Thumbnail photo: California Coastal commissioners stopped by the Pacific Shores subdivision during a visit to Del Norte County last year. | Photo by Jessica Cejnar Andrews Del Norte County supervisors on Tuesday stalled the proposed sale of 18 tax-defaulted properties within the Pacific Shores subdivision to the state, instead directing staff to determine whether they could be used to mitigate wetland damage caused by future infrastructure projects. Griping about a ratio the California Coastal Commission demanded during a runway safety project at the Del Norte County Regional Airport years ago, District 1 Supervisor Darrin Short asked if it would cost the county to hold onto the 18 properties rather than proceed with the sale. “We had to come up with 10 acres for [wetland] mitigation for every one acre we messed around with at the airport. It was plain extortion from the California Coastal Commission,” Short said. “My thought is the parcels we own in and around the swamps — Ruth Compound, whatever you want to call it — there are places there that are buildable. I’m thinking we could use these parcels to mitigate [that].” The resolution Short and his colleagues were asked to approve declared that the county didn’t need the 18 Pacific Shores parcels and designated them surplus land. The resolution also authorized administrators to negotiate a purchase agreement with the State Wildlife Conservation Board and the Smith River Alliance, which brokered the sale, according to District 3 Supervisor Chris Howard. The purchase agreement would have come back to the Board of Supervisors for final approval. The Wildlife Conservation Board had planned on incorporating those parcels into the Lake Earl Wildlife Area, Assistant County Administrative Officer Randy Hooper told supervisors. “In recent years, the state has provided funding through the Smith River Alliance to the Wildlife Conservation Board,” he said. “The benefit to the county is there’s a payment in excess of whatever the typical tax that would otherwise have been paid when [the parcels] became tax defaulted.” The sale could bring several hundred thousand dollars to Del Norte County, Hooper said. The area was initially purchased by the Tamco Development Company in the 1960s, the Associated Press reported in 2008. They paved 27 miles of roads when flood waters from the nearby lagoon was low and began selling half-acre lots for as much as $10,000 to buyers from Southern California and Hawaii. Development stalled in 1976 when the California Coastal Act was passed, according to the AP. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Smith River Alliance has been conducting a feasibility study ultimately aimed at acquiring lands from willing sellers in Pacific Shores for incorporation into the Lake Earl Wildlife Area. According to the SRA’s website, the goal is to purchase as many of the 400 remaining private lots as possible working with the California Coastal Conservancy, California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Wildlife Conservation Board. Last year Smith River Alliance representatives and scientists with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife hosted the California Coastal Commission at Pacific Shores to talk about the project. On Tuesday, Hooper said that the lands the county had previously acquired for wetland mitigation related to the airport’s runway safety project were desirable because they housed road segments that could be decommissioned. The roads were removed and the area was converted into more native habitat. Hooper said he didn’t know if that was the case with the 18 parcels the Board was being asked to sell. “My understanding from previous experience is that a lot of the parcels that were considered more desirable for mitigation purposes had already been acquired,” he said. “The ones that remain were considered less desirable or there was no participation from the owner in being willing to be part of the [mitigation] effort.” There’s also the question of how much it would cost the county to hang onto those 18 parcels. County Counsel Jacqueline Roberts pointed out that Del Norte had incurred a significant cost from cleaning up the area, which had long been a dumping site. There’s an ongoing cost to the county to patrol the subdivision and send code enforcement to continue to clean debris left behind by people who continue to dump in the area, Robert said. “It’s already been declared a wetland. It’s non-buildable,” she said. “Would there really be a benefit as far as mitigation? That’s a huge uncertainty.” Howard, however, urged Hooper to connect with the Smith River Alliance and ask their opinion on whether or not the parcels in question could be used for wetland mitigation. He pointed out that a proposal is on the table to raise the grade on U.S. 101 near South Beach as a guard against climate change and that “a lot of wetland” will be impacted. “Where that mitigation is going to come from in a land with 80 percent public lands is going to be a challenge,” Howard said, calling Short’s proposed “mitigation bank” a practical solution. “If there is opportunity to take a cursory look and evaluate those parcels for that potential I’m right there with Supervisor Short. We need to look ahead at these kinds of things.”