Mitigation Land Purchase Called Boon for Park

Southern California Edison has spent $5.7 million for 88 undeveloped acres along the San Dieguito River Valley in Del Mar to restore as natural wetlands, the utility said Monday.

The purchase, at more than twice the land’s previously appraised value, provides an important link in a planned 55-mile-long regional park and open-space wildlife corridor along the river valley from Del Mar to the foothills near Julian. It also fulfills more than half of the Los Angeles-based utility’s obligation to restore wetlands as a way of making up for damage caused by its nuclear plant at San Onofre.

When the Del Mar project is completed, motorists along Interstate 5 will be able to see the wetlands and accompanying wildlife as it would have appeared several hundred years ago, Edison planners and park enthusiasts said.

“This is an area that historically was wetlands, before man and nature itself changed the area with encroachment, sedimentation and erosion,� said Diane Coombs, executive director of the agency planning the park. “We’re anxious to have the area restored as wetlands.�

Escrow closed last week. The property previously was owned by a partnership headed by Hugh Oberg, which at one time had intended to develop a private, equestrian-theme country club. Oberg could not be reached Monday for comment.

Oberg earlier this year had rejected a $2-million offer from the Coombs’ group, the San Dieguito River Valley joint-powers authority.

The land also was sought by the 22nd District Agricultural Assn. as a site for parking during its summer Del Mar Fair.

Edison officials said they lacked the luxury of time to negotiate a lower price for the so-called Horse World property, just south of the Big Bear shopping center along Via de la Valle and east of I-5. The land had been appraised within the past year at $2.8 million.

“The Coastal Commission had given us nine months to pick a site and develop a preliminary plan for restoration,� said Frank Malone, an environmental engineer assigned by Edison to its San Onofre power plant. “We didn’t have a lot of time to utilize the tactics one might normally utilize to acquire property--to make an offer, and let the seller stew.�

Coombs said she was elated at Edison’s purchase of the land “because we wanted it for the purpose of wetlands restoration, and that’s exactly what will be done with it.�

The San Dieguito River Valley park authority, established two years ago, is struggling to buy land and, so far, its largest purchase is 89 acres along the San Dieguito River, just south of the Del Mar Fairgrounds between I-5 and the ocean.

The Horse World property will serve as a western gateway to the park as it stretches eastward from the freeway, Coombs said. The site is important not just for environmental reasons but because it will serve as a kind of signpost to passing motorists that the park is, slowly but surely, taking form.

Edison studied a half-dozen wetland sites along the coast from Tijuana to Ventura County before selecting the San Dieguito site, Malone said.

The Coastal Commission’s marine review committee in July decided that, because of the intake and discharge of cooling waters at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station and the resulting turbidity of the ocean water, the growth of kelp bed habitats had been stifled and the populations of two species of fish, the white croaker and the queenfish, had been reduced.

Edison was given the choice of either modifying its operations at San Onofre or offsetting the damage it was creating by improving 150 acres of degraded coastal wetlands elsewhere. It chose the latter course.

“San Dieguito was our first choice,� Malone said. “In that area, there are close to 400 acres of wetlands that currently are in private ownership. One of the constraints placed on us by the Coastal Commission is that, once we complete the project, we turn it over to public ownership and guarantee that it will remain in wetlands in perpetuity.

“So this will be our contribution to the overall plan of the San Dieguito River Valley park. It fits in very well with the plans people have for that region. Everything is ‘right’ there, to fulfill the mandate that the Coastal Commission has given us,� Malone said.

Edison will dredge the river bottom as it flows through the property to remove silt so seawater can flow back into it, Malone said. Some of the higher-elevation property will be graded down to the lower level as well, and the remaining high areas will be revegetated with wetlands foliage.

The utility also will dredge the river where it empties into the Pacific to further ensure an exchange of sea water with every tidal cycle, he said.

“In time,� he said, “you’ll see an area restored to the condition it was several hundred years ago.�

Coastal Commission approval is still needed for Edison to pursue the project, but that approval is expected, Malone said, since the Horse World property was one of the candidate sites offered by the commission for the mitigation project. Construction on the site might begin within 18 months, Malone said.

Edison needs to restore an additional 70 acres or more to meet the mitigation requirements ordered by the Coastal Commission.

Nancy Weare, president of the San Dieguito Land Conservancy and co-chairman of Del Mar’s San Dieguito Lagoon Committee, said she welcomes Edison’s plans for the property, especially because it extended eastward beneath I-5 the long-standing goal of restoring the lagoon.

“We’re not vultures down here welcoming any mitigation because you don’t want to invite irresponsible treatment of the environment elsewhere,� she said. “But this property is a particularly good site for mitigation because it has not only the long-term recognition of state agencies and local jurisdictions (as valuable wetlands) but it enjoys strong community support.�

She noted that, during the past 20 years, two-thirds of San Diego County’s riparian wetlands have been lost to development.

Her concern, Weare said, is that Edison’s purchase price of $5.7 million might artificially escalate land values along the river park’s loosely defined boundaries.

Property owners might hold on to their property for top-dollar from developers, utilities and others needing to purchase land for environmental mitigation projects, Weare said. “It can become another form of real estate speculation,� Weare said.