Judge overturns Harper Canyon subdivision over water concerns including a made-up basin.

Back in 2014, when the Monterey County Board of Supervisors was set to consider the proposed Harper Canyon subdivision, time was already on the developer's side. 

Noting that Harper Canyon Realty LLC had been pursuing the project since 2001, County Supervisor Simon Salinas was in favor of blessing the 344-acre project along San Benancio Road.

“The applicant has followed the rules that are in place,” Salinas said at the time. “If we don’t make that decision [to approve the project] here, then a court could make that decision.”

The board ultimately approved the project by a vote of 3-2.

Another year passed before nonprofit LandWatch and Meyer Community Group filed suit against the developer and Monterey County, claiming the project violated environmental law, then another three and a half years before a judge finally released an intended ruling on Aug. 30 of this year. 

In Monterey County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wills' take, the project failed to fully comply with the California Environmental Quality Act. 

Under CEQA, developers lay out the environmental impacts their projects are expected to have on everything from traffic to erosion to wildlife, in inches-thick environmental impact reports. Wills closely examined the EIR for Harper Canyon, and found it deficient. 

The project—owned by heirs of the late James Bond film producer Albert Broccoli—comprises 17 lots on 164 acres (with another 180 acres set aside as part of an expansion of adjacent Toro Park).  

The plaintiffs claimed the EIR for Harper Canyon was flawed on matters of traffic, noise, biological impacts and aesthetic impacts. Wills determined the EIR had adequately addressed those issues, but on another sticking point—impact to water supply—he agreed with the plaintiffs.

The EIR reported that Harper Canyon wouldn't have a significant effect on water supply in the Corral de Tierra Subbasin of the already over-drafted Salinas Valley Groundwater Basin. 

The first flaw, in Will's intended decision, is that the draft EIR got the geography—and therefore, hydrology—wrong. It stated the project was in the El Toro Groundwater Basin, which Wills found does not exist.

"The parties can point to no prior project, governmental designation, or map of any sort which contained such a designation," he writes.

"The [draft EIR] claimed that the project is located in a non-existent groundwater basin, the 'El Toro Groundwater Basin,' obscuring the potential impacts of the project upon its actual setting, the Salinas Valley Groundwater Basin." 

Beyond that, Wills found that the developer's EIR was selective in using hydrologic information and didn't fully capture the impact it would have on groundwater supply. 

Attorneys for Harper Canyon did not return calls requesting comment. It's not clear whether the developer will appeal, or if there is a potential path forward to update the water-supply portion of the flawed EIR. 

"What they want to do is low-density sprawl in an area with water supply concerns," LandWatch Executive Director DeLapa says. "This is exactly why LandWatch got started in the first place, to stop this type of nonsense. We only sue when we see something so egregious that it violates the principles our organization was founded on."