DANVILLE — Contra Costa County’s approval last month of 125 new homes in a wide valley of protected open space has drawn a third lawsuit, this one by the city of Danville, which lies directly east of the proposed development.
The lawsuit alleges that because Danville opposes the residential project, Contra Costa unfairly prevented it from participating in negotiations that ultimately resulted in a joint agreement allowing the county to expand its urban limit outward into the vast Tassajara Valley to encompass the 30-acre housing site.
The agreement between the county, the city of San Ramon and the East Bay Regional Park District couldn’t have been reached had Danville participated because existing law allows the line to be expanded only when a majority of cities affected by the boundary shift agree to it.
“We were left out of the agreement because if they included us, then the board wouldn’t be able to make the finding they needed to make,” Danville City Manager Joe Calabrigo said last month after the Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to expand the line.
As part of the agreement, developers FT Land, Meach, BI Land and TH Land promised to dedicate 700 acres of land they own nearby as permanent open space in exchange for permission to build the 125 homes.
The majority of supervisors viewed the arrangement as a wise tradeoff.
In its lawsuit, Danville challenges the agreement’s validity and questions why the park district was included since it doesn’t have the same land use authority as a city or county.
And like a lawsuit previously filed by a couple of environmental groups, the city’s suit points out that once roads are built around the new homes, 50 acres will have been graded for the development instead of the purported 30 acres.
The lawsuit also cites a ballot measure approved by voters in 2006 that lays out the steps for how and when the county can move the urban limit line. One of them allows the line to be expanded only when the county proves it isn’t on track to meet its 20-year housing needs for residents.
“No such showing has been made by the County,” the lawsuit says.
Danville’s lawsuit is the third filed against the county in the past week. The Sierra Club and the Greenbelt Alliance — along with two individuals, one of them a former Contra Costa supervisor — filed a collective suit challenging the environmental impacts of building the new homes in protected open space.
The East Bay Municipal Utility District filed a separate suit that challenges the project on grounds it doesn’t have enough water to deliver to the new homes.
District officials have consistently stated there’s no water available for the project — especially during drought years,
The Contra Costa County Counsel’s Office couldn’t be reached for comment about the latest suit and has declined to comment about the two previous ones.
