TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/111891/1118330.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 12.9 KB | 285 lines

                                                                                ENVIRONMENT, Page 83

CALIFORNIA

Gobbling Up The Land


Making room for a stream of new arrivals has pushed nature to
the wall

BY EUGENE LINDEN -- With reporting by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles


    The California gnatcatcher, a warbler-like songbird,
nests along the coastal sage land in Southern California's
Orange County, which happens to be some of the most expensive
real estate on earth. Last July, when the state fish and game
commission announced that it would consider listing the
gnatcatcher as an endangered species, developers bulldozed
hundreds of acres of the birds' remaining habitat so that the
land would be exempt from any future protection. In September
the fish and game commission, bowing to construction-industry
arguments that protecting the gnatcatcher would cost the state
$20 billion and 200,000 jobs, decided not to list the bird.
Environmentalists hope the Federal Government may yet do so.

    So went the latest chapter in the often brutal conflict
between development and protection of the environment in the
increasingly tarnished Golden State. California leads the nation
with 283 endangered, threatened or rare species, but despite
various state and federal forms of protection, two-thirds of
these species continue to decline.

    This destruction is occurring despite a concerted effort
to prevent it. In the past 25 years, nearly 90% of the state's
communities have imposed some form of restraint on growth, but
urban and suburban subdivisions keep sprawling. The legislature
passed laws in 1973 to ensure sustainable management of the
forests, but timber companies have replanted new species
instead of maintaining existing forests and have cut too often
to permit the forest to regenerate itself. And though Los
Angeles has made progress against smog, air quality has
plummeted in other parts of the state.

    Frustrated with the legislature's inability -- or
unwillingness -- to get the job done, citizens have passed
ballot initiatives to protect the 1,100-mile coastline,
establish a fund to buy habitat for mountain lions, and
authorize a bond issue to provide funding for parks and wildlife
habitat. But enforcement of these laws has been so ineffectual
that some enviros (as they are called in California) have turned
to the courts, suing to protect the delta smelt, salmon and
other species. More radical groups like Earth First! resort to
direct action: blockading logging sites and driving spikes into
redwoods so that they will be dangerous to cut.

    Now the conflict over diminishing resources is scrambling
the political map of California. Traditional allies such as
agriculture and big developers frequently find themselves at
odds. Some environmental groups have aligned with cities against
agricultural interests to try to break big farmers' stranglehold
on water supplies. Others have joined forces with surfers to
fight pollution from pulp-paper mills and with commercial
fisherman to end logging practices that destroy watersheds.

    As an unending tide of new arrivals pushes nature to the
wall, California is awash with experiments to preserve its
stunning natural heritage. The Wilson administration wants to
establish regional councils that would draw representatives from
all interests with a stake in an area in order to reach a
consensus on how to protect different biological regions. Says
Larry Orman, executive director of the Greenbelt Alliance:
"Because we have such massive problems, I view California as a
mirror to the future." The areas of dispute:


    LAND

    San Francisco architect Herbert McLaughlin coined the term
"slopopolis" to describe the shapeless subdivisions that spring
up to house California's surging population. Each year 50,000
acres of cropland give way to housing tracts or shopping malls.
Desert covers one-fourth of the state, but Jim Dodson, director
of the California Desert Protection League, says two-thirds of
those 25.5 million fragile acres has already been damaged by
human use. Congress is debating whether to preserve threatened
areas by creating a 1.5 million-acre national park in the Mojave
and expanding the Death Valley and Joshua Tree national
monuments into parks. But if Las Vegas proceeds with its plans
to buy groundwater from central Nevada, the underground streams
that flow westward to feed the oases in Death Valley may dry up,
mooting any question of aboveground protection.

    California's coastline has inspired more efforts at
protection than any other region. But the 1976 California
Coastal Act, which defined wetlands, agricultural lands and
scenic routes and called for local governments to devise plans
to protect their coastal areas, has been more an aesthetic than
an ecological success. The Natural Resources Defense Council
documented more than 300 beach closings in the state last year,
including some in supposedly pristine parts of Mendocino County
in the north. To a degree, economics abets preservation of the
coast: its scenic beauty generates more than $30 billion in
tourist revenues. In addition, communities in the water-starved
state are reducing pollution as they try to reclaim every drop
of waste water. Even so, the pressures on the coast will
continue to grow.


    WATER

    The heart of California's freshwater system is the
Sacramento Delta, where salt water from San Francisco Bay mixes
with 40% of the state's freshwater flowing down from the Sierra
Nevada through a vast web of wetlands and islands. The U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency says this watery corridor is the
most important estuary on the West Coast of the Americas because
it provides a critical stopping point for birds on the Pacific
flyway and a vast nursery for fish. But the area is also the hub
of a huge network of dams, canals and pumps that divert water
to irrigate the Central Valley and supply 18 million users in
the semi desert southland. The price of this growth has been a
series of ecological calamities.

    Because their peaty soils oxidize when exposed to air,
delta islands converted to farmland have been sinking, leaving
humans and wildlife increasingly vulnerable to flooding in the
next earthquake. Giant pumps powerful enough to reverse the
flow of the Sacramento River stun and kill young striped bass
and other fish. Encroaching urbanization, flooding, and
conversion of marshes to farmland have destroyed 90% of the
state's wetlands, most of which were linked to the estuary. As
freshwater is diverted into canals, the zone where freshwater
and salt water meet has moved upstream, starving young staghorn
sculpin that in turn were food for blue herons and snowy egrets.
Roughly 90% of the state's commercial Chinook salmon catch
depends on the estuary, but more than half the salmon swimming
up the Sacramento River to lay eggs are blocked by the Red Bluff
Diversion Dam. Those that get by are often unable to spawn in
overheated waters coming from drought-stricken Shasta Lake. The
San Joaquin River is entirely diverted for irrigation as it
emerges from the Sierra Nevada. When it resumes downstream near
the Kesterson Reservoir, selenium-poisoned waters flow into it
from the Westlands agricultural district.

    The problems have been compounded by a five-year drought.
In 1990 the state created a water bank that allowed cities to
bid for some agricultural water. Some environmentalists support
the scheme -- and are being criticized for it. "The enviros have
been pimps for water marketing," says environmental consultant
William Kier. He notes that Yuba City uses less than 10% of its
water entitlement from the New Bullards Bar Reservoir, then
sells the remainder to Southern California rather than allow it
to replenish the fragile delta system.

    Rehabilitating the region will not be easy, but the Sierra
Club Legal Defense Fund and others have sued the EPA to force
the state to protect fish like the delta smelt. Efforts are
also under way to restore flow to the San Joaquin and Trinity
rivers. Water consultant Mark Reisner and the Nature Conservancy
have worked with rice growers, the most water-intensive
farmers, to promote a plan to store water on paddies, creating
wetlands and riverside habitat during the winter. Perhaps the
most important aspect of Reisner's project is that it has got
the warring water users to talk to each other.


    FORESTS

    The state's 32.5 million acres of forest continue to
shrivel. In the north, loggers blame environmentalists for
"locking up" ancient forests by suing to protect the spotted owl
and otherwise halt timbering, but with 90% of the original
stands of redwood and Douglas fir already cut, loggers really
have only themselves to blame. Says Richard Wilson, newly
appointed head of the department of forestry and fire
protection: "The loggers put money into buying more old growth
rather than regrowing cut forests, and the trees are not there
to feed the mills." To maximize short-term profits, many
companies cut the trees at ever briefer intervals. "The M.B.A.s
have turned forestry into a mining exercise," laments Wilson.

    Roughly half the remaining ancient redwood forests have
some form of protection, and the state is negotiating with the
Pacific Lumber Co. to buy the 3,000-acre Headwaters Forest south
of Eureka, the biggest remaining privately owned stand of
ancient redwoods. This forest became a rallying point for
environmentalists when Pacific Lumber doubled the cutting rate
of its 1,000-year-old trees to service debt incurred in an Ivan
Boesky-arranged leveraged buyout of the company by the Maxxam
Corp.

    Legal protection alone may not guarantee survival for
ancient forests. The National Audubon Society charges that the
U.S. Forest Service has allowed logging concerns to clear-cut
sugar pine and cedar trees around giant sequoias in the 13,400
acres of groves it controls. This deprives the big trees of a
protective windbreak, increases erosion and eliminates habitat
for other creatures. Audubon's Dan Taylor says worsening air
pollution drifting into the Sierra Nevada also threatens the
sequoias.

    Sooner or later, Californians will have to face the dire
consequences of their activities. Resources secretary Douglas
Wheeler predicts that the time will come when large companies
begin to flee California because of ecological as well as other
problems. "The point at which a major company gets fed up with
bad air, scarce water, housing prices and traffic, and talks
about future capital spending in Colorado or Arizona is the
point at which you get a political response," he says.

    Wheeler believes voters and environmentalists alike have
become exhausted by the treadmill of lawsuits and initiatives.
In 1990 voters defeated almost every proposition on the ballot,
including a 1,600-page environmental package nicknamed "Big
Green." As an alternative, Wheeler has been promoting a series
of regional agreements among developers, environmentalists and
other interests. He is currently attempting to negotiate a plan
that would provide a haven for the gnatcatcher as an alternative
to endangered-species protection. Though deeply suspicious of
a state government that in the past has acted only when it was
forced to, a number of environmentalists are willing to give
this approach a try. Californians are beginning to realize that
they must find some common ground if they are to arrest the
slide.


________________________________________________________________
ENVIRONMENTAL TROUBLE SPOTS

    Los Angeles Basin

    Eight million cars, trucks and other vehicles help make the
region's air the dirtiest in the nation.

    Sacramento Delta

    The most important estuary on the West Coast has been clogged
by an array of dams, canals and pumps that divert water to
irrigation projects and homes in Southern California. Several
species of fish and birds have been put at risk.

    Death Valley

    As Nevada experiences dizzying growth, its residents put new
demands on groundwater, threatening to exhaust the underground
sources of the oases in the fragile Death Valley ecosystem.

    North Coast and Sierra Nevada Forests

    With most of the original stands of redwood and Douglas fir
already felled, timber companies battle with environmentalists
over the remainder. Critics charge the U.S. Forest Service with
permitting ruinous clear-cutting on public lands, endangering
surviving giant Sequoias.

________________________________________________________________
ATTITUDES TOWARD GROWTH

    Proportion saying there has been "too much" of this type of
growth in their community:

                                 STATEWIDE

    Population                      66%

    Commerical                      31%

    Multi-unit housing              42%

    Single-family housing           26%