiquitos Lagoon is slowly dying,” Lewis said.

Supporters of dredging believe that removing material and allowing sea water in will flush out the lagoon, stop chronic odor problems and improve the view by keeping water in the lagoon.

Hillman Properties, the builder of a large upscale residential development perched above the lagoon, has lobbied for the lagoon to contain more water.

The California Coastal Commission agreed that some habitat would be lost if dredging were allowed to let ocean water into the lagoon, but felt enough habitat would remain for birds and waterfowl that use the wetlands.

Last March, the commission voted, 6 to 5, to approve the dredging plan that Carlsbad has now decided to drop. The city will seek an amendment to the commission’s action to allow the alternative dredging plan.

The Batiquitos Lagoon project will be paid for by the Port of Los Angeles in exchange for the port being permitted to dredge 11.28-million cubic yards of material in San Pedro Bay.

State law requires that environmental damage must be mitigated, so the port wants to offset its activities at San Pedro Bay by paying for the improvement project at Batiquitos Lagoon.

The port’s role in the lagoon’s future has angered environmentalists, who claim political influence from Los Angeles is pushing the controversial dredging plan.

“The best plan,” said Jackson, “is to throw everything out and start from the beginning and design a project aimed at fulfilling the needs of the lagoon and not the L.A. port.”

Rather than massive dredging, she said the lagoon should be treated in “a slow, sensitive manner, not this brutal assault.”

However, Carlsbad officials remain convinced that there was nothing wrong with the initial dredging plan, except that key federal agencies won’t support it.

According to Lewis, the plan calling for greater dredging “appeared to yield the most benefits to the wildlife and the community. Now our partners in this effort have determined (the plan) is not permissible from a regulatory standpoint.”

The government agencies felt the dredging plan and resulting loss of habitat wouldn’t meet requirements of the federal Clean Water Act. City officials said they were prepared to drop their support for the first dredging plan if the Coastal Commission or the Army Corps of Engineers objected to it.

Lewis said the Port of Los Angeles agrees with the decision to proceed with the alternative dredging program.

The city’s special attorney, Worden, said, “We’d be walking on a pretty thin limb to ignore all the federal agencies.”