One interesting side note to this court battle was touched on in the Monterey Herald's August 1 coverage of the hearing. Did the County violate its own ordinance prohibiting building on environmentally sensitive habitat? According to Corky Matthews, Conservation Chair of the Monterey Bay Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, the Monterey Pine is identified by the California Department of Fish and Game on its Special Plants list. This habitat should be protected under the Monterey County environmentally sensitive habitat ordinance. (This is also an issue for Pebble Beach's big build-out plans.) See related story on endangered species.

Regardless of the outcome of this suit, we ask our members to remember that the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the basis for so many environmental lawsuits, can only do so much to protect us from harmful environmental decisions. A great deal of discretion is granted by law to local governing bodies to choose what projects or developments to approve despite the impacts to the community and resources. Ultimately, when we don't like the decisions made by our government representatives, we have the right and the obligation to vote them out of office. Many people are now calling for just this solution to Monterey County "building boom" policies.

In 1996 Clint Eastwood rode onto that pastoral scene. He purchased one-third of Monterra and called it Caņada Woods North (CWN). The CWN plan proposes to take the wastewater from the as yet unbuilt Caņada Woods projects and Monterra for Eastwood's private golf course. The plan also consists of a complicated water system inextricably linking Monterra to CWN, Caņada Woods East, and Caņada Woods proper in all aspects of water generation and usage: potable, agricultural, and landscape irrigation--thereby ostensibly solving Monterra's build-out problems. While the approval for the old Monterra plan forbade use of water from off-site, CWN plans to rely upon Carmel River water already transferred once from agricultural wells near the river, eastward and upland to Caņada Woods proper.

Regardless of the propriety of this water maneuvering, the CWN Environmental Impact Report acknowledges another impact to the Carmel River's public water resources--that of a side-effect of pumping the bedrock wells on CWN/Monterra. After the Club and others raised the issue that this pumping's potential 41 acre-feet-per year (AFY) impact to the aquifer is not "insignificant" as claimed in the EIR, the developer's consultants and the county reanalyzed the data and concluded the impact was actually much less (6 AFY) than they had previously thought. While this reanalysis is dubious, the issue remains that cumulative impacts to the aquifer were not addressed. The neighboring September Ranch subdivision is expected to be developed next. It too can be expected to claim a need for an additional "insignificant" amount of water for its needs. What will be the overall effect on the aquifer of such incremental pumping? No one knows.

You've probably read about the distorted county approval process put in place for this project. The shortened time-frame and shifting project description kept the public off-balance and always behind in analyzing the proposal. An interesting but not surprising side-note: a similar truncated process was used successfully when Eastwood wanted to get his adjacent Caņada Woods East subdivision rushed to approval. In 1995 the Eastwood-Williams Trust bought that land from the Big Sur Land Trust, even though it had "scenic easement in perpetuity" status. The county then revoked the scenic easement, downplayed impacts to biotic resources­-and yet another dubious project can go forward.

Other concerns raised by the Club on CWN were a too-low water estimate for each estate and for golf course usage, and the lack of­-and need for-­a penalty fee for any Cal-Am hookups. We also noted the failure to adequately address the following: environmentally superior alternatives to that favored by the developer; the cumulative impacts from the combined Caņada Woods/Monterra projects, justification for building the golf course on one of the best remaining stands of the rare coastal terrace prairie grassland; lack of adequate enforcement for mitigations to protect special habitat; impacts from the additional houses that can be built (68 additional units); inadequate and incorrect traffic analysis; and (importantly) a project design which allows for major reconfiguration after closing the public review process.

Many of the concerns of the Club and other members of the public were not taken seriously by most of the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors. Many county responses were evasive or inaccurate.

Where do we go from here? As of January 4, we have been unable to get the county to release copies of the final CWN conditions (with the reason given that the Supervisors have not yet signed them--another casualty of the "fast-track" process), so we are therefore in the position of having to complete the project analysis based on what we can piece together without them. We are mindful of the fact that development can have much environmentally and morally wrong without necessarily allowing legal challenge. The Club is seeking to determine if legal challenge is warranted.

One thing is certain, developers in Monterey County (especially if they have money or a big name) can find themselves virtually escorted through the approval process by many of our county representatives. Developers are expected to do whatever it takes to get their projects approved. But county government is expected to act as guardian of the public interest, neutrally examining the facts. Attending the hearings on Caņada Woods North presents a painful picture of the failure of this expectation.