Governor Asked Not to Pick Wright : Environment: The Sierra Club opposes a new state coastal panel term for the Port Hueneme councilman.

The Sierra Club’s regional chapter is urging Gov. Pete Wilson to reject the reappointment of Port Hueneme City Councilman Dorill B. Wright to the California Coastal Commission, claiming that Wright has failed to protect coastal resources while on the commission.

Wright’s latest two-year term expired in July, but a Wilson spokesman said the governor will need another month to receive and evaluate nominations for the position.

The 70-year-old Wright was initially appointed to the statewide commission by George Deukmejian in 1983, having served on the South Coast Regional Coastal Commission for eight years after its inception in 1973.

Area Sierra Club representatives say that by appointing a more environmentally sensitive commissioner, Wilson would signal a new direction for the Coastal Commission, which lost staff during the eight years of the Deukmejian Administration. Since his election last year, Wilson has restored a portion of the commission’s budget.

In the letter sent to Wilson last week, officials with the 7,000-member Los Padres chapter of the Sierra Club criticized Wright’s record of support for development along the state’s coastal zone. Chapter Chairman Tim Frank also cited Wright’s support for an unsuccessful proposal by Chevron to use tankers to ship oil through the Santa Barbara Channel to Los Angeles.

“Wright chose to sacrifice the channel to favor the oil companies,” Frank said. “He just can’t bring himself to support the environment while looking an industry lobbyist in the eye.”

The Sierra Club also said it opposes Wright because he supports a recreational vehicle park proposed on a 10-acre beach site in Port Hueneme.

“Port Hueneme once had substantial wetlands,” said the Sierra Club’s Al Sanders. “They have all been developed except for one last vestige, and now the city wants to develop that.”

Sanders said the undeveloped coastal area in Port Hueneme is important to efforts to save two species of endangered birds--the least tern, which nests nearby, and the brown pelican.

The two decisions reflect what the Sierra Club claims is Wright’s history of supporting projects in the half-mile-wide coastal zone, which the Coastal Commission was set up to regulate statewide.

“Wright votes in favor of every last development,” said Cynthia Leake, the Los Padres chapter’s conservation chairwoman.

In an interview Monday, Wright rejected the Sierra Club’s criticism, saying that the environmental group has unfairly interpreted several of his votes.

His vote to study shipping oil by tanker, he said, was meant to permit review of the entire issue of oil transportation after the oil company’s effort to build a pipeline had stalled. He still favors shipping oil by pipeline, Wright said.

And he dismissed attacks on the recreational vehicle park in Port Hueneme, saying the site can no longer be considered a wetland.

“Dredged spoils from a drainage channel were piled up there years ago,” he said, adding that the area’s only remaining wetlands exist in Oxnard.

A Port Hueneme councilman since 1970 and the city’s mayor for 17 of those years, Wright defended his role on the Coastal Commission, saying he had missed only 4% of the body’s votes and had voted with the majority 95% of the time.

Environmental critics, he said, have failed to examine the “total picture of development projects and how I conditioned those projects to meet the goals of the Coastal Act while protecting property rights.”

Allowed four appointments to the 12-person commission, Wilson has two other current vacancies to fill besides Wright’s.