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Planners Suggest Preservation Study, Not Law

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Times Staff Writer

San Diego planning commissioners, in a 4-1 vote, refused to adopt a hastily compiled interim ordinance designed to protect the city’s sensitive natural resources.

Instead, the commission on Thursday recommended that a task force be formed to work out a well-reasoned permanent plan to protect wetlands, steep slopes, vernal pools and natural vegetation throughout the city.

Only newly appointed commissioner Lynn Benn urged adoption of the resource protection ordinance that the City Council had instructed city planners to prepare as a companion measure for the controversial Interim Development Ordinance to slow the rate of development and growth.

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Benn’s motion for approval of the sensitive-resource regulations did not receive a second from fellow commissioners, and Chairwoman Paula Oquita said she was “not sure we are going to be inundated with destruction” if the interim controls are not put in place.

The City Council will consider the ordinance and other development control measures Tuesday when it holds hearings on a proposal to impose development fees for the first time in urban areas of the city.

Representatives of development interests Thursday echoed Oquita’s criticism of the sensitive-resource ordinance, protesting that it had been assembled too quickly and without thought about its impact.

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Bob Small, a land-use consultant, said the strict regulations copied from coastal zone requirements and applied to the entire city would cause “confusion, delay and uncertainty,” not protection from development for the city’s dwindling natural vegetation, wildlife habitat and river valleys.

Benn argued that current legislation cannot keep developers from leveling hillsides for building sites and removing native plants from valleys. About 100,000 acres of undeveloped land remains in the city, she said, which means that developers have plenty of room to build without attacking the 28,000 acres of sensitive hillsides and natural valleys that remain.

Architect Jim Kelly-Markham spoke in favor of the regulations but pointed out that they contain “a loophole big enough to drive a . . . tractor through.” Although removal of native plants from hillsides is prohibited in the proposed ordinance, an exception is made for clearing firebreaks, he noted. All developers would have to do is bulldoze off all natural vegetation from their properties, in the interest of creating firebreaks, and the land, without native plants, would no longer be subject to the proposed regulations.

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Mission Valley and Uptown community plan areas were recommended for exclusion from the proposed regulations by the planning staff, and developers on Thursday asked that other newly approved community planning areas also be exempted.

In a related action, Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer, supported by a Sierra Club spokeswoman and Del Mar Councilman John Gillies, said at a news conference earlier Thursday that she would fight to restore a $4.6-million Wetlands Acquisition Fund to the proposed 1987-88 city budget when it comes up for adoption Monday.

The fund was deleted in a budget conference while Wolfsheimer and another backer, Councilman Bill Cleator, were absent. It is designated for use in purchasing coastal wetlands, such as Famosa Slough, and the San Dieguito River Valley for preservation as natural open space.

Barbara Bamberger, speaking for the 11,000 local Sierra Club members, said the council’s action allocating the wetlands fund for other purposes was “a direct message to the people that ‘preservation’ is only a catchword.” She urged that the fund be reinstated.

Wolfsheimer said the City Council had diverted the wetlands fund to finance unfunded projects and council members’ “wish lists.”

“We cannot let this happen,” she said, urging environmentalists to rally to the cause and appear at the Monday council session. Money could be “borrowed” from the SANDER trash-to-energy plant reserves, which total $4.8 million, or collected from the Centre City Development Corp., which she said owes the city $52.2 million.

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