San Pasqual Valley Rich in Resources : Gravel Industry Seeks to Stake Its Claim in Sand

The muted greens and browns of the San Pasqual Valley provide a peaceful pastoral scene worthy of a Southern California Christmas card. But the quiet river valley wedged between the fast-growing city of Escondido and the affluent San Diego suburb of Rancho Bernardo lies in the path of urbanization and hides a tremendous lode of a sought-after resource owned and controlled by San Diego.

Beneath the ordered rows of garden crops and the lush valley pastureland lie millions of cubic yards of the finest construction sand around. As San Diego grows and local sand supplies diminish, this natural deposit may become so valuable that it will override the city’s longstanding efforts to keep the valley rural and free of commercial development.

Despite the increasing pressure to mine more sand and the encroachment of major commercial development on the valley’s fringes, city planners have proposed an updated San Pasqual Valley plan designed to keep the landscape much as it is for the next 20 years. The plan covering a 33,000-acre area around Lake Hodges and along the Santa Maria and Santa Ysabel creeks east of Interstate 15 comes up Jan. 6 for a public hearing and San Diego City Council action.

The plan, a two-year effort by the city Planning Department, a San Pasqual planning group and dozens of other citizens and officials, touches only briefly on the treasure beneath the river valley’s topsoil. It cites a 1982 state Mining and Geology Board study that labels San Pasqual as a prime source for construction-grade sand and estimates that more than 500 million tons of it lie on the valley floor.

The study also estimates that the developing coastal slopes of western San Diego County will face a 330-million-ton shortage of the vital construction material within the next 50 years. The city limits sand mining--referred to as flood channel enhancement work--to less than 100,000 tons a year, a limit designed to remove new sand accumulations from winter rains but not to tap the sand deposits built up through centuries.

Local sand and gravel industry spokesmen have been quietly promoting their effort to increase the mining in San Pasqual, telephoning and visiting City Council members, and last month obtaining a delay in council action until two council members who opposed increased mining--Mayor Roger Hedgecock and Councilman Bill Mitchell--had left office.

Although sand and gravel industry interests have long sought to remove mining restrictions from the valley, John D. Butler, a former San Diego mayor and one of the spokesmen for the industry, said that “no formal proposal has been finalized” for presentation at the Jan. 6 hearing. Earlier, industry spokesmen had endorsed relaxation of city controls on sand mining and expansion of the flood channel width (where mining is permitted) from 300 feet to 800 feet.

Emily Durbin, local Sierra Club chairwoman, points out that “so-called flood control enhancement simply disguises” lucrative sand mining activities in the valley. Expansion of the flood channelization in the valley to the width of an interstate freeway, she said, “is utterly ridiculous” and would mean the loss of hundreds of valuable agricultural acres.

Butler disagrees, pointing out that the current channel width of 300 feet provides protection only from minor floods--those expected to occur about once a decade--while a wider, deeper channelization of the San Pasqual Valley streams would provide protection from storm runoff similar to the flooding of 1978, 1979 and 1980 when 50-year floods rampaged through the valley and carried away rich topsoil.

Allen Jones, director of long-range city planning, confirmed that the new San Pasqual Valley plan proposes a “status quo” position on sand-mining activities, retaining the current channel size to protect against 10-year floods. But, he said, council members have requested an additional “update” of the plan to address the issue of sand mining and other controversial parts of the plan.

Deputy Mayor Ed Struiksma, new Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer and Councilman Bill Cleator are among council members seeking changes and additions to the San Pasqual Valley plan to address not only the sand-mining issue but also the increasing pressures for commercial development around its fringes.

Wolfsheimer plans to ask for a further delay in enacting the valley plan until procedures are established to ensure restoration of areas damaged by sand mining for use as parkland. She is also looking to resolve traffic problems created by the Wild Animal Park and by a new shopping center being built on the southern fringe of Escondido.

Struiksma’s staff is seeking a compromise agreeable to all interests on sand-mining in the valley over the next two decades. Cleator also seeks a middle ground on the issue, but emphasizes the need to reform the antiquated agricultural leasing system under which the city gains little revenue and lessees are free to sell sand off their leaseholds--within limits permitted by the city. The city owns about 11,000 acres in the San Pasqual Valley that it purchased as part of a now-defunct plan to expand Lake Hodges.

Several valley farmers who lease land within a city-owned agricultural preserve which covers the flat valley floor feel that the plan is “unrealistic” and will lose millions of dollars for the city and for themselves over the next 20 years.

Mike Horwath, who operates TMY Farms on an 1,100-acre leasehold from the city, points out that “the city is earning $8 an acre to let cattle graze on land right across the road from Ernie Hahn’s new shopping center,” the $120-million North County Fair commercial complex scheduled to open in the spring.

“What’s going to happen when the Wild Animal Park attendance goes up and they want to build a hotel there?” Horwath queried. “This plan just doesn’t address these problems, just doesn’t allow for anything to happen in the valley for another 20 years or more. It’s a wish list for the people who don’t want to see any change here.”

San Diego city planners respond that they have considered the rezoning of the city property fronting on Via Rancho Parkway near the shopping center site, but backed off when it became evident that the city, to conform to tightened growth management policies approved by voters in November, would have to put the project to a public vote.

Valley rancher Bill Witman, who leases about 4,500 city acres, agrees with Horwath that the valley plan puts the region in an economic straitjacket until 2005.

The plan “really says that we are going to keep San Pasqual Valley where it is today and I don’t think that’s possible. . . . I really think that nothing is going to . . . keep these pressures (for development) off the City Council,” he said, referring to the pressures for increased sand mining and for urbanization of the valley.

About the economic pressures, Witman told planning commissioners: “The City Council needs money (and) it’s a valuable resource. I sit in a place where I’ve had proposals brought to me that would earn $400,000 a year on land that I now pay $1,000 a year. Not $1,000 an acre, $1,000 a year.”

Durbin is philosophical about the apparent groundswell of economic and political interests lined up to oppose the proposed valley plan to keep agricultural pursuits and open space in much of the valley.

“The odds are usually against us,” she said, “but now and then we win.”