Standards Are Tough, but Goal Is Significant : Judge May Force County to Address Developer Impact

Developers and environmentalists have long been at loggerheads in Los Angeles County. One example is the Westridge project in the Santa Clarita Valley that would build 1,800 homes and a golf course on part of one of the county’s Significant Ecological Areas, or SEAs. A related lawsuit may establish an important point.

Specifically, it could add weight to the long-held belief that the county has been lax in forcing developers to meet tough standards for projects in environmentally sensitive areas. A little history is in order here.

In 1973, a group called Coalition for Los Angeles Planning in the Public Interest sued Los Angeles County over deficiencies in its General Plan. It successfully claimed that the county had failed to adopt open space protections for its coastal, desert and alpine landscapes. County officials were forced to recognize 61 sites as Significant Ecological Areas, nearly half of which are in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys.

The same lawsuit also forced the county to rewrite its General Plan. Residential development within the SEAs was not ruled out, but the county was required to “preserve the county’s significant ecological resources and habitat areas in as viable and natural a condition as possible.”

Since then, the SEAs have been under constant assault from development designs. County planning officials have not closely monitored this and don’t know which areas remain intact or have been degraded. And by “upzoning” land within scenic areas (permitting a higher building density than previous zoning allowed), county supervisors also raised the cost of acquiring such parcels for parkland.

The county’s actions were called into question in the Santa Clarita case, involving the Westridge project and the Valley Oaks Savannah Significant Ecological Area in Valencia.

The Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment, the Stevenson Ranch Residents for Responsible Development and the Angeles chapter of the Sierra Club sued the county and its Board of Supervisors. They alleged that the county had violated its General Plan and ignored elements of the California Environmental Quality Act by approving Westridge, whose developer is the Newhall Land & Farming Co.

The petitioners in the case failed to persuade a judge to greatly scale back the development’s intrusion into the Valencia SEA in a manner that might establish a precedent for the county’s other Significant Ecological Areas. In terms of the project’s potential for increasing air pollution, however, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert H. O’Brien said the county signed off on an environmental impact report that “fails to provide any meaningful understandable analysis of air quality impact that society can expect” from the project.

Moreover, the judge said the county had failed to properly follow another standard. The county’s Development Monitoring System was designed to ensure that its revamped General Plan was carried out in those rapidly growing and unincorporated parts of the county, such as the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys. The DMS requires the creation of adequate water, sanitation, fire, educational and library resources before a project can proceed. Judge O’Brien ruled that “the data in the record appears only to pay lip service to the DMS requirements relating to schools and libraries.”

The judge’s final ruling here could demand that the county rescind the project’s permits, zoning changes and General Plan amendments. Little else has convinced county officials to carefully weigh environmental and quality-of-life concerns. Perhaps a judge’s gavel will do the trick, and the county will reconsider the impact of such a project on its only stand of valley oak trees.