Environmentalists argued that the project would destroy the habitat of the exceedingly rare Butte County meadowfoam, an endangered flower.
By Edvard Pettersson, Courthouse News Service
A federal judge on Thursday overturned the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ approval of a 314-acre mixed-use development in Chico, California, that environmentalists claim will destroy vernal pools that are the natural habitat of several threatened species.
U.S. District Judge Daniel Calabretta granted in part the request for summary judgment by the plaintiffs — the Center for Biological Diversity and AquAlliance — and halted implementation of the Stonegate Development Project until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has prepared a legally adequate biological opinion that the development wouldn’t jeopardize protected species.
The judge, a Joe Biden appointee, agreed with the two environmental advocacy nonprofits that the service’s 2020 biological opinion that was the basis for federal approval of the project failed to sufficiently take into consideration the effects of climate change on the protected shrimp and other species that live in the pools that fill with water during the rainy season and dry up in the summer.
Specifically, the judge said, the biological opinion refers to other studies and reports regarding the threats of climate change to, for example, the vernal pool fairy shrimp and the meadowfoam plant, but it fails to incorporate the findings of these studies in its analysis and conclusions.
“It is true that the biological opinion references documents that themselves expressly discuss climate change and its impacts on the vernal pool species,” Calabretta wrote. “But the biological opinion does not in fact expressly incorporate those documents — it simply refers readers to them and does not otherwise engage with their conclusions regarding climate change or work those conclusions into the biological opinion’s analysis.”
Calabretta also found that the federal agencies had failed to consider the impact of the development on the protected giant garter snake because they had incorrectly assumed that there hadn’t been any sightings of these snakes within five miles of the proposed project.
In fact, there have been sightings of at least one giant garter snake within five miles of the proposed site at a nearby location called Dead Horse Slough.
“The court appreciates that this conclusion is based on the single sighting of a giant garter snake 12 years before the no-effect finding was issued for the proposed project,” Calabretta said. “And it may well be that, after a more thorough analysis, federal defendants conclude the project will in fact have a minimal impact on the snake.”
Representatives of Fish and Wildlife and attorneys for the project’s developers didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling.
The project on the outskirts of the Northern Californian town is to include 423 single-family residential lots, 13.4 acres of multi-family residential construction, 36.6 acres of commercial use, 5.4 acres of stormwater facilities, 3.5 acres of park, and a 137-acre open space preserve.
According to the conservation groups, the project would also permanently destroy 9.14 acres of wetlands, although some additional meadowfoam habitat may be established through mitigation efforts.
The Butte County meadowfoam is found nowhere else in the world but Butte County, the Center for Biological Diversity said . The species has only 21 distinct populations remaining, and the project would destroy one population and further encroach on two others.
