Blueprint for MALIBU : Controversial changes are coming to the coastal zone under a new land-use plan for development, but most of the debate over its impact centers on the rugged Santa Monicas, where the stakes are highest.

Any time Linda Palmer glances through the glass rear wall of her house on Mulholland Highway, she is reminded of why she moved to the western Santa Monica Mountains 13 years ago. Her backyard, a leafy, sun-streaked spot, is dominated by a thick-limbed sycamore and a two-horse corral.

Whenever she wants, she saddles up one of her geldings and rides a quarter of a mile to the nearest of the equestrian and hiking paths winding through the neighborhood.

There were trails in suburban Hidden Hills, her former home, but in the rugged mountains above Malibu “you can go farther and the landscape is much more exciting,” Palmer said. The combination of canyon and coastal views, wild land and proximity to urban Los Angeles exists nowhere else.

Though Malibu is synonymous with beach to most people , the mountain territory is by far the largest portion of a 65,000-acre Malibu Coastal Zone protected by the Legislature under the Coastal Act of 1976. The zone extends five miles north from the shore, encompassing 53,000 acres of the Santa Monicas.

For nearly a decade, the region hung in limbo while Los Angeles County and the state Coastal Commission struggled to reach agreement on a Malibu land-use plan, a blueprint for development of the area’s shoreline, flatlands and mountains. Most construction was put on hold while talks dragged on, with the county concentrating on property owners’ rights and the state emphasizing environmental safeguards.

Late last year, though, a bargain was struck and a plan adopted. For the first time, the county and the state agreed on a vision for the future of this part of the Santa Monica Mountains.

130-Page Document

Controversial changes are coming. The extent of those changes is not readily apparent in the 130-page document. The plan’s policies are couched in dry bureaucratic jargon, but its many technical guidelines about grading, lot sizes and the siting of buildings could add up to a sizable impact on the mountains. The nature of that impact is a matter of debate between environmental activists and property owners.

“The canyons and hillsides were the most difficult part of the process,” said Steve Scholl, who supervised the Malibu plan for the Coastal Commission. “ . . . A lot of the beachfront’s already built. The mountains still really are pretty open, surprisingly open. Maybe people felt the stakes were higher there.”

About 2,200 houses are scattered through the entire mountain area of the zone. But other people want a share. Thousands of acres have been purchased for state and federal parks so inland residents can escape city crowds.

Thousands more are owned by individuals who want to build homes.

County Planning Director Norman Murdoch bills the new plan as “a creative compromise” among the competing interests of residents, would-be residents and visitors from around the Los Angeles Basin.

But the plan’s design for the mountains has drawn fire from both flanks.

Residents and environmentalists say it doesn’t offer enough protection against bulldozing and overbuilding that could scar the slopes, flatten peaks and silt canyon streams--endangering homes and affecting wildlife enough to alter the rural ambiance that lures people there in the first place.

Aspiring home builders say the plan is too restrictive. They add that the new bureaucracy it sets up will delay construction on their property even longer. Some of them are challenging the coastal zone boundary line, seeking to exclude more than 6,000 lots from special regulations. They point to a recent U. S. Supreme Court decision that property owners who are denied the use of their land by zoning restrictions are entitled to compensation. And they mutter threats about seeking damages in court.

The county expects to spend another year or two creating specific ordinances to put the plan into practice. Until those rules have been approved by the Coastal Commission, the state panel will keep final authority over building permits in the zone.

But the land-use plan now forms the basis for both county and commission decisions, so permit applicants generally know what to expect.

Under the plan, the number of houses in the Malibu mountains could more than double. The Coastal Commission estimates that the plan’s guidelines would allow another 3,255 homes to be built in the hills. A 1,200-home limit has been placed on so-called “rural villages,” where 5,400 tiny lots originally designed for cabins and tents were created during the 1920s.

The plan also calls for about 150 miles of public trails that will be donated by builders. Eight canyons and swaths of land connecting them have been designated for extra building restrictions to accommodate plants and animals.

Critics on one side say the special rules for environmentally sensitive areas are too vague to be meaningful. And they say the 1,200-home cap for rural villages is arbitrary, leaving it open to legal challenge that could pave the way for many more cabin-lot homes. “I don’t believe the county’s beautiful words,” said Leon Cooper, president of the Malibu Township Council, a civic group representing about 1,000 families.

Landowners’ Rights

Critics on the other side say the county bargained away the rights of individual landowners. “The mountain people are the people that have been suffering the most with this,” said Bob Heagy, president of Concerned Citizens for Property Rights, representing about 500 mountain landowners. “Nobody likes to be told what to do and what not to do, particularly where their life’s investment is.

“I’ve lived in Malibu for 30-some years,” Heagy said. “Ever since I’ve been here, everybody that moves in, they want to be the last one. I’ve told some of the Sierra Clubbers they’re campaigning for the wrong thing. ‘You ought to be campaigning for birth control,’ I tell them. . . . You can’t stop people from coming or building or wanting to live in a house.”

The mountains that are the focus of all this anger and attention don’t seem so special from Pacific Coast Highway.

But to the north, the narrow roads twist upward to expose a different world. Out of sight of the highway, the houses thin out and the slopes grow steeper. Traveling around a curve can reveal a view of miles of craggy peaks or an expanse of ocean blue.

Descending on foot from a ridge to the depths of an undeveloped canyon can bring on an eerie sense of isolation, less than 30 miles from downtown Los Angeles.

At the top of the canyon, a pair of hawks circle slowly, silhouetted against a distant wall of sandstone. A path leads down past asters, mustard plants with tiny white flowers, blue-blossomed ceanothus bushes and red-tipped poison oak. Coyote, mule deer and bobcats have left tracks.

Along the stream at the canyon’s bottom, in the willow’s shade, huge ferns fan out in all directions. They have grown here for a century or more.

Sensitive Areas

This is fragile land. The towering hillsides sometimes crumble in slides. Floods wash through the gorges. Fires sweep through the brush.

One canyon is home to an endangered species of sunflower. In another, the state is nurturing a small population of steelhead trout, a giant fish that was thought to have died out in Southern California.

Accordingly, the land-use plan pays extra attention to certain sensitive areas. The plan more than doubles the amount of land originally proposed by the county for special environmental protection, increasing the acreage from about 12,100 to about 29,000--nearly 55% of the mountains.

The major sections of protected land are large canyons where streams snake toward the Malibu shore: Zuma, Malibu, Solstice, Cold Creek, Tuna and Trancas canyons, along with Arroyo Sequit.

These have been designated “significant watersheds.” The label still clearly irritates Murdoch, the county planning director. In the late 1970s, Murdoch recalled, when his own consultants were telling him “ ‘this watershed’s important, that watershed’s important,’ my reaction was: ‘Aren’t you going hog wild?’ ” Nonetheless, the Coastal Commission pushed further, adding Trancas Canyon, which the consultants had left off the list.

Wildlife Corridors

The state also targeted sections connecting the major canyons for wildlife corridors, where fences and walls generally will be prohibited to give animals room to range in search of food or to escape fires.

Houses are permitted in the significant canyons but building is subject to restrictions. Among them:

No new lots of less than 20 acres can be created.

Bulldozing and earth moving “shall be minimized” to reduce erosion.

No development is allowed along the banks of creeks with a year-round flow. Those areas are reserved for open space, hiking or horseback riding. Construction must be set back 50 feet from the vegetation rimming other streams.

An environmental review board of technical experts will be set up by the County Board of Supervisors to advise county officials on development proposals in significant watersheds or wildlife corridors.

“When I arrived on the scene, the county’s policy was one housing unit per acre,” Murdoch said. “I think this plan now does a pretty damn good job of protecting the Santa Monica Mountains.”

Not so, say environmentalists, who claim that the protected areas may have been expanded but the safeguards themselves have been weakened to the point of collapse.

The state gave in to county pressure to delete a requirement for specific plans for each major canyon. Though the canyon plans were originally the county’s idea, Murdoch said the land-use plan’s other restrictions offer so much protection that he cannot justify more delays for property owners.

“That, to me, is the greatest single loss,” said David Brown, an activist and adviser to the Sierra Club and the state Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. “The resources are different in every canyon.”

‘Minimum Grading’

The state also bowed to the county’s wish to remove a 1,000-cubic-yard limit on grading the earth for construction.

“Things are not tied down now,” said Madelyn Glickfeld, a planner and Coastal Commission alternate who lives in Malibu. “The plan says the ‘minimum feasible grading.’ What is the minimum feasible grading? The minimum feasible for building as big a house as the applicant wants?”

She believes that “a whole lot of flatland people who want to live in the hills but . . . want flatland houses” will find the space by leveling slopes and filling in ravines. Without specific limits on earth-moving, she predicted, “I think you’ll see bigger houses with less pressure to redesign.”

Since the land-use plan was passed, Glickfeld said, the coastal panel has already granted a permit that allows an applicant to grade 12,000 cubic yards of earth for an 18,000-square-foot house in Malibu Park above Zuma Beach.

Said Brown: “It’s not just the house. It’s what has to be done to protect it.” Homeowners will have to clear brush to reduce fire danger, though the roots may be keeping the hillside in place. They may have to spray gunite--a concrete-like substance--on nearby slopes or run drainage pipes down a hill to minimize the risk of slides.

“There seems to be an unlimited number of people willing to buy these lots,” Brown said. “I can see why they want to live in the mountains, but I don’t think they know what they’re getting into.”

Ken Healing’s hopes for a Spanish-style, four-bedroom house have been on hold since he bought 2 1/2 acres atop Tuna Canyon for almost $40,000 a decade ago.

His land is nearly level. “The place where I am has been graded in the past . . . ,” said Healing, a 40-year-old stockbroker. “I really don’t see what harm a single-family dwelling is going to do.”

But Tuna Canyon is a significant watershed. And the Coastal Commission would not allow any building in significant watersheds until a final plan had been drawn.

Healing and his wife, Trudy, a 38-year-old preschool teacher, have had four blonde children since they bought the Tuna Canyon property. The family lives in a cramped two-story A-frame in Topanga Canyon, where Emilee, 10, and Tom, 7, share a room, while Mary, 4, and Alyson, 2, sleep on a futon at the foot of their parents’ bed. Pans and cups hang from the ceiling of the compact kitchen. The clothes dryer sits outside.

That house is a mere half a mile from the site where Healing thought he would be living by now. He checks on the vacant land every few months.

‘Nothing Ostentatious’

In the beginning, Healing and his wife would take a trail onto their land, where they could peer down the canyon toward a sliver of sea.

They would try to visualize their future home. “Nothing ostentatious,” Healing said. Added his wife: “We know where we want the orchard. We’d angle the house to get the best view and the breeze. We’d have a porch, a covered porch. . . . I’d like a nice kitchen. Maybe a dining room.”

These days, they can’t even stand on their own property. Over the years, the brush has grown so dense it hides the path. “We weren’t allowed to clear anything,” Healing said. He now takes the kids for hikes on the dirt road running past his lot.

Healing is well aware that he could have moved his family to more spacious quarters in the San Fernando Valley or the Westside. But “it’s so peaceful up here,” he said. So he chose to keep the family in Topanga, clinging to the possibility of a breakthrough.

With the land-use plan in place, “I’m more encouraged than I have been at any time in the last few years,” Healing said.

And yet he is still frustrated.

He wants to apply for his building permit, though he doesn’t like the land-use restrictions. “They are definitely going to make building more expensive,” he said.

Awaits Review Board

He needs to go through the permit process to find out how much his building costs will increase. He can decide then whether to keep the land or sell it. Before the plan was adopted, he had no choice. “Who’s going to buy it if they can’t build at all?” he asked.

His biggest problem now is waiting for the county to establish the environmental review board, which will consider the impact of each development proposal in significant watersheds.

More delays may force Healing to sell the land. “I can’t afford to keep holding on forever,” he said.

So far, he has paid about $6,000 in property taxes and $30,000 in mortgage for the vacant lot. He continues to pay taxes and mortgage on his Topanga house. “It’s kind of silly to go through this ordeal,” he said.

There are hundreds sharing Ken Healing’s dilemma, says Heagy of the Concerned Citizens for Property Rights. And while Heagy says the plan in its final form “appears to be the best we could get,” many of his group’s members chafe at the regulations as well as the delays.

“At what point has your property been condemned?” asked Tom Bates, a real estate broker who has served as president of the property rights group and as land-use chairman for the Malibu Board of Realtors.

Bates has contributed about $300 to a group of mountain landowners who have launched a campaign to challenge the coastal zone boundary. They claim that the border was drawn about 2 1/2 miles too far inland. The landowners say state law requires the coastal zone to end at the first major ridge line, but the coastal panel says the landowners are misinterpreting the law.

Lawsuit Proposed

County officials have raised the issue, and the Board of Supervisors recently voted to consider joining a proposed lawsuit by property owners that would slice about 6,000 inland properties out of the coastal zone.

Meanwhile, county planners are working on a set of regulations to carry out the guidelines in the land-use plan. Once the rules are approved, the county will be the final interpreter of the land-use plan and its ordinances. The Coastal Commission will hear appeals only on cases concerning property within 300 feet of the coastal bluffs or within 100 feet of a year-round stream.

Heagy, for one, is heartened by the prospect. “I think we’ll all be happy just to get the Coastal Commission off our backs,” he said. “We presume that the county will be a little more fair than the Coastal Commission’s been, a little less picky, a little less hard-nosed, maybe.”

Elizabeth Wiechec measures the plan by how it will affect the Cold Creek Canyon Preserve.

Wiechec is executive director of the Mountains Restoration Trust, a private, nonprofit organization created to protect open space in the Santa Monicas.

The trust owns the 650-acre preserve, located in the 1,900-acre Cold Creek Canyon watershed east of Malibu Canyon and west of Las Flores Canyon.

“It’s a wild place still,” Wiechec said. Only 25 people each day are allowed to walk the trails leading to the spiny shrubs, tiny flowers and gnarled oaks in the preserve. In Cold Creek itself, the presence of stoneflies, a breed extremely sensitive to septic and petroleum pollution, testifies to the water’s purity.

But Wiechec worries that the land-use plan will damage the pristine preserve. She believes that the balanced environment there will be upset by construction outside its borders.

‘Piecemeal Approach’

With the requirement for specific watershed plans taken out, “the piecemeal approach is bound to degrade the resource over time,” she said.

Wiechec would have liked to see a specific plan for Cold Creek Canyon that required land trades and redrawing of lot lines to locate houses where they would do the least harm to the preserve.

The trust does not own the ridge overlooking the Cold Creek preserve. If people build houses there, without the earth-moving limits, “you’ll get siltation in the creek from grading,” Wiechec said. As the homes go up, “you’ll get septic tanks,” she said. “You’ll get dogs.”

If the creek changes, the alders nearby could sicken or die off and the deer may lose their water supply. Cold Creek drains into Malibu Creek, so the effects could be felt at least a canyon away.

“You take out a little piece of creek here and destroy a hillside there and it reaches a critical mass,” Wiechec said.

David Brown has similar fears over the parkland held by the state and federal governments.

“We need to protect a major public investment,” he said.

In the mountain portion of the coastal zone, the state Department of Parks and Recreation owns about 6,000 acres, the state Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy owns 1,774 acres and the National Park Service owns about 7,400 acres. The park service alone has spent nearly $28.6 million to buy land in the area.

‘Prices Will Go Up’

Given the final version of the land-use plan, Brown believes that there is only one way to restrict building on lots near parks as much as environmentalists would like. “I think the ultimate answer is to buy them,” he said. “It’s do-able if we get on it fast.”

Heagy of the landowners’ group agrees. “These mountains don’t approach the beauty of parks like Yosemite or Sequoia,” he said. “But if they really want to do it, buy the damn land. Just give the people who own it what it’s worth.”

Now that the land-use plan has been adopted “prices will go up,” said Daniel Kuehn, National Park Service superintendent in the Santa Monica.

But buying extra land at any price is not a likely solution.

The Santa Monica Mountains national recreation area, a plan for the state and federal governments to cooperate in assembling a network of parks, was approved by Congress in large part because politicians were assured that the land-use plan would provide a buffer for the parks.

Such assurances “clearly helped to assuage the (Reagan) Administration’s fears that they would be getting into a . . . situation where . . they would be continually hounded for more funds for acquisition,” U. S. Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Los Angeles) testified at a state hearing in 1978. Beilenson introduced the bill creating the recreation area.

A shift in policy is doubtful. The public agencies involved in the park system have struggled every year for federal and state funds to buy property originally targeted for acquisition in 1979. About 20,000 acres from that “wish list” remain in private hands.

Without a drastic change, Brown said, “either it’s going to cost the public a lot of money or they’re going to lose what they’ve already got. They’ll lose it in the sense that it’ll be degraded, eroded.”