Lawsuit Blocking Housing in Fire-Prone Area of San Diego County is Settled
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has announced a settlement with developer Baldwin & Sons of a lawsuit filed in 2020 by several environmental groups and joined by the state to block Otay Ranch Village 13, a massive housing project planned for an unincorporated, fire-prone area of San Diego County.
The settlement reduces the footprint of the project by 300 acres and allows the developer to build up to 2,750 homes at a rural site northeast of Chula Vista, an increase of 812 units over the 1,938 units that were approved by the county. The deal requires the developer to undertake a series of measures to reduce the wildfire risk.
The fire mitigation steps include installing high-standard interior sprinklers in multifamily units and exterior sprinklers on all perimeter buildings; a $30,000 contribution to expand a network of cameras deployed for wildfire surveillance in the area; a “wlldfire education program” for residents, including the restriction of high-risk activities on red flag days; and expanding Otay Lakes Road, the primary evacuation route, from two to four lanes.
Baldwin also has agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by making all of the buildings fully electric, with no natural gas infrastructure on the site; achieving a net-zero energy design for all single-family residential and commercial buildings; and creating a Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Fund of at least $15M, which will fund emissions reduction projects in San Diego County.
Under the terms of the deal, the developer will be liable for $2M in attorney’s fees incurred by environment groups including the Sierra Club, Endangered Habitats League and the Center for Biological Diversity, and the state, which joined the lawsuit after it was filed.
The settlement places a stay on the litigation until a revised project proposal that conforms to the agreement is approved by the county.
After the county Board of Supervisors approved a Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) for Otay Ranch Village 13 in November 2020, the lawsuit claimed the FEIR violated the California Environmental Quality Act because it failed to adequately address the risk of wildfire despite acknowledging the very high potential for wildfire hazards in and around the project site.
The lawsuit also claimed that the Otay Ranch development threatened the unique biodiversity of a nature preserve in the area.
“San Diego is a global epicenter for biological diversity including many animals and plants found nowhere else on Earth,” David Hogan, legal committee chair for the San Diego chapter of the Sierra club, said in a statement. “This settlement proves that we don’t have to choose between housing and environmental protection.”
Village 13, the next phase of Baldwin’s Otay Ranch master-planned community, originally planned to include 1,938 homes, a resort hotel, an elementary school, 40K SF of commercial space, a fire station and more than 1,100 acres of nature preserves at the northeast corner of Lower Otay Lake.
San Diego County was one of the few areas to see a decrease in the overall size of its “very high fire hazard severity zone” in a revised fire hazard map for Southern California issued last week by the state Forestry and Fire Protection Department, also known Cal Fire.
The new map, which ranks wildfire risk as moderate, high or very high, replaces Cal Fire’s last assessment, which was done in 2011. Local governments have until July 22 to adopt the maps as their own designations.
According to Cal Fire’s data, San Diego now has 157,338 acres with the very high designation, a 9% decrease from the 180,700 acres that had the highest level of wildfire hazard in the 2011 map.
Most of the decrease was seen in the city of San Diego, which saw its very high hazard zone reduced by nearly 30,000 acres. Chula Vista, adjacent to the Otay Ranch property, saw its highest hazard zone more than double in the new map, to 8,939 acres from the 3,717 acres with the very high designation in the 2011 survey.
Source: GlobeSt/ALM