Measure would boost parks, water supply
Lack of funding for new reservoirs draws fire
09:38 AM PDT on Monday, October 9, 2006
For years, Pete Staylor and other Inland cyclists have had to haul their bikes to a spot over the Orange County line to hop on the Santa Ana River's bike trail to the beach.
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Even though the river winds through major Inland cities, the crest-to-coast trail still has gaps in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. A measure on the November ballot would invest $45 million in bridging those gaps and adding parks along the river.
Staylor often rides a 9-mile stretch of the trail through Riverside, only to come up against a chain-link fence near the city's Van Buren Bridge where he must turn around.
"It's the trail to nowhere right now," said Staylor, a member of the Riverside Bicycle Club. "We're chomping at the bit to get this going."
Before that can happen, though, a majority of California voters must approve Prop. 84, authorizing the sale of $5.4 billion in bonds to fund flood control and water quality projects, and purchase new parkland and wildlife habitat across the state.
In the two-county Inland region, bond money would help restore the shrinking Salton Sea in the Riverside County desert, buy habitat and open space in the Coachella Valley, remove invasive plants along the Santa Ana River, and treat groundwater pollution.
Eleven environmental groups, including the California Audubon Society and the Nature Conservancy, wrote the bond and collected enough signatures to qualify it for the ballot.
"There's supposed to be some huge amount of growth in the next 20 years. You can see it by driving the freeways," said Drew Feldmann, president of the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society. "There's a need to preserve the wildlands or semi-wildlands that remain, to preserve wildlife diversity and habitat."
A Critic's View
Bill Leonard, the measure's most vocal opponent, said the initiative hasn't undergone the Legislature's scrutiny like other bonds on the November ballot.
"I don't know who made up the list of projects, and I don't know what they left out," said Leonard, an elected member of the California State Board of Equalization and a former state lawmaker who represented the San Bernardino area.
The $45 million tagged for the Santa Ana River Trail divides $30 million equally among Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange counties, according to the initiative's language.
But, Leonard said, it doesn't specify what would happen with the remaining$15 million.
Fiona Hutton, an initiative spokeswoman, said that money is up for grabs to the three counties, which can submit grant applications to the California Coastal Conservancy.
The state agency will award money based on the grants' merits.
Leonard also criticized the measure for not doing enough to boost the water supply because it has no funding for new reservoirs.
Most major Inland water agencies, however, have endorsed the proposition because it increases the water supply by cleaning up polluted water and removing salts from otherwise unusable groundwater, said Redlands-based water consultant Daniel Cozad.
The region, he said, did just that with previous water bonds, creating additional water to serve 600,000 families in the watershed that stretches over parts of San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange counties.
Besides the Santa Ana River Trail, Prop. 84 would fund trails along other neglected rivers, including the Los Angeles River, where a restoration plan along the city's 32-mile stretch is being developed.
Decades ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and local authorities lined rivers such as the LA River in Southern California and the West with concrete for flood-control purposes.
These days, many community activists want to return rivers to their natural states so they become landmark features lined with greenbelts.
"We don't have enough parks in Southern California for the people," said D.P. Myers, of the Wildlands Conservancy, in Oak Glen, a river supporter. "Why not create a natural linear park? Instead of turning our backs to the river, let's embrace it and build upon it."
A recent poll conducted by the nonpartisan Field Institute showed that 50 percent of likely voters surveyed supported Prop. 84.
Thirty percent opposed and 20 percent were undecided.
The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 6 percentage points.
Building Momentum
Even if the bond measure doesn't pass, improving the Santa Ana River trail has gained momentum with an agreement finalized in July that created advisory panels with members from the three counties to manage the river as a regional recreational amenity.
And the river's main benefactor, the Wildlands Conservancy, which has pumped more than $50 million into trail projects, has volunteered to help guide efforts to complete it.
The nonprofit, established in 1995, has purchased thousands of acres for conservation.
The conservancy has given most cities along the river $5,000 to develop plans for their part of the trail, much like Riverside has already done.
Once they are completed, the conservancy has offered to develop a master plan based on those cities' visions.
Myers said the river has long been neglected for funding and supporters lost a legislative bid a few years ago to designate the river a state conservancy, which typically attracts heavy bond funding.
There are only nine such conservancies in the state, including the Coachella Valley Mountains Conservancy.
"This is a huge win for us," Myers said of Prop. 84. Myers' group is helping to fund TV advertisements supporting the measure, he said.
If the bond passes, San Bernardino County likely would use its portion to help construct the trail between Redlands and Highland, build Colton Regional Park along the river, and add rest stops and other access points along the trail, said Maureen Snelgrove, the county's deputy director of regional parks.
Snelgrove said the bond measure creates other statewide pots into which cities and counties could tap. Prop. 84, she said, includes $400 million for new local and regional parks and $72 million for river parkways.
In Riverside County, construction is expected to start in January on a 4.5-mile segment of the trail on the western edge of Riverside through the Hidden Valley Wildlife Area.
The roughly $6 million project, funded by the state, county and Wildlands Conservancy, is expected to be completed by May.
It will have separate trails for bicyclists and equestrians, and, when a one-third-mile section to the east is completed by a Riverside developer, the fence at the Van Buren Bridge that Staylor and his comrades face will be taken away
Riverside County's portion of Prop. 84 funds would likely help bridge gaps through Norco and Corona, said Paul Frandsen, Riverside County's parks chief.
What remains a "pinch point," as observers call it, is building the trail through Prado Dam, a river barricade near Corona that's now being raised and sits at the busy intersection of the 91 and 71 highways.
The Wildlands Conservancy gave the Army Corps of Engineers $1 million to incorporate the trail into the federal agency's dam-improvement plans, Frandsen said. For instance, he said, the bike trail could travel over new dykes the Corps is building as flood protection.
As it stands, starting lines for the annual "Smog to Surf" ride from Riverside to Huntington Beach, changed this year to the more politically correct "Riverside to Surfside," begin Saturday in Riverside and Corona but riders won't be able to go along the river until they hit Orange County past the Prado Dam.
It's been a sore point for the past 20 years of the event.
A completed trail, Staylor said, would not only connect Riverside to the beach but to many of the Inland region's major cities.
"It's going to open up so much," he said.
Reach Jennifer Bowles at 951-368-9548 or jbowles@PE.com
BSRanch Perspective:
Now there is talk of finishing the Bike Trail, Back in 1990, 1991, a very good friend of mine & I Went to Yorba Linda Park to enter the Bike Trail to go to the Beach, that was 21 miles both ways, We always talked about how great it was if they opened the trail the whole way through we would not have to fight the traffic on a long hard ride home, because we would have bypassed it on the bike trail. I hope that they do it and get it completed. so the Bicyclists have a place to ride!!
BSRanch
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