Dana Point Headlands fight comes to a sad close

June 15 marked the end of the decade-plus battle over the 121-acre Dana Point Headlands property, when the preliminary injunction against the California Coastal Commission's approval of the Headlands Development and Conservation Plan was denied.

photos:Celia Kutcher (r), North McKinnon (r)

Dana Point Headlands Mesa before construction began (left) contained some endangered species habitat areas. The ESHA has now been removed by bulldozer to make way for a resort development.

Sierra Club and Surfrider Foundation waged a four-year campaign against the development plans for this precious coastal open space, one of the few remaining in Orange County. The lawsuit against the commission was a late phase of the battle.

The basis of the lawsuit was that the proposed development plan, calling for 118 custom lots and a 65-90-room resort hotel on the site above Strands Beach in Dana Point, violates the commission's own standards for coastal development as laid out in the Coastal Act.

The project violates the Coastal Act in that it calls for severe grading in the coastal zone and construction of a 2200-foot-long rock pile revetment/seawall to support about 70 custom lots on Strands bluff. Even the Coastal Commission's own staff's reports strongly recommended denial of this project based on its multiple Coastal Act violations.

If granted, the preliminary injunction would have halted construction on the Headlands project until the lawsuit came to trial, several months later.

In late June, Sierra Club and Surfrider assessed the situation. Without the preliminary injunction, construction on the site would continue until the trial; even if the environmentalists won at trial, undoing of the development work would be unlikely. The need to put resources into the much larger toll road/Trestles campaign loomed large. The groups reached regretful consensus to end the Headlands campaign.

Sierra Club National Litigation Committee approved dismissal of the suit in mid-September. Surfrider Foundation has also voted to approve dismissal.

The development is now in full swing. An outing to Strands Beach is now marred by the sight of heavy-duty construction machinery working on the bluff. The once-peaceful bluff has been cleared of all vegetation and looks like it has been strip-mined.

The Coastal Commission's approval of the project has not only destroyed the natural beauty that once was Strands bluff, but also set a bad precedent for other coastal development projects throughout California.

The loss of this injunction shows how important it is to keep up with coastal issues such as this one or Trestles Beach.