Vote Slams Another Door on Canyon Jail Plan : Development: Anaheim council approves environmental study of 8,000-home project where the county wants to build a lockup and landfill.

Closing yet another door on the county’s plans to build a jail in Gypsum Canyon, the City Council has opened its arms to a massive canyon development plan that calls for construction of nearly 8,000 homes.

The council’s approval of the environmental study of the Irvine Co.’s 3,179-acre Mountain Park came late Tuesday over the objections of environmentalists who continued the call for the land to be maintained as wildlife habitat.

With its decision, the council may also have bought a legal challenge from opponents of the plan, some of whom said there are serious flaws in the environmental study that should be debated in the courts.

Connie Spenger of Friends of the Tecate Cypress said Wednesday about council members: “I think they were ignoring us completely. I don’t think they have any idea what kind of biological impacts this plan will have. Either they don’t understand or they don’t care.”

Accompanied to Tuesday’s meeting by the group’s attorney, Spenger said her organization, which seeks to maintain the canyon’s delicate tecate cypress ecosystem and wildlife habitats, will soon be considering legal action.

At times, Tuesday’s public hearing resembled more of a court proceeding than a City Council session, as at least two court reporters took positions inside the chamber to make written records of the hearing.

In voting approval, council members said the project would be a “asset” to the city’s housing stock and represented more than two years of planning and “compromise” between the city’s Planning Department and Irvine Co. officials.

“This is a carefully balanced plan,” Councilman Tom Daly said shortly after the vote. “The open space dedicated in this plan amounts to probably the largest open-space dedication on a development like this in the history of Anaheim.”

Daly referred to the company’s plans to locate five parks within the development and to devote canyon land on the project’s boundary to permanent open space.

“I remember hunting jack rabbits out there,” Councilman William D. Ehrle said about Gypsum Canyon. “I believed that there would be a time when homes would be built out there. Now is the time.”

Although the council indicated its acceptance of the entire development, Tuesday’s action approved the environmental study but did not extend to the company’s overall plan for the area.

City Atty. Jack L. White said legal provisions require that the specific plan, including zoning modifications, be considered separately.

He said the plan could be brought back for council action in about five weeks.

Still, approval of the impact study dealt another serious blow to county officials who propose to build a 6,720-bed jail and place a new landfill in the canyon.

Proponents of the jail and landfill projects are banking on passage of a bill that would make it easier for the county to use its powers of condemnation to claim the tract.

The legislation, proposed by Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove), would give just three of the five county supervisors the power to condemn the property; under current law, it takes four supervisors’ votes to do so. The bill has passed the full Assembly and is awaiting consideration by the Senate.

The canyon is on unincorporated county land, but it is in Anaheim’s sphere of influence, meaning that the land has been included in the city’s plan for growth. Anaheim officials have said they would favor bringing the property into the city. Irvine Co. executives say annexation could be completed by the end of the year.

Kari Rigoni, a section chief with the Orange County Environmental Management Agency, told the council that the housing would preclude the county’s plans for the jail and landfill.

She said available landfill capacity in the area is rapidly declining.

“Gypsum Canyon is still considered a prime location for a landfill site,” Rigoni said Tuesday in her testimony.

Dominic DeMaria of Anaheim Hills United Homeowners spoke of potential traffic problems that the housing development would cause on the Riverside Freeway, which borders the development.

“This project represents a distasteful signature on our community,” he said.

Outside the chamber, DeMaria said: “The county wants a jail and a dump, and the Irvine Co. wants to give us something equally as distasteful.”

The council’s action came as no surprise to local biologist Paul Beier, who had previously told the city Planning Commission that the project would have a staggering impact on canyon wildlife.

“There will be a lawsuit on this,” Beier said.

The project leader of the county’s Mountain Lion Study, Beier said: “There are cougars and deer there and anything you might find in the Santa Ana Mountains. I wish people would look at the cumulative impact of this and develop an idea of what they want their landscape to look like further down the road.”

Irvine Co. officials defended the project, saying they had reached a “conceptual agreement” on the project with three environmental groups, including Friends of the Tecate Cypress.

Company officials said that 98% of the tecate cypress ecosystem would be preserved with the new development; that research on bald eagles nesting in the area would take place, and that plans had already been made to relocate one eagle’s nest now in the project area.

“We intend for Mountain Park to be a highly planned and quality residential community,” said C. Bradley Olson, president of Foothill Community Builders, a division of the Irvine Co. “That quality means a long-term commitment to the city of Anaheim.”

In addition to the homes in the canyon, expected to cost $200,000 to $500,000, the Irvine Co. wants to devote 179 acres to commercial use; build three elementary schools, a middle school and a high school, and possibly add a fire station.

Before Tuesday night’s action, the county’s canyon jail plans were probably most severely clobbered in May, when voters rejected Measure J, a tax measure that would have financed construction of a new jail.