This week I
visited the Brightwater development off of Pacific Coast Highway and Warner in
Huntington Beach. These houses are rather new and those on the edge of the mesa
have amazing views of the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve and Bolsa Chica State
Beach. Despite being new development, plans to build houses in this
area go back to the late seventies when developers wanted to convert what was
left of the wetlands after oil extraction into a marina with several hundred
houses. Members of the local community (in particular, several members of the League of Women
Voters), fought against this massive development, stopped it, and eventually spearheaded a
restoration project whose first stage was completed a few years ago.
As for the
mesa where these houses are located, the California Coastal Commission
ultimately ruled that there were no legal grounds under the Coastal Act to
completely deny all development and as a result these houses were built.
Despite the ruling, the building of these houses was and still remains highly
controversial due to concerns over urban runoff into the nearby ESHA’s
(Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Areas) and the presence of Native American
artifacts and remains in the construction area that go back thousands of years.
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| These glass walls provide beautiful ocean views from the backyards of houses that are to be built here. |
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| These houses are very close to, if not directly upon a known archaeological site that is several thousand years old. |
The thought
to do something on this area came to me as I was reading The Environment of Justice by David Hardy. I wasn’t originally
going to do anything on this area since I volunteer here and talk about issues
related to the wetlands all the time, but I felt that there were a couple of
really interesting ways to think about what has happened here in terms of what
Hardy talks about in his paper.
First, Hardy discussed the way that the poor (and therefore by extension, minorities
and other members of the underclass) tend to get pushed into areas that have
poor environmental and ecological conditions. There is an inference here that those
who have the resources and wealth to do so will live in the areas that have the
best environments. At the Brightwater development there are two ways to look at the environmental quality of the site that both agree and disagree
with Hardy. The first is that this area is quite scenic with views of the ocean
and the reserve, and therefore it is an area of high environmental quality. This idea most certainly played a role in the presence of the Native American settlements found all throughout this area. The
second would be to consider that before restoration efforts this place was
quite dirty and to this day has several nearby oil wells that continue to pump
oil out from under the reserve and off the coast. This second idea actually
fits quite well with most of the coastal neighborhoods in Huntington Beach as
up until the 1970s or so the region was a giant oil field.
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| In the background if you look closely you can see a couple oil derricks that are still in operation. I believe that the current lease holder is Occidental Petroleum, but I may be wrong. |
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| I grabbed this image from the Washington Post (see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2008/07/25/GA2008072502547.html). This is Huntington Beach in 1928. |
Second,
Hardy while commenting on the ecological modernization thesis talks about the
refusal by some “
to see the supposed
trade‐off between environmental concerns and
economic growth in zero‐sum terms.” As this fight over the houses
on the mesa went on for literally decades, the developers were eventually
allowed to build the neighborhood so long as they installed a restoration
area/buffer zone between the reserve and the neighborhood itself. This was
presented as a kind of win/win for both economic progress and the wetlands as
the houses were to be built and some marginal restoration was to occur.
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| This is part of the restoration area that has been put in place by the developers. |
Your post connects extremely well with David Harvey’s article, The Environment of Justice, but also highlights the fact that projects such as the LANCER (Los Angeles City Energy Recovery Plant) project and grassroots movements such as Greening the Ghetto, Led by Majora Carter (whose talk can be found here (www.ted.com/talks/majora_carter_s_tale_of_urban_renewal.html) , are necessary throughout the United States, and globally (the same problems present themselves, perhaps in a slightly different manner, in London also), not just in certain pockets of the world.
ReplyDeleteOne of the main problems with the neo-liberal lack of concern (due to the common neo-liberal notion that the uncultivated environment does not create surplus value), and reactionary rather than preventative stance on environmental preservation/degradation is that the value of the environment is severely undervalued. Majora Carter explained that economic degradation was the main cause for environmental degradation, which in turn leads to social degradation – something that can be seen with the naked eye. The areas that surround richer residences are often much more kempt and manicured (e.g. Bel Air) than those that surround more deprived (e.g. South L.A.) areas.
Carter reasons that this cycle (in the example of the South Bronx, was caused by White Flight) is self-perpetuating and can be broken, in part, by providing people with an area that is aesthetically pleasing, and that can be used to further fulfil people in the urban areas where green space is limited (0.5 acres per 1000 people in the South Bronx).
The wetlands that you describe are extremely important areas of ecological importance, also, not just as a site of aesthetic value that increases the social welfare of human inhabitants, in fact, it is often cited that wetland environments such as Mangroves in areas of the world such as Bangladesh could have provided a ‘green barrier’ to events such as the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami (see here for more info: http://www.wetlands.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=vTRaXxq0yZo%3D&tabid=56)
Thanks for the interesting and thought provoking read.