County to Sue Anaheim Over Development Plan : Gypsum Canyon: Board hopes to forestall a 7,966-home project on land where it hopes to place a new jail.

The County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday ordered its lawyers to file suit against the city of Anaheim, charging that the city’s environmental analysis of a huge new housing development in Gypsum Canyon is legally flawed.

The supervisors’ action comes as county officials search for a way to press ahead with either a jail or landfill on the land, both strongly resisted by Anaheim officials. The lawsuit, which is to be filed by late next week, could drag on for months, meanwhile bottling up Anaheim’s plan to let the Irvine Co. build the 7,966-unit Mountain Park development in Gypsum Canyon.

“This is the only game in town right now. The county just doesn’t have any other options,” said Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, one of three board members who voted in favor of the lawsuit. “I don’t think that we can just cry uncle.”

Anaheim Mayor Fred Hunter called the suit “a waste of taxpayer money.”

“The county is going to have to spend money to sue the city. The city is going to have to spend money to defend itself. Measure J lost by a 3-1 margin. The people don’t want to put a jail there. They realize the best use for Gypsum Canyon is residential housing, and that’s what they voted to do.

“Besides, the county doesn’t have enough money to buy the property anyway.”

Dawn McCormick, a spokeswoman for the Irvine Co., called the supervisors’ action “unfortunate,” adding: “We believe the city and its consultants did a very careful job. . . . We stand behind it.”

The lawsuit represents the latest development in a longstanding and escalating battle between the county government and the city of Anaheim, both of which have long had designs on the 2,500-acre canyon site. Since 1987, a majority of the Board of Supervisors has supported building a jail on that site, and more recently the property has emerged as a leading contender for a new North County landfill.

Under one scenario, the county would condemn the land for a landfill and then convert a portion of it to a jail site.

“This is the land that we have planned on,” Supervisor Thomas F. Riley said. “Another site just hasn’t jumped out at us, and we need to keep the pressure on.”

The city, however, vehemently opposes the jail and landfill and has moved rapidly to approve the Irvine Co.’s Mountain Park development. That proposal involves the construction of schools, parks and other facilities as well as thousands of homes.

City officials have been joined in their opposition to the jail proposal by two members of the Board of Supervisors, Gaddi H. Vasquez and Don R. Roth. Vasquez’s district includes the canyon, and Roth’s covers Anaheim, which he once served as mayor.

Both supervisors voted Tuesday to oppose directing county counsel to file the lawsuit.

“It’s a stall,” Vasquez said later. “When you challenge an environmental impact report, what you do is force them to amend the environmental impact report, correct the areas that a judge finds were in error and then go ahead. So we appeal, they clean up the report. Then what? Then they proceed with the project.”

While those maneuvers are going on, however, the supervisors will consider a report suggesting that they acquire Gypsum Canyon to build a landfill there. That report is due within the next month or so, and the supervisors faced an Aug. 26 deadline for filing suit against the Mountain Park plan.

But Vasquez and Roth said they doubted whether the county--which is wrestling with a huge budget deficit and contemplating layoffs--could afford to acquire Gypsum Canyon, no matter how badly it is needed for either a jail or a landfill. A recent appraisal of the property put its value at about $56 million, and Irvine Co. officials have generally indicated that they believe the land is worth far more than that.

Although Orange County’s suit is not expected to be filed until next week, materials gathered by the county counsel’s office and sent to Anaheim officials lay out the broad outlines of the county’s objections to the environmental impact report.

For instance, according to the county documents, the city has not done enough to assess possible damage to deer and mountain lions. The report needs to be amended to include new information regarding those species, county officials maintain.

The county counsel’s findings also suggest that the city’s report may badly underestimate the traffic that would be produced by the new homes.

Moreover, the county findings call attention to the immensity of the proposed housing development.

“The proposed project will require the grading of an extraordinary 80 million cubic acres of earthwork,” the assessment states. “This amount of grading is more than the total amount of grading normally authorized for all projects within the unincorporated County of Orange in one year.”