State Buys ‘Linchpin’ of Land Plan

Racing to meet year-end tax deadlines, defense contract giant Lockheed Martin Corp. sold 9,117 acres of Riverside County wildlife habitat to California on Wednesday, with promises to clean up rocket-testing contamination at the site.

The $25.5-million purchase was funded with $12 million in park bonds, $8 million in federal wildlife funds and $5.5 million in county developer fees.

The land is an undulating stretch of sandy hills and creek beds between Beaumont and San Jacinto known as the Badlands or Potrero Valley. The land will be preserved as part of fast-growing Riverside County’s ambitious plans for conservation and development.

“This is really a big deal. It’s a been a conservation dream for a decade,” said Dan Silver, head of the nonprofit Endangered Habitats League, who said the land was home to “the world’s highest concentration” of Stevens kangaroo rat and other endangered species.

The kangaroo rat is one of dozens of Southern California animals and plants facing extinction because of habitat lost to development.

Such federally protected species have bedeviled Riverside County builders and planners in recent years.

Lockheed Martin originally hoped to build homes, a golf course and commercial centers on the land.

The Sierra Club sued to stop the development because of the kangaroo rat and other at-risk species, and “it became evident that what we needed to do was conservation,” said Lockheed Martin spokeswoman Gail Rymer.

The company contacted the Conservation Fund in Texas, which specializes in bringing together private landowners and public agencies.

An appraisal done for the company valued the land at $42 million; a state appraisal found it was worth about $34.5 million, officials said.

“We sold below market value,” Rymer said, in part to complete the sale by year’s end.

The company also agreed to clean up 565 acres at the property where groundwater may be contaminated. The site was used for rocket engine testing in the 1960s and early ‘70s, Rymer said, and some of the soil and groundwater was contaminated with trichloroethylene and perchlorates. Once cleanup is completed, that portion will be signed over to the state Wildlife Conservation Board, which helped to broker the sale.

The transaction capped three years of negotiations and a decade of litigation and other disputes.

Studies of contamination and natural resources, conflicting appraisals, and even the recall of Gov. Gray Davis and election of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger all delayed the sale, said Riverside County Board of Supervisors Chairman John Tavaglione.

“It was always up in the air,” he said. “Back and forth, back and forth again. ‘How severe is the contamination? How critical is the habitat?’ ”

But Dec. 23, he and other board members were told the company was ready to sell and wanted to complete the deal by year’s end.

Tavaglione and fellow supervisors said the purchase was key to both an existing plan to protect the kangaroo rat and to a far more sweeping conservation and growth project designed to set aside large areas of habitat for 146 species, while allowing habitat for those same species to be bulldozed elsewhere.

The state’s fourth-largest county, Riverside County has experienced explosive growth, and its population is expected to double to 3 million in the next two decades.

The new plan is awaiting approval from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and some Riverside County cities.

“This land is one of the crucial pieces in the puzzle,” Tavaglione said. “It is critical to the overall habitat plan.”

Critics argue that local taxpayers could be left paying for the land or the property might not be preserved at all if promised state and federal backing falls through.

Proponents say this week’s sale disproves that.

“This bodes very well,” said Silver, the environmentalist. “This shows the money is there.”

Supervisor Bob Buster said the sale is “a real linchpin” of “the next 25 years of conservation in Riverside County.... The kangaroo rats should be doing a victory dance.”