California Biodiversity Council
Regional Meeting

Camp Pendleton

June 7-8, 2000

On June 7^th and 8^th, the United States Marine Corps hosted the California Biodiversity Council (CBC) Regional Meeting at Camp Pendleton.  The base occupies 125,000 acres of northwest San Diego County.  42,000 people live or work on the base contributing approximately $1.2 billion annually to the local and regional economies.

Camp Pendleton sits in a high growth area – San Diego, Orange and Riverside are three of the fastest growing counties in California.  This rapid growth brings developmental pressure and urbanization issues – military noise becomes less tolerable, demand for military lands increases, and competition increases for airspace used for military training.  Furthermore, since Southern California is a major “hotspot” for endangered species, expanding environmental legislation and regulations directly impact undeveloped military training areas.

Currently, the base has fifteen endangered or threatened species including riparian, upland, and estuarine/beach species. The presence of these species and the requirement to protect their habitat  restricts Camp Pendleton’s ability to use the base for military training.  Established and proposed critical habitat designation for six endangered species impacts approximately 70,000, over half of the base's training areas.  Ever increasing restrictions on Marine Corps training space threatens their ability to train, maintain and deploy combat ready forces to worldwide national contingencies.

As urbanization continues, cities and counties view Camp Pendleton's undeveloped training areas as ideal locations for public service infrastructure requirements like nuclear power plants, gas and electric lines, new roads and freeways, rail lines, parks, etc.  What appears to be underutilized land to city and county planners is essential training space to the Marines.

The Santa Margarita River passes through the heart of Camp Pendleton and is one of the last free-flowing rivers in Southern California.  One of the most active parts of the base, which includes a large military air station, sits in that flood plain.  Seasonal floods have destroyed roads, bridges and crossings, and halted the operation of other critical facilities.  History shows a tremendous potential for flood damage due to the Santa Margarita River.  For example, a 1993 flood caused over $125 million in damage.  In order to protect infrastructure and equipment, the base constructed a new levee and a bridge designed to withstand a 100-year flood.

The complexity of the project, its costs, environmental impacts, and legal problems, challenged the Marines to find alternative solutions to flood control projects.  Since upstream activity significantly affects flood risk, the base decided to look at the entire watershed to identify other nonstructural approaches that might be encouraged in order to mitigate flooding activity.

Additionally, the Department of Defense contracted with Harvard University Graduate School of Design to study how rapid urban growth in the region between San Diego and Los Angeles might influence the biodiversity of Camp Pendleton.  Utah State University, the National Biological Service, the USDA Forest Service, The Nature Conservancy, the Biodiversity Research Consortium, the San Diego Association of Governments, and the Southern California Association of Governments cooperated in the study. 

The study was designed to increase understanding of the risks and benefits of the range of alternatives for the Camp Pendleton region and to provide tools and techniques which may be helpful in managing the processes of urbanization and landscape change within the watershed. 

The Harvard researchers found that increasing levels of urbanization around the base could increase the magnitude of flood damage there.  Also, as growth occurs, more habitat will be consumed, leaving the base with an increasing proportion of the remaining threatened and endangered species.  The surrounding communities and the military are dependent upon one another economically, socially, and environmentally.  This suggests that there needs to be a cooperative effort between the base and the surrounding communities regarding development decisions within the watersheds comprising the base.

Camp Pendleton officials announced that the Department of Defense will be updating the Harvard study.  The Biodiversity Council agreed to participate in the study by updating databases and sharing them with the base.  Base officials discussed contacting jurisdictions in the watershed (Counties of Orange, Riverside and San Diego) to coordinate multiple species conservation program implementation activities.  CBC will be forming a subcommittee to look at the interagency issues raised at this meeting. 

The meeting wrapped up with a panel presentation addressing issues of effective watershed approaches to resource management and the protection of biodiversity.  They explored ways to coordinate flood control, water supply and environmental protection.   The panel concluded that the planning process for jurisdictions within the watershed needs to be coordinated to assure ecological values are satisfactorily integrated into regulatory compliance, land use approval, and infrastructure development.  The panel explored the feasibility of having local watershed groups play the lead role in managing watershed resources recognizing the regulatory functions of federal, state, and local agencies.

Summary by Janet Fairbanks, San Diego Association of Governments