SAN DIEGOSAN DIEGO — San Diego City Council unanimously approved an ambitious plan Tuesday to transform much of northeastern Mission Bay into climate-friendly marshland that can fight sea-level rise and pull carbon from the air.
ers said the plan, which follows seven years of community debate, is a fair compromise between environmentalists and advocates for camping and other recreation like tennis, softball and water skiing.
But environmentalists said the plan caters too much to those interests, contending that more of the 505-acre area should become marshland because climate change is accelerating.
Golf ers also criticized the plan because it would slightly shrink the footprint of Mission Bay Golf Course, possibly requiring a reconfiguration that could make the course ineligible to host high school events.
Campers grudgingly ed the compromise, out of fear it could be worse. But they also complained that space for camping would shrink from 62 acres to 49 acres and from 970 campsites to roughly 500.
While council praised the plan for making every group give a little and take a little, they expressed concerns that the hard-fought compromises might get dismantled by state and federal wildlife agencies.
An aide to Mayor Todd Gloria said the agencies — the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife — have told city officials they the environmentalists’ calls for additional marshland.
The aide, policy adviser Randy Wilde, said those agencies have the power to demand significant changes in the plan when it gets presented to the Coastal Commission for approval later this year or next.
Councilmember Raul Campillo said he was frustrated the city doesn’t have final say on land-use decisions for one of the most beloved spots in all of San Diego.
In addition to the golf course, the area includes De Anza Cove, Campland on the Bay, Kendall-Frost Marsh Reserve, Rose Creek, several sports fields, a tennis complex, parking lots, beaches and more.
“We want to control our own destiny in Mission Bay,” said Campillo, urging city staffers and his council colleagues to stand up to state and federal officials during any future negotiations.
The plan could also get blocked or delayed by litigation. Environmental groups have suggested during the years of compromise that a plan with inadequate marshland could prompt them to sue.
Despite the possibility the plan will get changed or blocked, Mayor Gloria said it was an important milestone to get so many competing groups to agree to a compromise that the council approved unanimously.
“This plan will not only restore vital wetland habitats, but also ensure that De Anza Cove remains a vibrant space for recreation, low-cost visitor accommodations and environmental education for generations to come,” the mayor said.
Community leaders echoed those comments.
“The city’s plan is the only one on the table that remotely strikes a balance between environmental stewardship and recreational access,” said Sarah Mattinson, a member of the Mission Beach Town Council and owner of Olive Cafe.
Marcella Bothwell, chair of the city’s Parks and Recreation Board, said the compromises in the plan came after thousands of hours of hearings and negotiations.
“Compromise is hard,” she said. “It’s not perfect.”
Environmentalists said the plan is essentially a false compromise based on the mistaken idea that existing recreation uses in Mission Bay Park’s northeast corner must remain there.
They say the 4,000-acre park has plenty of recreation space when looked at as a whole, contending it makes sense for marshland to dominate the northeast corner instead of being weighed against recreation.
The city’s adopted plan would actually increase recreation space in the park’s northeast corner from 60 to 66 acres, allowing two more courts for tennis and pickleball and enlarging some playing fields to regulation size.
While the plan would triple marshland, wetlands and dunes in the area from 82 acres to 262 acres, a large coalition of environmental groups prefer a plan that calls for 315 acres.
“The City Council needs to take an aggressive stand today,” said Andrew Meyer, conservation director for the local chapter of the Audubon Society. “This plan, if improved, can be the first cornerstone of meeting our climate action goals and being resilient to sea-level rise.”
The revised Climate Action Plan that the council approved in 2022 calls for creating 700 acres of marshland across the city. The plan adopted Tuesday would create 180 acres, just over a quarter of that total.
New marsh areas — sometimes called wetlands — serve the dual purpose of removing greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide from the air and fighting sea-level rise by acting as a coastal sponge.
The plan adopted Tuesday would take many millions, possibly more than $1 billion, to fully develop. City officials said it almost certainly would be done in phases over many years.
Meyer said there is more than $3 billion in state and federal grants available for coastal resiliency projects.
The plan adopted Tuesday is a high-level master plan. The specifics of how the area would be reconfigured won’t be decided until city planners, with from the public, create a general development plan.
No existing activities would be forced to move until those decisions get made, city officials said.
The fight over Mission Bay’s northeast corner began more than seven years ago, when the closure of the De Anza Cove mobile home park prompted San Diego to explore how to revamp the entire area.
City officials decided in the 1990s that the 50-acre Campland on the Bay site would eventually become marshland so it could be ed with the existing Kendall-Frost Marsh Reserve north of Crown Point.
Kendall-Frost has the only remaining marshland in Mission Bay Park, which was essentially all marshland before it was aggressively dredged after World War II to create what city officials call the world’s largest aquatic park.
Because Campland would become marsh, camping would be relocated to De Anza Point, where the mobile home park used to be, and get less space.
New features in the plan include a nature center, a small boating area on the beach of De Anza Cove and an extensive network of multi-use waterfront trails.
