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History
of the Greenbelt
The
open space known as the Laguna Greenbelt has long been a fixture of our community
life-who could imagine Laguna Beach without its backdrop of scenic hills and
natural ridgelines? An outgrowth of the Citizen's Town Planning Association
of 1967, the Laguna Greenbelt, Inc. organization was founded by local bookstore
owner Jim Dilley about thirty-five years ago. Dilley's dream was to create an
open space greenbelt between Laguna Beach and other cities similar to the ones
he had admired in England. That dream came to be called the Laguna Greenbelt,
and sometimes people confuse the organization with the land we are trying to
save.
In his town Dilley found fertile soil for his ideas, and a band of enthusiastic
supporters formed around him. Over the ensuring years this support has not waned,
but rather has grown so much that in 1990, 80% of Laguna voters agreed to tax
themselves to help buy Laguna Laurel, a crucial piece of the Greenbelt in Laguna
Canyon.
Achieving the preservation of the land meant years of talking with local government
officials, reading and responding to environmental impact reported, and attending
public hearings everywhere possible, including city councils. county planning
commissions, Board of Supervisors, LAFCO, the California Coastal Planning Commission,
and various regulatory agencies. In 1980 we approached Congress and almost were
successful in having a National Park created in the Greenbelt!
In 1990 we entered negotiations with the Irvine Company, along with Laguna Beach
and several other environmental organizations, to purchase the 2150 acre Laguna
Laurel property in Laguna Canyon. A lawsuit which we had maintained against
the County and the landowner over a development agreement for a proposed project
on the land was a key element in the successful conclusion of the option agreement.
Although mostly successful through other means, over the years we have had to
file a number of lawsuits when persuasion failed. Most recently, we initiated
a series of lawsuits in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to prevent the San
Joaquin Hills tollroad from built through the heart of Laguna Canyon. The road
was conceived in 1975 to ".....allow for continuation of the e existing
development patterns which serve a relatively high-income well educated and
predominantly white population." At the time, the future population between
the I-405 and the coast in the San Joaquin Hills was expected to reach 500,000.
The road was vigorously pursued by big landowners, developers and their elected
officials, even though the coastal population in that area will probably be
one-fifth of that figure.
On other fronts, we have turned our attention towards the management of the
greenbelt open space as it becomes parkland. We received a grant from the State
Coastal Conservancy to prepare a restoration plan for the Laguna lakes, Orange
County's only natural lakes, which have suffered from the impacts of cattle
grazing, urban runoff from Leisure World, and being alongside Laguna Canyon
Road. After the plan was completed, the county parks department received a larger
grant to carry out the restoration plan.
An important goal of the organization is public education about the natural
history of the open space, and over the years we have led tours into the natural
areas of Moro Canyon (now Crystal Cove State Park) and Sycamore Hills (now Jim
Dilley Greenbelt Preserve). Since 1987, Greenbelt volunteers have enabled thousands
of people to enjoy the Dilley Preserve in Laguna Canyon, where we established
and help maintain a self-guiding nature trail through the coastal sage and one
around the lake.
With a grant from World Wildlife, we wrote and distributed a set of three brochures
for people in wilderness edge neighborhoods. The brochures define solutions
for common problems (from opossums to wildfire) faced by residents living on
the edge of the greenbelt open space lands.
In 1998. we wrote and circulated an Open Space Initiative in Laguna Beach, to
ensure the long term preservation of about 1100 acres of city-owned open space
lands. In just three weeks, 150 community volunteers gathered over 3,000 signatures,
twice what was needed to qualify the initiative for the ballot. In mid-July
the City Council adopted the initiative.
Laguna Greenbelt has a grant program to fund field trips by local schoolchildren
to the greenbelt, and a limited scholarship program for graduating seniors.
Elisabeth Brown, President