Let’s Not Lose Habitat to Haste

In Santiago Oaks Regional Park recently, the county issued a grading permit for work at a site that was set aside as part of a 37,000-acre natural reserve system. This mistake is a cautionary example of how the permit process can get ahead of the bureaucracy. The problem threatens the credibility of a generally praiseworthy program that was designed to protect habitat while allowing developers and landowners to get on with their business.

Rather than fighting species by species over land use, developers, environmentalists, landowners and the state in 1991 tried to craft a better way. The Natural Communities Conservation Planning program, or NCCP, sought to strike a balance between the need to preserve open space and habitat and the desire to streamline the permit process.

This ambitious departure from the politics of environmental warfare ultimately depended on trust and diligent enforcement. Government oversight agencies like the county had a special charge to make sure that land earmarked for preservation was not bulldozed.

According to the county, the permit covering up to two acres was issued on land once proposed to be part of a land swap with the developer. The permit was issued even though the swap and later land sale never went through. This particular site was supposed to have remained part of the reserve system. Somehow the paperwork didn’t match up by the time the bulldozers started their engines.

It now appears that the county may have violated the NCCP agreement in its haste to facilitate the development. This may have been an unintended error. But land paved over cannot be retrieved. In return for ease through the regulatory process, the county and the public ought to get something back. That something is the assurance that land slated for preservation really does get preserved.

These commitments must be upheld if the system is to work as intended. It may take a while to go through the administrative steps that are part of the NCCP process. The alternative to being patient is for building permits to be frozen entirely, or for a return to business the old way. That would mean more litigation, and wrangling over species at development sites. Compliance is in everybody’s interest if this model is to work.