Repair of wetlands stressed

Governmental regulators have yet to hear back from a mobile home park owner who reportedly eliminated a protected wetlands while building a parking lot for mobile homes, but regulators added that penalties for failure can be significant. The deadline for a response to the California Coastal Commission is April 14, but that doesn’t mean Cabrillo Mobile Home Park owner Mills Land & Water Co. might not rack up possible fines in the meantime.

“I have not spoken to them but they still have another week or so to get back to me,” said Andrew Willis, district enforcement analyst for the California Coastal Commission.

Efforts to reach Mills Land & Water Co. for comment were unsuccessful.

It wasn’t the first time Mills was warned about destroying wetlands, city code enforcement manager Bill Zylla said. The company acquired the land in 2004 as part of a complex settlement with Huntington Beach after a lawsuit over land rights. Soon after in 2005, the company was warned to stop a similar project to remove the wetlands, Zylla said. That time, the city managed to stop them earlier with a citation, he said.

“My understanding is they were clearing out vegetation there, which they knew they weren’t supposed to do,” he said.

This time, things went further before the authorities found out, Zylla said. It appears workers not only cleared out wetlands plants, but dug a trench to drain water away from an area where they were going to store their construction equipment, he said.

Government regulators said they were tipped off by Jan Vandersloot, co-founder of the Bolsa Chica Land Trust, in late February. Vandersloot had sent extensive photographic evidence, Willis said. Then the government took over.

“I swung by one day to look at it and that was within a few days of getting the report,” he said. “They obliterated it.”

Willis said his agency begins by seeking an agreement with the company in violation to fix the problem—undo the damage to 1.2 acres and restore the wetlands. But such agreements often include penalties.

Fines for violating the Coastal Act range from $500 to $30,000, Willis said. Removing a wetland is considered one of the highest level violations, he added. But the main goal is to get the company to agree to restore the wetlands as soon as possible, he said. Getting prosecutors to impose fines, rather than getting penalties paid voluntarily, would be a last resort, he said.

The Coastal Commission is taking charge of enforcement because the agency’s fines are bigger and its resources to investigate are larger, Zylla said. But the diversion of water and destruction of wetlands without a permit runs afoul of everything from city zoning rules to the regulations of the Army Corps of Engineers — whose penalties include possible jail time — and Regional Water Quality Control Board, he said.

The commission is also looking at fines for knowingly violating the Coastal Act, which range from $1,000 to $15,000 per day, Willis said.

“We look at whether the company has been warned and is aware of the Coastal Act,” he said. In these circumstances, he said, that was “something we are definitely looking into.”