A successful return to nature

Danette Goulet

Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series on the

restoration plans for the Bolsa Chica.

The California coast was once a seemingly endless string of wetlands

that greeted the Pacific Ocean with each new tide. Over the years the

land has been altered by development and nature, to the point where

wetlands are a rarity rather than a rule.

On the Bolsa Chica in Huntington Beach, it is seen as a fight between

urban sprawl and that natural order. And while the predominant enemy of

salt marshes, mud flats and tidal pools, is man-made, Mother Nature has

gotten in a few licks of her own.

Now environmentalists are taking up where Mother Nature left off.

State agencies and environmental groups, even some of the same

engineers who are seeking to restore the 1,200-acre coastal wetlands of

Bolsa Chica, have saved other wetlands and in the process learned what it

takes to do the job properly.

One such project is the Batiquitos Lagoon in the city of Carlsbad in

northern San Diego County.

Batiquitos was the third in a series of large wetland restoration

projects funded by the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in exchange

for projects of their own that would destroy natural habitat. Bolsa Chica

will be the fourth.

The first was a small, 25-acre project in the Upper Newport Bay, said

Jack Fancher, a coastal program coordinator for the U.S. Fish and

Wildlife Service who worked on all these projects and is now set to help

restore Bolsa Chica.

The second was Anaheim Bay, a 110-acre area in Seal Beach just west of

Huntington Harbour and the third was Batiquitos. It took seven years of

planning and nearly three years of construction, but Batiquitos has been

restored and its inlet reopened to let the rejuvenating tides sweep in

and out.

That project, which is roughly half the size of Bolsa Chica,

ultimately cost $55 million. There was not the added expense of

purchasing the lands as with Bolsa Chica, since the property was donated

by the Hunt brothers in return for developing rights.

That $55 million was paid out by the port of Los Angeles as the

project progressed, Fancher said, unlike at Bolsa Chica, where the funds

were handed over upfront and a large chunk spent to purchase the land.

Like Bolsa Chica, Batiquitos was a fully tidal wetland less than 150

years ago. But when settlers came they built roads and railroads across

the lagoon, restricting the flow of water. Sediment washed down from

fields and farmland above and filled in portions of the lagoon.

Other sections of it were filled in for development, as Huntington

Harbour and so many other areas along the coast of California were. And

water that once flowed from the watershed above was dammed off and

diverted.

Severe winter storms in the 1980s robbed the local beaches of sand and

left cobblestone beaches in their wake.

This once fully tidal lagoon became intermittently tidal, and then, in

more recent years, ceased being tidal even intermittently.

“In San Diego county they had something really bad to deal with -- the

county railroad,” Fancher said of the tracks that run right along the

shore and over the lagoon. “That cut down the tidal prism, especially the

salt marsh in the central tidal wetlands. It altered the way tide flowed,

reducing efficiency of flushing and increasing the trapping of sediment.

It started to fill in.”

Unlike Bolsa Chica, it was not the deliberate actions of duck hunters

that shut this area off, but a combination of forces.

It became a seasonal pond that filled with water in the winter and was

drained to allow a nesting spot for the endangered birds in the spring.

Subsequently it became a dried wasteland in the summer and fall.

“Before the project [Batiquitos] would go through these annual cycles,

where it would fill up as a fresh water lake in the winter and dry up by

summer,” Fancher said. “Very few organisms could tolerate it. Its

biological community was simple, only a handful of species sometimes.”

And so they reopened the inlet, allowing tides to flush out the

lagoons.

Batiquitos was designed as half intertidal, where tides come in and

out, and half sub-tidal, which is when an area is always underwater.

There are three sections to the lagoon -- the west, central and east

basins. Like Bolsa Chica the east end of the lagoon is squeezed by

development.

A rock inlet and jetties were created in the state beach to allow

uninterrupted tidal flow, and dredging was required to create sub-tidal

and intertidal habitats. Sandy nesting areas were constructed like those

planned for the endangered birds of Bolsa Chica. Material that was

dredged was disposed of in a pit dredged in the central basin and covered

with sandy material.

“One big difference is that Batiquitos never had oil fields -- it had

sewage ponds, that are gone, but they weren’t contaminated with the same

kinds of things,” Fancher noted. “There was no urban runoff, no chemicals

or industrial discharges -- it’s clean.”

The contamination of Bolsa Chica is one of the main concerns with the

Bolsa Chica project for the local chapter of the Surfrider Foundation.

Members of the Huntington Beach chapter of Surfrider are concerned

that cutting an inlet in the state beach will wash 100 years of

pollutants into Surf City’s cleanest waves and allow runoff a more direct

path to those waves.

“We have some scientists saying there may be some heavy metals from

the oil that needs to be addressed and safeguarded against -- and

biological runoff from birds and all that,”

Fancher was unconcerned and assures anyone who asks that, as has been

done at Batiquitos, the environment would be closely monitored

“At Bolsa if we have contaminated stuff we have to negotiate with the

oil company to remove it, but what we have buried monitoring has shown

that Batiquitos recovered really well,” Fancher said.

As required by state law they have also monitored surf zones for

bacteria levels, Fancher said.

Of the many surf zones tested only one came up with unlawful levels of

bacteria and that was at the Santa Ana River mouth, Fancher said. But

they didn’t stop there. They also tested the wetlands.

“We wanted to try to determine if high numbers of birds using Bolsa

Chica caused these high bacteria levels, and couldn’t even come close to

[levels discussed in the law],” he said.Surfrider also is worried that

the inlet will interrupt the quality waves enjoyed now.

At Batiquitos the inlet has been an asset to waves. On any given day,

swarms of surfers can be found riding waves next to the jetties in

Carlsbad.

But the Batiquitos project was not without opposition.

“When we started building a small component decided to oppose

restoration,” Fancher said.

The group was worried about dredging that would be done and the affect

on the beaches. But opposition soon died down as the restoration promised

beaches a huge infusion of clean sand that was to be taken from the

lagoon.

“Also a group thought we were going to do great harm to the snowy

plover, a small shore bird, which was using [the area] not very

successfully,” he said. “They said it would be bad for the plovers and

sued.”

Fancher noted that the snowy plover continues to thrive and that they

have seen a return of many other endangered species.

“We beat them on everything and then we set about building it,” he

said.

* DANETTE GOULET is the assistant city editor. She can be reached at

(714) 965-7170 or by e-mail at o7 danette.goulet@latimes.comf7 .