Environmentalists decry ‘foot-dragging’ on reports of remains in Bolsa Chica

Environmental activists criticized Thursday what they say was foot-dragging on reports about 174 ancient sets of human remains on a section of the Bolsa Chica Mesa. Half of those were reported just recently by archaeologists in November, according to officials from the California Native American Heritage Commission.

Bolsa Chica Land Trust Executive Director Flossie Horgan called it a “cover-up,” saying the public deserved to know about those finds when they happened on the land slated to become the Brightwater housing development.

Half of those remains have been reinterred, while the rest are yet to be dealt with, said Dave Singleton, a program analyst for the California Native American Heritage Commission.

Officials said they should have been told as remains were discovered, rather than hearing about 87 only at the end of last year. Efforts to reach developer Hearthside Homes have not been successful.

Anyone who discovers human remains has an obligation to tell the county coroner or medical examiner, Singleton said.

“That’s under California Health and Safety code,” he said. “The coroner’s then required to report to the Native American Heritage Commission.”

But Singleton said each coroner has its own procedure, and said he couldn’t speak for how the process was being handled with the Orange County coroner’s office.

She said she wished the information had been available when the California Coastal Commission was deciding on requirements to develop the property. The Land Trust seeks to preserve land in the area that it considers environmentally or otherwise sensitive.

“If the developer had been forthcoming with the human remains that have been taken out of [the site], then the Coastal Commission hearing would have been very different from what it was,” she said. “There would have been an opportunity then for mitigation to take place so certain areas on that mesa might have been preserved.”

The area was settled as early as 8,500 years ago, said Patricia Martz, an anthropology professor at Cal State Los Angeles. Those early Native Americans have links to the Juaneño and Gabrieleno-Tongva groups that still exist today, she said.

“I’ve been concerned about that site for a number of years,” she said. “It’s a world-class site, and if any site in Orange County could have been preserved, it should have been that one.”

Residents of the area carved “cog-stones” out of basalt that look like a mechanical gear and had some unknown religious purpose, Martz added.

“It was a village, a ceremonial site for a religion we don’t know anything about, having to

do with those cog-stones,” she said. “Close to 1,000 of these cog-stones have been found. This was a center where they were being produced and probably used.”

Singleton said he couldn’t speak to when all of those remains were dug up.

“We were made aware of remains that may have been identified at a much earlier time, considering that there was 30 years of pre-construction activity,” he said.