Newport activists show support for bond measure

Paul Clinton

A handful of Newport Beach environmentalists joined their Surf

City compatriots Thursday evening at a fund-raiser for a statewide

bond measure expected to provide funding for coastal projects.

Former councilwoman Jean Watt, Crystal Cove activist Laura Davick

and ocean and ficus tree activist Jan Vandersloot attended the event

at the Waterfront Hilton Beach Resort in Huntington Beach.

Other attendees included Joan Irvine Smith, the heiress turned

environmentalist, and members of the Bolsa Chica Land Trust, a

Huntington Beach group fighting a housing development on wetlands and

a mesa on the northwestern border of that city.

Event organizers from the trust raised about $80,000 to promote

the Clean Water and Coastal Protection Bond of 2002, otherwise known

as Proposition 50. The initiative, which will appear on the Nov. 5

ballot, would raise $3.44 billion.

Bond funding would be made available for projects that reduce

water pollution, cleanup beaches, decrease urban runoff or help

ensure a safe water supply across the state.

“You’ve got to support it,” Smith said Friday about the

initiative. “It addresses water in a lot of different ways.”

The bill also includes a provision that would allow some portion

of the $950,000 set aside for wetlands and watershed protection to be

used to purchase the Bolsa Chica Mesa in Huntington Beach.

Developer Hearthside Homes and property owner Signal Landmark have

proposed to build 387 homes on the upper mesa. Bond money could be

used to purchase the mesa and set it aside as protected land, Smith

said.