Commentary: Not so fast on Banning Ranch decision

One governmental decision that’s being made too fast: Banning Ranch.

At a now-postponed Coastal Commission hearing that was to be held on May 12, there is great pressure to approve a development on this last piece of wild land, carving-up ecosystems millions of years in the making.

Below are a just a few reasons to step back and think about what is being considered.

• The habitat has not healed from years of hacking. And what the Coastal Commissioners saw in person on a 2014 tour of the 200-acre mesa in the middle of a multi-year drought was a site that had barely started to recover from the intensive abuse.

• High-density development is going up all around the ecosystem-rich mesa. Costa Mesa and Newport must be in some kind of race to see who can approve the most-dense condo development in the West Side industrial district, while locals fight the crowding with ballot initiatives to get controls in place. These changes are happening like an instant day-to-night conversion all along Banning’s east flank.

• Finding money to preserve it, as described in Newport’s general plan, was not, in my opinion, done correctly. In 2008, during a massive financial crisis, Newport officials gave one lone consultant the task of finding millions to save Banning Ranch as open space. What a surprise, he failed.

The local non-profit group fighting the development does not know how to mount the campaign for this, nor should it without help from elected officials. But the money is here. Look around and you’ll see it being spent everywhere on new building.

• A slow-moving actor here is sea-level rise. Driven by climate change through melting ice sheets, and the simple principle that water expands when heated, it is inevitable that the beaches that gave Newport its recreational blessings will shrink. This makes wild areas just inland from those beaches even more important than they are now.

I’ll cover these points in a talk at 6 p.m. May 10 at Seaside Café & Catering, 1559 Placentia Ave., Newport Beach, in the industrial area next door to Banning Ranch, with plenty of habitat photos showing how wonderful it could be as a state nature preserve. Not fragmented by condos, but 100% wild for kids like us to explore.

KEVIN NELSON is the founder of the Nature Commission.