• 2020 Lame Duckery and Looking Forward (?) to 2021

    By Frank Landis, CNPS-San Diego Conservation Committee ChairI’m writing this on November 18, after listening to the Boardof Supervisors approve Otay Ranch Village 13 by a 4-1 margin, with Fletcher voting against. Sierra Club is already promising to sue, and they have a very good record against the County. Indeed, that record was part of their testimony, that they’re getting tired of suing the County, and winning, having the County pay their fees, and doing it over again. Supervisor Jacob asked them if there were situations under which they would not sue, and the general answer was that it was entirely possible, if the County followed its own General Plan and did something reasonable about climate change.CNPS will be considering our options going forward on this case. This project, among other things, plans to bulldoze 1,200-odd Nuttall’s scrub oaks (Quercus dumosa, list 1B) across six acres. They originally misidentified the oaks (in the DEIR, the oaks were stated to look like dumosa, but they were too far inland for the Jepson Manual description, so they were misidentified). When I pointed out that there are Nuttall’s Scrub Oaks east of the site, they changed it to “they’re dumosa, but it’s a small number, so it’s not significant.”Today, they claimed they would mitigate the 1,200 oaks in a yet-to-be-written revegetation plan, so there was no significant impact. Sigh.So why did this pass, aside from the fact that it’s the last big project that Cox and Jacob have been working on off and onsince the 1990s? That’s likely one big reason, that and Gaspar leaving the board and toeing the party line. Come the end of January, the number of Republicans on the board is going from 4 to 2, and everyone expects the County to take a political left turn. This project, along with a bunch of other joyless lame duckery, is the usual post-election: finishing up long-term projects and making controversial decisions the outgoing politicians can no longer be punished for.

  • Not in The Teens Anymore

    By Frank Landis, CNPS-San Diego Conservation Committee ChairAs I’m writing this, everything relates to Covid-19 and we’re already tired of reading about it. I suspect it will be the same when this comes out. Hope you’re staying safe and sane.Switching gears, I’m still dealing with conservation issues. One of the frustrating parts of this job is that projects inevitably are sent through at inconvenient times, just to make it harder to oppose them. Thus it is that Otay Ranch Village 13 went to the County Planning Commission on April 17, with notice given and documents posted a few days before Easter. Since I’m writing this April 15, I can only speculate that, despite overwhelming testimony against it, it will pass 5-1 or perhaps 4-2 and head to the Board of Supervisors. Why? Every General Plan Amendment (GPA) Project in the last few years has followed this pattern.This one is botanically odious because of the scrub oaks. They want to wipe out 6.2 acres of scrub oak chaparral, an estimated 1,200 scrub oaks. In their original draft EIR they said that they looked like the rare Nuttall’s scrub oak (Quercus dumosa), but since the Jepson Manual said that species only grows within sight of the ocean, that couldn’t be it, it must be the more common Quercus berberidifolia. I went online, looked at where Nuttall’s scrub oak has been found, and found that no, the project is within the physical range of the Nuttall’s scrub oak. In the final EIR I was surprised to find that they agreed with me and changed the designation. However, they labeled it an “atypical population” and declared without further evidence that bulldozing these 1,200 rare oaks without mitigation was therefore an insignificant impact.