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Sacramento
Bee
July 13, 2006
Julie Vandermost once made her living helping builders put up
houses, offices and factories. Now she does it by helping them
make up for the damage they do to the environment.
A former manager with the Building Industry Association of
Orange County, Vandermost is part of a growing cottage
industry that has sprung up in response to the labyrinth of
government regulations developers must navigate to build just
about anything in California.
Business advocates often complain that environmental rules are
job-killers. But Vandermost and the 14 people she employs owe
their jobs to those very rules.
Her company -- San Juan Capistrano-based VCS Consulting
Services -- specializes in preserving wetlands, or creating
them from scratch when wetlands are destroyed by new
construction.
The firm walks builders through the often-convoluted
permitting process controlled by local, state and federal
regulators. If the rules require that wetlands be created, her
firm will baby-sit the reworked terrain until it can survive
on its own. The company even sells the plants that regulators
routinely require be grown to compensate for native vegetation
the builders scrape away with their bulldozers.
Her clients have included some of the biggest builders in
Southern California, such as the Irvine Co. and Centex Homes,
as well as public agencies from the city of Anaheim to the
Orange County Transportation Authority, which themselves have
to get permission from other governments when they want to
build something.
"Our job is to build consensus," Vandermost says.
"Most of the builders want to do what they need to do so
they can get their permits processed and be done with
it."
The builders might be satisfied once their permits are in
hand. But Vandermost's work is just beginning then, especially
when she is dealing with wetlands. And we're not talking here
only about those large lagoons of brackish water you see along
California's coastal highways. Some of what Vandermost is
preserving would look like little more than a puddle to a
layman.
Anywhere two hillsides form a crevice into which water drains,
regulators are likely to consider the land part of an extended
wetland ecosystem, even if the drainage is only a few inches
wide.
"In Southern California, if you have water on your site,
if water flows into a concentrated area and makes its way
somehow to a receiving body of water, even through a storm
drain, then it is considered a navigable water of the United
States," Vandermost says.
"Waters of the United States" are the magic words.
They bring into the action the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,
which has become the prime regulator of construction in and
around wetlands.
Typically, builders must restore anything they disturb on a
2-1 ratio, leaving twice as much behind as they took away. It
is not uncommon for Vandermost to work on sites as small as
one-tenth of an acre.
Engineers analyze the drainage on the site and order up
grading that channels the water into a new place where it can
collect. Sometimes, if they are dealing with runoff from roads
or driveways, they design a swale that takes the water over
gravel and grasses to help filter out impurities.
Then biologists working for Vandermost place native plants
into the newly created wetland and nurture them to adulthood.
There are about 200 different plants that regulators typically
require.
"When we first started getting these plants, it was very
expensive and the quality wasn't real high," she says.
"We have a team of nurserymen doing the maintenance, and
they said, 'We can grow better plants than this ourselves.' "
So Vandermost leased five acres from an energy company with an
oil field in Brea, and the company now grows its own plants in
pots. She plans to expand that operation soon.
Once the plants are in place, irrigation lines ensure that
they have moisture when nature does not cooperate. Maintenance
workers might return weekly for two years to check on the
progress and tend to the plants.
"You have to get in there and weed the sites so the
little natives can grow and prosper," she says. "You
have to make sure the irrigation lines don't get chewed up by
the critters. You have to pick up trash and debris. It's a
major undertaking."
As the native plants start to thrive, the irrigation is turned
off. The habitat must sustain itself for three years before
the regulators will sign off on the project.
Vandermost's company is just one of many doing the same kind
of work. Others are heavier into the biology, supplying a full
work-up of a site and mapping out the various habitats. There
are also archaeologists and paleontologists who work with
builders. Vandermost said she even heard of a consultant who
specialized in dealing with American Indians when issues come
up involving the tribes.
Government is always prone to the law of unintended
consequences. In this case, the consequence seems to be good,
well-paying jobs. All of this obviously makes it more
expensive to build and buy a house. But the money, like the
water on these sites, is not simply being poured down a drain.
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