Supervisor: Discuss environment openly

Ocean conference speech stresses that outdoor resources stakeholders must debate in accord. Environmentalists need to move away from traditional activist functions and more openly engage traditional adversaries like big business and private industry, Orange County Supervisor Tom Wilson said this week in an address at the Headwaters to Ocean Conference in Huntington Beach.

Community leaders should facilitate the process, he said, encouraging all stakeholders to sit at the table and reach a compromise before environmental debates degrade into mudslinging battles.

“There must be a fundamental change in perspective for all stakeholders,” he said Thursday. “Representatives from all groups should realize that they share the same goals. We can no longer advocate blindly -- that just hurts the process.”

Recent efforts to restore a major portion of the Bolsa Chica wetlands, along with attempts to improve water quality in coastal Newport Beach and Huntington Beach, were the results of environmental collaboration between multiple government agencies, environmental nonprofits and private industry, he said.

This change in paradigms means a shift in organizational methods and ultimately a shift in how leadership is defined; success should be a product of effective collaboration, he said, not just an end in itself.

Wilson pointed to a recent decision by the Orange County Sanitation District to begin secondary treatment of sewage released from its ocean outfall line.

“It took them stepping up to the plate at a great cost to themselves to do something about the beach closures we were experiencing in 1999,” he said.

It also took a lot of lawyers threatening to sue the sanitation district to bring in change, environmental activist Bob Costin said.

“There’s nothing that comes out of sitting at the table,” he said. “Unless you have a number of big attorneys behind you and the funds to force them to do it, you’re not going to get any results.”

Wilson said litigation threats often bring unnecessary costs to government projects. Instead, he called for better interregional planning to set long-term goals for environmental management. Dozens of agencies have jurisdictions reaching the Newport Bay -- an opportunity, Wilson said, for all agencies to bring their needs to the table for collaboration.

“And this can all be done without creating new levels of government,” he said.

The idea sounds good, several environmentalists said, but a change would require a shift in some basic assumptions by private industry. Stephanie Barger of the Costa Mesa-based Earth Resource Foundation, said many businesses need to change the way they think about profits.

“When you talk about community goals, businesses and government agencies need to understand what true sustainability is,” Barger said, outlining what she describes as the triple bottom-line model -- a focus on people, the planet and profit.

Barger said that sustainable environmental practices often net a more sustainable profit margin. Environmentalists are getting better at arguments to advocate for more effective change in private industry, she said.

“We don’t need to chain ourselves to bulldozers anymore, because we can talk the economic talk,” she said.