A brazen attempt to open up thousands of acres of northern San Diego County countryside to sprawl development has been derailed.

EHL leapt into action last year when tiny San Luis Rey Municipal Water District – heretofore a groundwater manager – sought to annex farmland and wildlife habitat, and import water to fuel leapfrog urban development. We filed litigation under CEQA against the project’s environmental impact report (EIR), as did the Pala Tribe and the Rainbow Municipal Water District. The annexation also faced hurdles at the San Diego County Water Authority.

According to a settlement reached in February, the district will decertify the EIR. Staff attorney Michael Fitts represented EHL in the case. We will now monitor efforts by development interests to find other sources of water.

In a related accomplishment in the North County, EHL worked with the San Diego Association of Governments on its regional transportation plan to maintain backcountry portions of Highway 76 as a two lane rural road, rather than expand it to four lanes. The County of San Diego’s new draft general plan, which steers growth toward existing development in the west, supported this good planning decision.