The rolling hills of the exclusive Pelican Hill Golf Club stretch before Tamaribuchi with stunning views of the Pacific Ocean in the distance. This will be the site of a new resort taking shape in Newport Coast, a low-profile and environmentally sensitive enclave that The Irvine Company has been planning for years. If nature had its way, the runoff would flow down the rugged washes to Crystal Cove State Park with its fragile tide pools, sensitive marine life and struggling kelp forests. But The Irvine Company has a different plan in mind, one that will stop new runoff from getting anywhere close to the coast. Beneath the surface of the Pelican Hill Golf Club, the master plan developer envisions a sophisticated water quality system to promote conservation and recycling - a labyrinth of filters, enormous cisterns and catch basins that will trap and treat all runoff at the new resort. "Our goal is to mimic and even improve upon nature," said Tamari-buchi, vice president of environmental affairs at The Irvine Company. The captured runoff will be treated and used to help irrigate the two championship golf courses that have operated for more than a dozen years. "The smart use of technology to control urban runoff is important to the protection of our natural resources in Orange County, but it is especially critical with coastal projects such as Pelican Hill because pollutants picked up by runoff can have an immediate and harmful effect on the ocean," Tamaribuchi said. Construction of the Pelican Hill water quality system is expected to begin in the fall of 2004. But already the plan has received the blessing of many environmental experts and activists, who say it's the most advanced water quality management program they've ever seen on the California coast. It has the endorsement of Orange County Coastkeeper, whose officers were consulted early in the planning process. |
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"The goal of this project is quite extraordinary and will become a model of water quality for California and possibly the entire nation," said Garry Brown, founder and executive director of Orange County Coastkeeper. "This commitment far exceeds what is required by law. We appreciate the fact The Irvine Company wants so much to do the right thing they are spending significant extra dollars to protect the special biological area that lies in the ocean in front of their property." The Local Coastal Program for Newport Coast allows for greater development than what The Irvine Company has proposed. This more modest plan translates into less runoff that could affect the marine habitats of Crystal Cove, which are among the most biologically diverse in California. In addition, rather than simply complying with expectations to control runoff, the company intends to exceed them. In July, 2002, The Irvine Company put together a team of designers, engineers, landscape architects and irrigation specialists to work on the project, a mix of experts from different disciplines who rarely work side by side on water quality issues. "Even with all this expertise at the table, it was basically an education process. We told them, 'Here is our goal: To improve the water quality of natural runoff. We know it sounds counter-intuitive, but we think it can be done.' We wanted them to be creative," said Monica Florian, a former group senior vice president of environmental affairs at The Irvine Company. Coming up with a solution to The Pelican Hill puzzle took six months, even though the technologies involved already exist and are readily available. Some are state-of-the-art satellite systems, while others are based on simple principles used for centuries to harness water. The challenge was putting all the pieces together in a novel way and making it work. "There's nothing experimental about the Pelican Hill system; the technology is proven, as are the concepts behind it," Florian said, adding that the plan borrows from - and builds on - the system designed by The Irvine Company three years ago to preserve offshore water quality at Crystal Cove. |
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