Newhall Ranch: The Fundamental Stall Tactics Apply, as Time Goes By

“If we haven’t actually stuck a stake through this thing’s heart, we’ll just keep trying as time goes by.”

--Avocado grower and Newhall Ranch opponent Jim Churchill, commenting on Kern County Superior Court Judge Roger Randall’s ruling on the proposed project.

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Aside from the vampirishly demonizing play on words, to fully understand this statement, you have to go all the way back to 19th-century England and the formation of the Fabian Society.

Taking its name from a 2nd-century B.C. Roman general, a group of intellectual English socialists, with a wealth of then-unlawful ideas, banded together to influence British politics. With the subtle avoidance of pitched battles they learned from Fabius “the Delayer” (as the general was well known), the Fabians were able to gradually permeate British politics and beyond to instill many of the socialist ideals we now see throughout Europe.

Along the way, the one thing they had on their side was time. Never in a hurry, Fabians have become remarkably adept at subtly permeating and influencing any political scene.

In America, this methodical process has brought about laws that various fringe groups can use separately, but in concert with each other, to achieve mutually beneficial goals.

It didn’t seem like much a few years ago when a fish (that would later be classified “invasive and nonnative”) that required calm, clear pools to survive put the brakes on a proposed reservoir at the headwaters of the Santa Clara River.

But now that a judge has declared that Newhall Ranch doesn’t have an adequate water supply, it turns out that efforts to “save” the unarmored three-spine stickleback have become quite the anti-development cat’s meow.

And don’t think for a moment that, even if it were able to, Newhall Ranch would automatically get the green light by simply coming up with more water. As time goes by, continued permeation and influence will likely create even more hoops through which future developers will get to jump.

More “endangered” habitats. More “new” discoveries. Another rare plant. Another day, another dollar.

Time is not an ally of the people who make their living building roofs to shelter the rest of us from the storms. This is precisely why the California Supreme Court weighed in with its 1990 landmark decision in a case Concerned Citizens of Goleta Valley brought against the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors.

Everything that happens in this state has to meet all the provisions set forth in the California Environmental Quality Act. Its creation based “on judicial and administrative interpretation of the National Environmental Policy Act” and with the environmental impact report described as its “heart,” CEQA’s sole purpose is “to inform the public and its responsible officials of the environmental consequences of their decisions before they are made.”

An environmental impact report was always intended to be a means of mitigating the impacts any given project could or would have on the surrounding environments. And, in its 1990 conclusion, the Supreme Court cautioned “that rules regulating the protection of the environment must not be subverted into an instrument for the oppression and delay of social, economic or recreational development and advancement.”

The court also warned that NEPA requirements “may not be turned into a game to be played by persons who for whatever reasons and with whatever depth of conviction are chiefly interested in scuttling a particular project.”

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The general public is too easily distracted and uninformed to realize any of this. And its knowledge is likely to only wane further.

There is, however, a very small segment of society that knows exactly what the laws are as well as how to ignore them and still walk away knowing that society’s pigeons will think that someone just did them a favor. It seems pointless to expect the pigeons to continue paying for a Supreme Court if lower court judges and public officials are, as time goes by, going to increasingly choose influence over the law.