Save Newport Real News in Newport Beach
Late last night, after 13 hours of testimony, the California Coastal Commission rejected with a 9-1 vote the most recent Newport Banning Ranch proposal, with over 400 people showing up to Newport Beach’s Council Chambers to speak both for and against the project. Banning Ranch is fenced-off land in Newport Beach which cannot be accessed without signing a waiver due to the dangerous mess left behind by oil-seekers over the last 90+ years after oil was discovered in the 1920s. Littering the area are rusting vehicles, buried equipment, odd pipes jutting out from the earth, and countless acres of absolutely dead patches of land, possibly from oil spills over the years.
In 2006, voters in Newport Beach approved a General Plan Update which would authorize about 1,400 units of development to the area. In exchange for these development rights, the owners of the land promised that once the project was approved, they would use the advance money to immediately begin cleaning all of the land– and even better: open it to the public once it was complete. Some neighbors worried about the increased traffic to their homes, and others worried about what might happen to the ecological life that currently inhabits the area. While that same life inhabited nearly all areas where homes are currently standing, environmental laws have made construction of vast areas very sensitive in recent years.
For the last decade, developers and ecological activists have battled at meetings, with the developers finally agreeing to build less than 900 of their permitted 1,400 units and to also dedicate 80% of their land into a perpetually-funded land trust which would remain open space area for everyone to publicly access– all after they footed the bill and cleaned up the oil mess.
To many, restoring an oil field to pristine condition, dedicating 80% of it as open space, and opening it up to the public sounded like an exceptionally generous offer. To others, this still did not solve the problems that they were fighting for: maintaining current traffic levels and a habitat for the fairy shrimp and a rare owl.
The shrimp are a non-native species. How did we wind up with shrimp on a hill, you ask? Well, as the oil workers from the 1920s passed time on their lunch breaks and after work, they created a baseball field on the property. Throughout decades of poor maintenance and endless players running on the same patch of land, the field eventually became indented, and would pool with water after a rain. As birds would fly over and grace the pool with their food waste, they would drop fairy shrimp into the pool– and viola, we have a fairy shrimp pool! That area is now fenced off in perpetuity to protect the shrimp.
The ruling today is a victory for the environmentalists, and puts the developers in a very precarious position: They can choose to submit a “substantially different” plan to the Coastal Commission for the filing cost of a quarter-million-dollars (plus the cost of producing that plan), or they can scrap the project altogether and hang up the towel.
What do you think of this ruling? Would you like to see the area cleaned up and opened at the cost of slightly increased traffic, or would you rather keep it closed off as a sanctuary for the owl and fairy shrimp? Or do you think there is a better alternative? Sound off in the comments!
Here are some photos and a video of the area:
