It’s been nearly one year since the Colusa County Board of Supervisors filed a lawsuit against the Colusa City Council over expanding the housing development near the county’s only airport without subsequent review under the California Environmental Quality Act.
A hearing is scheduled in Sacramento County Superior Court at 3 PM on Friday, although the county’s claim the city violated CEQA may ultimately be barred by the statute of limitations, based on court rulings so far.
Until the courts can decide the merits of this case, the county is seeking a narrowly tailored preliminary injunction on the remaining homes planned for construction in the B-1 Compatibility Zone (a high risk and high noise impact compatibility zone containing the inner approach/departure zone of the airport’s only runway), which they claim puts the public at risk and jeopardizes the future of the airport.
The Colusa City Council in 2016 approved changes in the scope of the project to allow 180 single-family homes to be built rather than the original 84 homes approved by Colusa County in 2008, without notifying the Airport Land Use Commission of the changes, as required by the Çalifornia Public Utilities Code.
Hundreds of pages of documents have flowed back and forth between the court and attorneys representing the county, city, and developers who have argued their cases.
Attorneys for the city and developers claimed the county’s opinion had “no evidentiary value” because it was offered without reasoned explanation of why the underlying factors led to their ultimate conclusion that the public and airport operations are at risk.
According to court documents, the county’s primary concern is the construction of homes on 34 lots, some of which have been completed, that border aircraft flight plans and are closest to the airport.
The lawsuit was initially filed in Colusa County on Jan. 20, and moved to Sacramento County by order of the local court.
The expanded project has been in the works for several years, but received little notice from the public as to the changes in scope and elimination of certain mitigation measures until 2021, largely due to decisions being made behind closed doors, as alleged by county officials, which greatly limited the public’s access to information and the opportunity for them to monitor or participate in the decision-making process of their elected officials.
County officials claim in the petition they have a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits because the city has made no attempt to defend its actions.
The county also claims the likelihood they will ultimately succeed on the CEQA claim because the city and developers named in the lawsuit argued the statute of limitation has run on the 2016 approval of the expanded project.
“This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of CEQA,” the county’s petition states. “When, as here, there are subsequent discretionary approvals, the agency must comply with CEQA’s subsequent review requirements.”
According to the petition, Colusa County officials are challenging the Colusa City Council’s Nov. 2, 2021, approval of the Airport Land Use Commissions override without complying with CEQA’s subsequent review requirements – and that the city also has failed to enforce adopted mitigation measures the City Council incorporated into the project after annexing the project site and surrounding land into the city limits in 2015.
The county cites legal standing which upholds that mitigation measures must “actually be implemented as a condition of development, and not merely adopted and ignored.”
The county claims that the city’s process left the public in the dark as to which mitigation measures would be enforced and which ones would not.
Attorneys for the City of Colusa and developers have largely argued the threat of financial harm outweighs the possible harm to the county or the public, should the county prevail on the merits of the case. ■