Endangered Habitats League Completes Habitat Conservation Plan For Western Riverside County

Dan you've been working for years on crafting a multiple species habitat conservation plan for Western Riverside County. What was your original ambition and what has been achieved to date by the Endangered Habitats League?

The driving factor for Riverside County and the cities was their perception that there were major infrastructure projects that needed to be put in place over the coming decade. And that if they did not have a comprehensive plan, which addressed species currently listed as well as potential future listed species, those infrastructure projects would encounter significant and unacceptable delays. So in the case of Riverside County, the main impetus for the plan was the construction of more infrastructure. That was what motivated the local governments.

The builders also had a need for certainty. They wanted to be able to meet their anticipated housing production with a system that allowed them not to have to worry about current and future listings. And the conservation community had another need for certainty, which was that there would be an ecosystem left at the end of the day. So, these were the driving forces for each of the parties involved.

And does the recent approval of the plan by locals and federal authorities mean that your original goals and objectives have now been met?

Yes, from everyone's perspective the plan is not perfect, but we believe it meets thresholds for a successful program.

From a conservation perspective, 153,000 acres of new conservation is an ambitious plan. It captures the most important undeveloped lands left in the Western County. And, while we would have preferred to see a plan that was even larger, we believe it's fundamentally a sound conservation plan. And again, from the local government perspective, they might have preferred a plan that was less expensive to put together, that didn't present them with so many land use obligations. But, it looks like implementation is feasible and the finances are doable.

From the building perspective, a $1600-per-unit fee was put in place on new development, which was based on a nexus study. And the interesting thing about the fee is that it's very broad-based. It's shared broadly by new development in the sense that the nexus has to do not only with whatever habitat might be on a particular site, but also the nexus to the infrastructure that the plan makes available. Because the nexus was very broad, the cost per unit is actually very low. So it worked well for the building industry to have this relatively low broad-based fee that will give them the ability to build. There will be public acquisitions as well from state/federal sources, as well as mitigation from the infrastructure projects themselves.

And what was the role of both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and the State Dept. of Fish and Game?

They negotiated the plan with the local government and they are issuing permits for over 100 species. There are also provisions specifying that if future listings occur, the plan will be adaptively managed to provide for those future listings. They were very forthcoming in negotiating a plan that had very broad permitting and in return they got a plan that preserved very large core areas, provided for linkages between them and provided the basis for issuing those broad permits.

Dan, take a step back from your work on this effort and describe for our readers the Endangered Habitats League mission and the role you play in planning process like this effort in Western Riverside.

Our group has tried to follow a collaborative path, thinking that if we could work with the local governments, with business interests, with farmers, we can actually achieve larger conservation results that we would have otherwise achieved. And these large-scale multiple species plans, general plan updates, and transportation plans have allowed us an opportunity to see if that collaborative approach works. We have been fortunate to be invited by the local governments to serve on advisory committees where we've had the opportunity to work with other stakeholders in advancing these programs and developing what often have been innovative solutions.

We are a regional conservation group with members in LA, Riverside, San Bernadino, San Diego and Orange Counties. Our mission is ecosystem protection and sustainable land use. And we've tried to implement large scale, multiple species plans throughout the five county region, sometimes with success and sometimes not, and to link those to more compact patterns of development.

Okay, let's refocus on your work in Western Riverside County. What stresses does rapid population growth place on the land, the infrastructure and on the implementation of this planning compact?

Well, the plan anticipates the future growth. In essence, that is the downside from the conservation side. The plan really does anticipate the future growth that's going to occur and it covers that future growth. We have to accept that if we were going to get the benefits of the plan. On the other hand, new development is paying for a lot of the conservation, so it's a symbiotic relationship.

It should be appreciated that a lot of the conservation is targeted for the outlying, more pristine rural areas. The rapid residential growth is going to occur in areas that are less desirable for conservation and on former agricultural lands. And so, this rapid growth is going to have a smaller impact on wildlife than might otherwise be expected, but generate a lot of units of housing. And the more units built, the more fees that are collected. So, in a funny way, the rapid growth can jumpstart the conservation program financially, allowing the program to accrue the money needed to buy the important pieces of land.

Dan, a plan is merely a plan until there is an ordiance, legislation or a lawsuit that confirms or changes the plan. What is your best guess on how this plan will roll out and what the stumbling blocks and impediments to its implementation will be?

I expect there to be a couple potential stumbling blocks. One potential stumbling block is the need for a significant amount of funding early in the program in order to purchase these big important pieces before they get subdivided. We would hope to see a National Wildlife Refuge established to help bring in federal moneys. Some big pieces have already been purchased, like the Lockheed Martin property out near Beaumont. But, one potential hurdle is the money.

The second potential hurdle is land use. The plan has a very complex system whereby 160 acres of cells are mapped and conservation objections are established in each cell. What happens when people come in wanting to develop within the cells? There is going to have to be a lot of creative land use planning, either to cluster development, to set aside the right areas, and to purchase those areas that need to be purchased. There is thus a land use planning challenge inherent in implementation.

Are there legal challenges pending? Is the legal controversy over the plan's ‘No Surprises' clause, settled or ongoing?

There were a number of lawsuits filed against the plan on CEQA grounds. Those included from the Riverside County Bureau and from some builders. It is my understanding that most, if not all, of those suits have been settled or will be settled shortly. There may be some additional litigation from some conservation groups against the federal and state permits. That may happen. But it looks like they've gotten the No Surprises situation worked out so that if the No Surprises clause comes back, it will be reincorporated back into the plan.

Could you give our readers a synopsis of the lessons learned to date from engaging in this nationally unique, long-range habitat planning effort?

The plan would have never happened without a lot of commitment from the local government. We had real leadership on the board, first from Tom Mullen, then from other members of the board who stepped in after he left. So without the local leadership, something as difficult and complicated as this is unlikely to happen.

The second thing I learned is that a plan like this can never really fix a broken land use system. When you have a land use system that is out of control, that zones vast area for rural residential subdivision, you can never really recover. So for other parts of the state, we really need to focus on sound general plans, on densities that are appropriately low in outlying areas. We need to focus growth in and around existing cities-that's the lesson. A multiple species plan can help salvage important conservation, but it doesn't fix a land use planning system that is severely flawed.

This habitat plan is clearly but one piece of the Riverside County's regional blueprint for setting out the location of future freeways, homes, and industrial development in the portion of the County west of the San Jacinto Mountains. Elaborate on the county's Integrated Project and how you hope the habitat plan contributes.

There were three parts of the County's Integrated Project. The multiple species plan was for habitat. There was a general plan update at the county level for land use planning. And, there was a transportation process that had an acronym CETAP, Community and Environmental Transportation Acceptability Process, whose main purpose was to put in a new north-south corridor and a new east-west corridor. The CETAP process ended up with a new north-south corridor that largely made use of existing freeways. It is still working on the east-west component. And the multiple species plan anticipates that east-west component, although the exact route is still being developed.

The question of how to get from Western Riverside into Orange County is still not determined. There are still unanswered parts of the transportation puzzle, but the multiple species plan anticipates that infrastructure in concept and takes into account its growth-inducing impacts. That's how those things fit together.

The county general plan does make significant progress toward a smarter pattern of growth in that it designates higher density community centers. It also calls for the integration of a transit system, but there was so much inertia in the old general plan and in preexisting large approved specific plans, that the more progressive aspects of the general plan remind me of trying to turn around a very large ocean liner. You do it very slowly. So I think we seeing progress, but the new general plan does not truly reverse sprawl.

A year from now, when we come back to interview you on the success of your collaborative planning efforts, what can we expect you to say?

I'm going to be saying, thank goodness we put it in place when we could because not having it in place would be a complete disaster. And having it in place has allowed us to begin to build the viable core habitat areas and linkages that can keep the ecosystem going.

Let's step back from the particular to the general. You participated in a Smart Growth dialogue in the State capital last month, sponsored by the Surdna Foundation, the California Center for Regional Leadership, and the Smart Growth Funders' Network. What was your take away from that conference?

The conference brought a lot of experience from around the country, but we're seeing, I would say, progress in smart growth that is still of a marginal nature. I'm concerned about the smart growth movement, particularly in California, in that I don't think it will succeed except at the margins unless we can fundamentally reform the planning process. Right now, the State of California says to local governments, you can do anything, anywhere, at anytime. What we need is a framework that injects some discipline with the concept of growth boundaries that are periodically reassessed – the concept that there are cities and there are rural areas, with some certainty over time in that distinction. Until we have a better statewide framework for planning, I don't think we are going to make more than marginal progress even in what is usually described as smart growth – infill, utilizing underutilized land, building around transit, and having more walkable communities.

And the other concern I have is that the development community is cherry-picking the smart growth package. It's saying let's do more infill and let's build more condominiums and housing at higher densities because there is a market for it, but we are not really serious about controlling the dumb growth at the fringe. And smart growth has to be a complete package. You have to do the infill, but you also have to control the rural residential subdivision, which is really the monster that is eating California. Two-acre lots and four acres lots are consuming hundreds of thousands of acres of California's defining landscapes. Until you get a handle on the dumb growth, you don't have a cohesive or successful smart growth package.

Who are today's champions of smart growth? At one time, foundations like the Irvine Foundation underwrote your work and others like you. Are there new patrons willing to take on th challenge of livabiity in California?

We've seen a major reduction of foundation support in California for smart growth. Foundations that were funding the policy work are no longer doing so. However, there is a recently formed organization called the Better California Campaign, which is a coalition of groups that has submitted a smart growth framework to the new administration. It now mainly consists of planning, environmental, social justice, low-income housing, and civil rights groups, and is still missing major business players. The coalition needs to be expanded to include those players if it is ultimately going to be successful. So in California, the Better California Campaign is the leading edge. But it remains to be seen whether the comprehensive package that the Better California Campaign has put forward, which includes, in essence, an urban growth boundary framework, will be advanced and embraced by the Administration.