Local environmentalists gearing up for fight

Jasmine Lee

More than 35 Newport Beach residents are expected show up at a

California Coastal Commission meeting in Santa Monica on Wednesday to

urge state officials to block an Irvine Co. project to build 635 homes

above Crystal Cove State Park.

Members of the Alliance to Rescue Crystal Cove, a group fighting to

preserve the beach, said they are hopeful the commission will deny a

development permit to the Irvine Co.

“I think it is just going to set a precedent for the future,” said Mary

Blake, the founder of the alliance. “We need to look at the cumulative

effects of development.”

The group has been primarily concerned over runoff from the proposed

development contaminating the beach.

Environmentalists, who for years have been fighting development along the

coast, are heartened that the state agency is concerned about a proposed

detention basin in Muddy Canyon Creek. The basin would go against the

state agency’s guidelines for building in sensitive habitat areas,

according to a Coastal Commission staff report.

Laura Davick, president of the alliance, said the group -- along with

their environmental experts -- hopes to convince the commission the beach

is indeed threatened by the residential development, which has been in

the works for more than 30 years.

County officials in 1998 granted the development permit to the Irvine

Co., but the Coastal Commission can overturn the decision.

The commission in October voted to begin the appeal process to deny the

permit.

Paul Kranhold, a spokesman for the Irvine Co., said the 980-acre project

has been redesigned during the past six months in an effort to address

many environmental concerns, such as water quality and erosion.

In addition to the homes, the plans include recreational facilities and

open space.

Construction on a related, but separate, project to build 200 houses and

a retail center in the area has begun and could be complete by summer.

The proposed project to build 635 homes, if approved, would probably not

break ground immediately, Kranhold said. The development would be the

final phase of the Irvine Co.’s Newport Coast community -- 10,000 acres

between Laguna Beach and Corona del Mar.

More than 70% of the land will be preserved as wildlands as a result of a

court settlement between the Irvine Co. and another environmental group,

Friends of the Irvine Coast. As a part of the settlement, the grass-roots

group was barred from filing any further legal action against the

company’s developments.

But there is nothing holding other beach lovers from continuing the fight

-- not even distance.

Sue Ficker, a longtime Crystal Cove advocate, traveled from her home near

Big Sur to defend her former stomping grounds. Ficker and Blake have been

enjoying the beach since childhood.

“I’m here to substantiate the fact that things have not improved since I

left,” said Ficker, who moved out of Newport Beach in 1992.