EDITORIAL:What’s a month when you’ve waited decades?

How long have there been plans to develop that property next to the Bolsa Chica Wetlands? Since the late ‘80s?

We won’t bother to rehash the long, sorry history of all those development plans, which started with thousands of homes only to be reduced to the pending 170-home project that the City Council approved in 2002.

Suffice it to say that the property owners have waited many years for permission to build on that land. So when the California Coastal Commission put off a vote for about another month you’d figure it wouldn’t be such a big deal. After all, if you’ve waited decades for something then what’s another month?

“This [delay] exposes over 7,000 homes and businesses to one more storm season without flood protection,” Shea spokesman Laer Pearce said, referring to the flood-control portions of the development. “If we have another El Niño year or even a routine year, people have a very high risk of being flooded because of what those opponents did.”

And another year of the landowner and developer failing to sell homes, too, but Pearce was wise enough not to point that out.

It’s also worth noting that Shea Properties has been working on this project for 11 years and yet California Coastal Commission staff members are still recommending more changes.

But that wasn’t what prompted the delay. The commission put off a vote after the Bolsa Chica Land Trust, longtime opponents of the development, claimed that Shea Properties illegally filled in wetlands on the property.

This is an allegation serious enough that the commission’s executive director, Peter Douglas, told commissioners, “the evidence relating to the historic illegal fill was substantial. That creates a dilemma for us.”

It sure does. Another month or so of consideration is certainly called for.