Countywide : Seal Beach, Groups Sue O.C. Over Bolsa Report

The city of Seal Beach and a coalition of groups representing environmentalists and Native Americans on Tuesday sued Orange County and the Board of Supervisors, which last month approved a developer’s plan to build 3,300 homes in and around the Bolsa Chica wetlands.

The lawsuit alleges that the environmental impact report prepared by the county was flawed and violates the California Environmental Quality Act because it inadequately analyzed various adverse impacts associated with the project.

“The Orange County Board of Supervisors has created quite an outrage in the community,” spokeswoman Debbie Cook said at a news conference Tuesday at the wetlands near Huntington Beach. “It is clear that the board’s decision . . . was not the result of study and deliberation, but rather the result of its incestuous relationships with the developer.”

County officials--including Board Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez and Supervisor Jim Silva, who represents Huntington Beach--could not be reached for comment.

But Lucy Dunn, senior vice president of the Koll Real Estate Group, which is planning the project, said that the county’s environmental study complied with all laws and was adequately prepared.

“They’re just flat wrong,” she said of the groups responsible for the lawsuit. “We will work with the county to vigorously challenge (the lawsuit’s) contentions.”

In addition to Seal Beach, which has opposed the project because of its potentially adverse impact on traffic in the area, the plaintiffs include the Bolsa Chica Land Trust, Huntington Beach Tomorrow and the Sierra Club--organizations opposed to the project on environmental grounds--as well as the Gabrielino Shoshone Nation, a Native American group angered by the developers’ disturbance of Native American remains at the site.