Sierra Club Sues Thousand Oaks to Reopen Dos Vientos Ranch Pact

The Sierra Club has filed another lawsuit against the city of Thousand Oaks for its handling of the 2,350-home Dos Vientos Ranch development, arguing that an agreement with developers should be reopened because of failure to discover alleged potentially devastating environmental impacts.

The suit, filed this week in Ventura County Superior Court, targets the second, 584-home phase of the massive Newbury Park development, approved by the City Council in July. Otherwise, it is identical to a 1994 Sierra Club suit against Thousand Oaks that is pending in the state Court of Appeal.

At issue is whether California cities such as Thousand Oaks are required to reopen development agreements with builders if they later discover that the environment will be harmed more than they anticipated--and more than state law allows.

Thousand Oaks approved a development agreement with the builders of Dos Vientos in 1990, but learned in an environmental review in 1994 that the project would have a greater impact than city officials previously thought on traffic and noise as well as native plants and animals.

“It’s the same issue: whether the city can say its hands are tied in a development agreement, so it has to ignore environmental impacts,” said attorney Stephan C. Volker of the San Francisco-based Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. “We believe that since Dos Vientos occupies a vital wildlife migration corridor, the city needs to re-review this development, its density and its critical effect on that section of Thousand Oaks.”

Dos Vientos Ranch is a hilly, panoramic property once owned by Malcolm Clark, the founder of Snap-On Tools. Conservation biologists believe it is one of only two remaining wildlife corridors linking bobcats, deer and other large mammals of the Santa Monica Mountains with those of the Santa Susana Mountains to the north. Closing that corridor would seriously affect the long-term health of the Santa Monica Mountains ecosystem, they say.

“If this project goes on as planned and you lose that corridor, we could see the end of large mammals in the Santa Monica Mountains in 50 to 200 years,” Volker said.

Critics--including lawyers for Operating Engineers, the Pasadena developer looking to build the homes--scoff at the existence of any such corridor. They point out that animals would have to somehow traverse increasingly urban Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley--not to mention the Ventura Freeway--to reach the Santa Susanas.

All such issues are beside the point, according to City Atty. Mark Sellers. Thousand Oaks’ development agreement with Operating Engineers is a legally binding contract and cannot be amended after the fact, he said.

“It doesn’t surprise me that they [the Sierra Club] are suing us, because this is nothing new,” Sellers said. “We disagree over the nature of a development agreement, and we will continue to disagree.”

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In 1990, Thousand Oaks agreed to allow construction of the Dos Vientos development in exchange for $12 million, 1,000 acres of open space and a list of other public improvements. In addition to Operating Engineers, builder Courtly Homes is involved in the Dos Vientos development, although the homes it plans to build are not a target of the Sierra Club suit.

In 1994, however, the city issued a new environmental report on part of the massive subdivision because the original analysis was more than 5 years old. The later environmental review showed that Dos Vientos would have more serious environmental repercussions--impacts that violated Thousand Oaks’ own General Plan as well as the California Environmental Quality Act, according to the Sierra Club.

With financial help from Newbury Park residents, lawyers for the Sierra Club sued the city in 1994 over a section of Dos Vientos. This week’s suit is based on the same premise but covers a different piece of the subdivision.

“Despite widespread opposition to Dos Vientos and its serious environmental harm, the city of Thousand Oaks remains wedded to the project and its badly orchestrated and irresponsible development agreement deal,” said Cassandra Auerbach, legal chairwoman of the Sierra Club Conejo Group, in a news release.

“These actions show a city government willing to sacrifice the public interest and the public safety for developer’s profits and long-term financial gain,” Auerbach continued. “The days of careful planning are gone. Our only resource is through the courts.”

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So far, Ventura County courts have not been kind to the Sierra Club’s argument. Last year, Superior Court Judge Barbara Lane rejected the group’s claims in the first lawsuit that Thousand Oaks had violated its own environmental guidelines, ruling that the city had acted properly.

Nevertheless, Sierra Club lawyers decided to file another suit Monday, and they are confident that they will win their appeal of the first suit.

Michelle Koetke of Residents to Preserve Newbury Park, which has been outspoken in its criticism of the city over the Dos Vientos development, said she and others are glad that the Sierra Club is continuing the fight.

“We’re very happy about this,” said Koetke, who plans to raise money in Newbury Park to help the Sierra Club finance the suit. “This is what we’ve been saying all along, that you can’t do things like that, that the environment is more important than deals with developers.”