Development of a $1 billion resort and housing project in one of the state's most wildfire-prone communities has been placed on hold after a judge ruled developers didn't adequately plan for what might happen when a wildfire erupts and thousands of people have to run for their lives.
The Lake County judge's ruling on the Guenoc Valley Resort could have sweeping ramifications for housing and business developments across a state where fires are growing in severity and local officials are under intense pressure to approve new building projects during a housing crisis.
The ruling, under California's powerful environmental law, also represents a major victory for environmentalists opposed to new housing and business projects in areas with extreme wildfire risks.
"The court recognized that Lake County failed in one of its most important jobs, to consider how a dangerous development in the direct path of fire can increase risks to surrounding communities," said Peter Broderick, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.
In this case, the environmentalists had a powerful legal ally. The California Attorney General's Office joined the Center for Biological Diversity in the environmental group's lawsuit challenging the posh Lake County resort.
On Tuesday, Lake County Judge J. David Markham agreed with environmentalists and the state that Lake County planners signed off on the development's environmental documents without accounting for what would happen when a fast-moving fire erupts and the resort's workers and guests all try to leave the area at the same time.
"A significant number of wildfire related deaths in California occur during attempts to evacuate," the judge wrote.
Markham said developers had done a good job of attempting to reduce fire risks. That said, they hadn't fully accounted for serious problems that could arise if a wildfire broke out. A portion of the project's 16,000 acres burned in 2020, the worst wildfire season in modern California history.
Markham wrote that the resort could bring up to 4,070 new people to the sparsely populated area of Lake County, where the roads could be overwhelmed during a wildfire.
"These people will likely compete with residents in the surrounding area for safe evacuation routes," Markham wrote. "The additional people competing for the same limited routes can cause congestion and delay in evacuation, resulting in increased wildfire related deaths. This is undoubtedly a situation where the Project, by bringing a significant number of people into the area, may significantly exacerbate existing environmental hazards; specifically, wildfires and their associated risks."
Officials with Lotusland Development Holdings, the group building the Guenoc project, said they were reviewing the ruling.
"We remain committed to working alongside the Lake County community and fire safety experts to ensure this project is built in the right way to improve wildfire detection, prevention and response throughout the region," Meredith, a partner in the Lotusland project, said in a written statement.
Moke Simon, the Lake County supervisor whose district includes the project site, said the ruling was "deeply disappointing."
"The investments proposed, including adding housing supply and even a fire station and helipad, offered the potential for lasting regional economic benefits. If the ultimate result of this decision is the project not moving forward, that will be a tremendous loss," he said in a statement released by the county.
State debates fire restrictions
Lotusland's chief executive, Alex Xu, told The Sacramento Bee last spring that the project would carve out "fire breaks" on the landscape, install high-definition warning cameras and take other safety measures. The first building to go up on the premises would be a fire station.
"I completely understand and respect the concerns about fire safety," he said at the time. "If we weren't confident in our ability to defend and prevent fires, or major wildfire events, we as business people wouldn't be committing (to) this kind of investment."
Lake County is one of the poorest in the state, and officials say the resort will be a major economic driver.
Located just over the line from Napa County, Guenoc Valley would bring luxury resort villas and upscale housing, along with a polo field designed by an internationally known polo star who counts Prince Harry as one of his friends. The project site would include vineyards and is part of an old country estate owned by Lillie Langtry, a famous British actress of the late 1800s.
The ruling comes as state policymakers struggle to balance the state's unrelenting demand for new housing and business opportunities, while also seeing lethal fires destroy entire communities nearly every summer.
In 2020, as some of the worst fires of the season were still burning, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed SB 182, a bill that would have required communities approving new developments in wildfire zones to build evacuation routes and raise fees to clear flammable vegetation.
In his veto message, Newsom said the bill would conflict with the state's goals of easing its crippling housing shortage. California has been building 100,000 to 120,000 homes a year since 2015, well short of the annual goal of 180,000 set by the state Department of Housing and Community Development.
A similar bill failed to get out of legislative committee last summer.
Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara has suggested the state should discourage new developments in fire-prone areas by withholding state funds for infrastructure "where risk from climate disasters is too high."
Fire evacuees dying in traffic
Concerns about evacuation routes backing up with traffic during frantic wildfire evacuations aren't unique to Lake County.
At least eight people died in their cars, stuck in traffic, as they tried to escape 2018's Camp Fire in Paradise, the state's deadliest wildfire that burned 10,000 homes and killed 85 people in a matter of hours.
Their cars burned over despite Paradise officials having conducted evacuation drills and developing fairly sophisticated evacuation plans. Experts said the reality was the routes out of Paradise were simply too few and too tiny to handle the town's entire population fleeing at once.
Ironically, Paradise had one of the better evacuation plans in California. "Destined to Burn," a 2019 joint investigation by the USA TODAY Network, McClatchy and the Associated Press found that just 22 percent of communities in California's most fire-prone areas have robust, publicly available evacuation plans.
Like Paradise, Lake County is one of the most fire-prone regions in the state. Thousands of buildings have burned there in the last decade.
It was no no fluke when a portion of the Guenoc Valley development site actually caught fire during the LNU Lightning Complex, the state argued in court filings challenging the project.
Much of Guenoc Valley lies within spots designated by Cal Fire as highly vulnerable to major fires.
"Wildfires have affected the Project site throughout its history," the lawsuit says.
The Guenoc Valley resort isn't the first time environmentalists have filed lawsuits challenging what they consider risky developments in other fire-prone regions of California.
Invoking the California Environmental Quality Act, two environmental groups secured a ruling this spring that temporarily halted the 19,300-home Tejon Ranch Centennial project near Los Angeles because of fire hazards.
The case was dismissed late last year when Tejon Ranch's developers and the environmentalists settled the case. The developer agreed to pay $1 million for electric vehicle charging stations to fight climate change and to reduce fire fuels in and around the project site, according to the Bakersfield Californian newspaper.
Shortly after suing over Guenoc Valley in Lake County, the attorney general filed a similar case over Otay Ranch Village, a pair of subdivisions in San Diego County, saying the fire dangers constitute a violation of CEQA.
In October, a San Diego County judge ruled developers and San Diego County officials failed "to consider meaningfully the issue of wildfire ignition raised by the" project.
The Lake County judge's ruling should force planners and developers "to see how absolutely crucial it is to consider evacuation challenges when building projects this risky," said Broderick, the environmentalist attorney challenging the resort.
"No developer should be allowed to make it harder for people to escape catastrophic fires," he said.
