A coalition of Joshua Tree residents has sued San Bernardino County over the approval of a 64-home project in the midst of that 6,767-population rustic community, asserting the board of supervisors merely rubberstamped the development without doing an adequate environmental analysis.
On January 23 the San Bernardino County Planning Commission approved the 64-unit Lovemore Ranch residential subdivision on 18.4 acres on Alta Loma Drive between Hillview Drive and Sunset Road in Joshua Tree.
More than 60 local residents, contending that neither the project proponents, Axel Cramer and Dane Hollar, nor the county gave proper notice to the owners of land that falls within a distance of 300 feet of a project site. Residents who are to be impacted by the project therefore did not have an opportunity to weigh in with regard to it before its approval, they maintained, and they appealed the planning commission’s decision to the board of supervisors.
The board of supervisors, citing California’s Housing Affordability Act, rejected the appeal, giving go-ahead to the project on April 8. Those officials said state mandates calling on local jurisdictions to approve housing projects to ease the California’s housing crisis tied their hands, such that they had to approve the project.
Residents in Joshua Tree, including those living or owning property at the periphery of Lovemore Ranch and others living both proximate to the site and at a further distance banded together, functioning under the aegis of both the Morongo Basin Conservation Association and Joshua Tree Village Neighbors.  They retained San Luis Obispo-based attorney Babak Naficy. Nacify specializes in that province of the law relating to land use, the California Environmental Quality Act and environmental public policy issues.
He filed suit on May 5 in San Bernardino Superior Court against the county over its approval of the project, asserting the county did not abide by the California Environmental Protection Act nor the county code in approving the Lovemore Ranch project.
Cramer and Hollar, who in 2020 were then 27 years old and 24 years old, respectively, at that time approached the county, proposing on behalf of their company, Green Collar Builders, what ultimately evolved into the Lovemore Ranch project. There original concept involved construction of 31 ½ acre+ lots, which was in keeping with the half-acre minimum lot size traditionally adhered to in Joshua Tree. Subsequently, however, they changed the intensity of the development proposal and using Collar Builders more recently-formed corporate offshoot, Lovemore Investments, LLC , last year filed with the San Bernardino County Land Use Services Department an application to complete a 64-home project on the property.
Through the art/science/magic of technical innovation, they insisted, there would be more electricity generated on the property than would be used by those residing there, more water would percolate into the water table than goes into the aquifer at present as a consequence of natural rainfall and no native species of plants or animals would be disturbed by the erection of 64 homes. Moreover, according to the duo, the entire project was to have less than a net-negative carbon impact, meaning, apparently, that after the 64 homes are built and filled with residents, there will be less use of fossil fuel on the 18.5 acres where the homes are to be built than is in use there now.
Those appealing the planning commission’s decision to approve the project did not demand that the project be denied outright, but that the conditions of approval be altered such that the subdivision be restricted to lots of at least one-half acre. This would, the appellants maintained, allow each structure to have its own septic system and remove the need for the project to entail a sewage treatment facility.
In evaluating the project application, San Bernardino County Land Use Services consented to using a mitigated negative declaration, also referred to as an initial study, as the means of providing the project with its environmental certification.
Under the California Environmental Quality Act, a mitigated negative declaration is one of the least exacting types of development impact assessments.
At issue in the lawsuit is that the project as it is proposed is not compatible with the community and that the environmental impact evaluation was inadequate and the project’s environmental certification flawed.
The plaintiffs contest whether Cramer and Hollar should be allowed to put a hotel and a sewer treatment plant on the property next to people’s backyards.
The plaintiffs allege the project proponents made factually wrong submissions with regard to the traffic impacts, by stating there would be 70 vehicle trips resulting from the project in any given hour. The project proponents’ own numbers contradict that, the litigants say.
County planning staff took the proponents at their word and did not require any analysis of the project’s traffic impacts. According to planning industry documents, however, the plaintiffs maintain a typical 64-home subdivision will result in over 100 total trips per hour between 3 and 7 p.m.
The hydrology study, which the planning commission accepted, and the board of supervisors did not revisit, claimed that the post-development property would have only 88 percent of the stormwater flow of that the pre-development land experiences. That is outright wrong, the plaintiffs maintain. Once the property is paved for streets and parking and housing is put in, the ground will be more impervious and less able to absorb water, they point out. The amount of water running off the property will be greater and will therefore result in serious flooding of neighboring properties during deluges.
Naficy is calling for a more exacting environmental impact report.
Issues with regard to the matter are to be heard on July 31 at 8:30 a.m. in the Courtroom of Judge Corey G. Lee, in Department 37 at the 11-story courthouse in downtown San Bernardino.