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The good news is that the California Coastal Conservancy acted in June 2002 to exercise its option to purchase 265 acres owned by Southern California Edison. This $9.7 million purchase plucked a key part of the wetland away from a pending sale to Occidental Petroleum. OXY wanted it for a Liquid Natural Gas facility. This facility would have received LNG by tanker ships from throughout the Pacific Rim. This highly dangerous activity was proposed not only in a wetland, but also in the path of a Navy base that very recently experienced a military jet crash within a mile of the site.

The LNG proposal was one in a seemingly endless parade of schemes to further invade this degraded but still viable wetland with industrial development. This time, there was active support for the Conservancy action by Ventura County and the City of Oxnard, as well as by a broad range of environmental and community groups.

Despite this unusual unity, conflicting visions persist for other key parts of the wetland. The City of Oxnard still has no overall wetland preservation plan and shows a lack of understanding that wetland pockets without buffers and upland habitat are vulnerable to wither away due to the effects of water, noise and light pollution from urbanization.

The 265-acre piece to be protected by the Conservancy is part of a minimum of 750 acres needed to restore a sustainable wetland. The biggest other single piece of the jigsaw puzzle is 309 acres owned by the City of Oxnard and the Metropolitan Water District of Los Angeles. They jointly purchased this piece in 1998 due to the bankruptcy of a housing developer who planned a mini-city. Rather than act as a steward, Oxnard and MWD have behaved like any other land speculators. There are negotiations going on between these two owners and the Conservancy, but little is known about their progress.

Meanwhile, in March 2002, Oxnard floated a proposal to cleave off some 50 acres from the 309 for industrial development. The city pitched this triangular-shaped piece for a massive Sysco grocery distribution warehouse. The odd shape of the proposed site was dictated by a city scheme to develop the only part of its parcel outside the coastal zone. To its credit, Sysco said it was no longer interested when it learned that splitting off the parcel would be subject to California Coastal Commission approval.

The biggest immediate threat to Ormond Beach is another Oxnard plan to approve development of a 38-acre parcel of upland buffer not part of the City/MWD parcel, as a Pacific Vehicle Processing (PVP) facility. This use would place structures and vast expanses of lighted pavement on the entire parcel. It would operate 24 hours a day, finishing 100,000 vehicles a year brought in by ship, rail and truck. The PVP company is a subsidiary of the world's largest car transport company, Wallenius Wilhelmsen. This Swedish/Norwegian company prides itself on environmental awareness -- but not at Ormond Beach.