040319-7

THE COASTAL commission staff’s grossly exaggerated prediction that almost all Monterey pines would die from pitch canker wasn’t just an innocent mistake.

Rather, the phony prognostication, which was denounced by scientists as soon as they were asked about it, was part of a campaign launched by a few bureaucrats in Santa Cruz and San Francisco to stop the Pebble Beach Company from putting in a new golf course — a campaign they knew stood a much greater chance of success if they could find a crisis that threatened the existence of the Monterey pine. And this “crisis” had to have arisen since 1988.

That’s because 16 years ago most of the land where the P.B. Co. wants to build its new golf course, along with hundreds of acres promised by the company for a Monterey pine preserve, was zoned by the coastal commission for homes — almost 1,000 of them. At the time, the zoning was seen as a major victory for the environment because it was much more restrictive than the county’s pre-Coastal Act land use designations in Pebble Beach.

Thus, the 1988 zoning triumphantly became the law of the land — not only for the P.B. Co., but for Monterey County and the coastal commission. They are all obligated to abide by it.

But the coastal commission staff has long ago forgotten the pride they once took in the adoption of the Del Monte Forest LCP. They now see it, essentially, as a gift to developers. Even the P.B. Co.’s greatly reduced ambitions — a golf course, 150 new hotel rooms, just 38 homes and hundreds of acres of forest preserve — gain them no credit. If the LCP allows even a small amount of new development it must be changed, the coastal commission staff evidently believes. But how to do it?

That’s where pitch canker, unknown in Monterey County in 1988, comes in. The LCP is no longer acceptable, the coastal commission staff claims, not because their opinions about development in Pebble Beach have changed, but because circumstances are radically different. A deadly disease now threatens the forest, they say. The zoning adopted in 1988, if implemented on the ground, might cause the extinction of the Monterey pine, coastal commissioners were told last month in San Diego.

Otherwise, coastal commission staff members obviously fear, their rush to have nearly all remaining native pine forest declared “Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Area” — putting it off limits to development — will come to a grinding halt. “If the forest wasn’t ESHA in 1988, why is it ESHA now?” is the question that will stop it. And without a dire pitch canker threat the answer will be: “It wasn’t, and it isn’t.”

That’s why the world was told the tall, tall tale that 85 percent of Monterey pines might succumb to pitch canker.