WHAT WILL Ventura County be like in the year 2035 with an estimated 200,000 more people and how can we start planning for it today?

That is the task participants were charged with last week at the first of Compact for a Sustainable Ventura County's citizen workshops. The Compact is a broad partnership of the 10 cities, the county and various agencies, along with the Southern California Association of Governments, which funded the exercise.

The workshop was led by Ted Knowlton of the Planning Center who ran through a series of questions for the group before we began a mapping exercise. The consensus? Most of us felt with that with 200,000 more people, the quality of our lives would likely suffer.

According to baseline projections for 2035 on the group's website, the hours lost to traffic congestion will increase by 166 percent and carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles will go up 129 percent. We'll need almost $1 billion in new local infrastructure projects to handle the population.

And so we began in small groups to tackle the task of what urban planners should do to make life in the future comfortable for residents.

With a map of the county spread out before us which tracked where development and protected open space lies, we were given paper tokens for future housing and commercial areas, along with colored tapes for transit, freeways and hiking trails. 

OUR GROUP decided to invest in more mass transit opportunities with town centers situated near transit stations. These areas would encompass living, shopping and high-wage centers in one spot. To do this we had to trade in most of our single-family home tokens, a decision that didn't sit well with everyone in the group. We didn't add major highways, but added connector roads instead to alleviate congestion on major thoroughfares and freeways.

The exercise was a bit like playing Monopoly and just like that drawn-out game, we didn't quite get finished before it was our time to present.

Our Ventura workshop was just one of several scheduled throughout the county last week and next. Our input will be compiled and will help shape future planning decisions. It was a good learning experience for everyone.

What is apparent is that our single-car commuter lifestyle is not sustainable. New federal and state laws will also change the way we plan. And the sooner we change our existing mindset the better.

THERE'S AN EXPRESSION called "Hawaiian Time" which loosely means you get around to it when you can. It's the laid-back attitude of the island of Kauai which I just spent the last nine days visiting. So in the aloha spirit, please forgive my week-late commentary on last week's state budget vote. Also in the Kauai spirit, I dedicate this blog to the island's unofficial birds: the wild chickens that roam loose everywhere on the island.

My fellow Democrats in the state legislature: with some notable exceptions, you generally lack spinal columns. How is it possible that the majority party with all public polling on its side kowtowed to the minority Republicans and our governor in slashing billions to schools, children's health insurance, state parks, the elderly, sick and disabled?

Why, when recent polling showed that over 70 percent of voters, across party lines, supported a cigarette and tobacco tax increase that could generate $1.2 billion a year, did you discard the idea? (We are number 32 in the nation in such fees. Forty-six other states have raised their cigarette tax rate a collective total of 93 times since California last raised its tax in 1998.)

Why, when other polling showed that 73 percent supported oil extraction fees like every other oil-drilling state has, did you also discount that plan? These fees could generate $1.3 billion a year.

Big Tobacco and Big Oil have spent millions fighting these ideas and you let them win.

Why did you instead agree to let the state borrow or take billions away from our cities and counties, leaving local governments to further cut their own decimated budgets? The City of Ventura alone will lose an estimated $2.76 million this fiscal year to Sacramento's budget debacle, according to a calculation tool provided by the Sacramento Bee. These grabs are sure to trigger lawsuits.

Another tip: Our unions want to save jobs, too. Bring everyone to the table to talk and don't let wedge issues like public employee pension reform be used as last-minute ammo by our governor in the next budget talks.

AND NOW FOR THE EXCEPTIONS:  Kudos to State Sen. Fran Pavley, (D-Agoura Hills) who refused to vote for the raid on local gas taxes which would cut street repairs to cities, according to Star reporter Timm Herdt. The Assembly fought that one back, too. Pavley also voted no on over $334 million in reductions in state spending for developmental services.

More no votes from Democratic Senators Gil Cedillo, Lou Correa, Mark DeSaulnier, and Leland Yee on the main budget bill forced perennial Republican no voters Sam Aanestad, Roy Ashburn, Dennis Hollingsworth, Bob Huff, George Runner, and Tony Strickland into voting yes. This time around they won't be able to issue hypocritical press releases afterward saying they didn't actually vote for these cuts.

And hooray for our local Assembly member Pedro Nava (D-Santa Barbara) who stood up to the governor's sneaky plan to override the State Lands Commission's denial of the first new offshore drilling deal in state waters in 40 years. Irregardless of what you believe about oil drilling, bypassing long-established procedures and public decisions in a hurried budget deal is wrong.

"I think it should be very troubling to the public that a decision that was made through a public process in the light of day can be overturned by a few leaders behind closed doors," Victoria Rome, deputy California advocacy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council said. Nava, who is running for State Attorney General, gathered the support of more than 60 environmental groups, editorial writers and the state Democratic Party in defeating the oil deal.

These Democrats with guts will continue to have my vote.

IT IS AN unimaginably incongruous juxtaposition.

Face north and the sorry spectacle of the former Halaco metal recycling facility at Ormond Beach in South Oxnard makes you wince. Crumbling, toxic, graffiti covered and forlorn, it has to be the biggest eyesore in Southern California.

Face south and you find the restful solace of one of the few remaining coastal wetlands in the state. "We have just 4 1/2 percent of our coastal wetlands left, " said Jean Rountree of the Beacon Foundation. "This is out of thousands and thousands of acres lost to industry and development." She'd like to see the area become a haven for birders and environmental tourists one day.

Yet next to this environmentally sensitive site is a man-made blunder. Highly toxic and abandoned in 2004, the Halaco site will cost between $20-50 million to clean up, Allen Sanders of the Ormond Beach Observers told me. As I talked to Sanders and Paul Felix of Oxnard at the site, a charming little bird flew overhead.

"He probably has three eyes," Felix joked.

But Ormond Beach is no laughing matter. I've read plenty about the Halaco site. But until you've seen it for yourself, it doesn't really hit home. Now listed as a Superfund hazardous cleanup area, it could be eligible for federal stimulus funds.

NEXT TO THE DECAYING building sits a mountainous slag heap filled with toxic material. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, a poisonous alphabet soup of elevated levels of aluminum, barium, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, magnesium, manganese, nickel, thorium, and zinc is leeching into both underlying groundwater and sediments in the Oxnard Industrial Drain.

Removing it will be an arduous task, Sanders acknowledged. And just where do you move a mountain of toxic sludge to? Sanders shook his head.

In 2007 a warning was issued to residents that elevated levels of radiation were coming from the fenced-off property.

Halaco, which declared bankruptcy in 2002, also lost a civil complaint alleging that it had illegally disposed of used oil by burning it in its smelting furnace or pouring it over scrap metal which made its way into on-site settling ponds.

You have to wonder what the City of Oxnard was thinking about in 1965 when they allowed this to be built.

A little further down the road is the former Edison, now Reliant, facility, which has its own toxic issues. Nearby, a developer has plans to build even more houses.

Despite all this, the National Audubon Society lists Ormond Beach as one of the most important bird areas in California. For a bird lover, it's a treat to look out at the lagoon. The area is home to Least Terns and Snowy Plover. The sand is covered in native vegetation, some in spring flower.

A delight and a disgust, Ormond Beach is testament to the stupidity of mankind and the resiliency of the natural world.