Group Wants to Save Canyon’s Open Space : Suit Planned to Halt Penasquitos Road

Friends of Los Penasquitos Canyon, an environmental group attempting to preserve the North City canyon as open space, plans to sue a major developer it claims is raping the natural environment and violating the state Environmental Quality Act.

Leo Wilson, the group’s president, said its board voted to launch a legal attack against Newland California (formerly Genstar Southwest Development Co.) to halt the grading of a major roadway down Lopez Ridge from Mira Mesa west to Interstate 5 and the construction of a 1,300-unit housing development along the spine of land between Penasquitos and Lopez canyons.

“This is the worst violation of CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) I’ve ever seen,” Wilson, a San Diego lawyer, said Thursday. Work on the road and housing development has seriously damaged vernal pools in an area that the city and county have been attempting to acquire, he said. Wildlife habitat and natural vegetation also have been “irreparably damaged,” he said.

Newland’s president, Mim Scott, said the firm has received the necessary permits to proceed with the project, which was approved by the city almost a decade ago as part of an agreement under which the development firm deeded 1,800 acres of the Penasquitos Canyon land to the city as open space.

The road, Calle Cristobal, running 3.5 miles down Lopez Ridge, is necessary to serve the development and would also provide an east-west connector road from Interstate 15 to I-5 and I-805.

Also on Thursday, Earth First!, an activist environmental group, took more direct action against the development. About 19 members of the group plastered anti-development stickers on cars and on Newland’s offices at 9404 Genesee Ave. and occupied the corridor outside. Two members chained themselves to a balcony railing outside the firm’s door, vowing not to leave until all grading was halted at Lopez Ridge.

An Earth First! spokesman, Todd Schulke, said civil disobedience is “the only method left to stop this project.”

About 10 San Diego police officers responded to the disturbance call and arrested the two members chained to the balcony. The pair, Kenneth Zamba, 25, of Pacific Beach and Pamela Bell, 29, of Solana Beach were arrested on a misdemeanor charge of creating a disturbance and released on their own recognizance.