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Judge Upholds Ruling Against Fire-unsafe Subdivision in San Bernardino Mountains

10/27/2008: Ruling in favor of the Center for Biological Diversity and the health of the San Bernardino Mountains, this Tuesday California's Fourth District Appeals Court affirmed a lower court's decision that San Bernardino County's approval of a controversial Lake Arrowhead subdivision was illegal. The ruling echoes a 2006 opinion in a case brought by the Center, stating that approval of the development went against the county's own general plan's "unambiguous" requirement that a fire evacuation route be finished before an area project is approved. The court further ruled that the county went against its own development code as well as state environmental law by not identifying an adequate water source for the project. And all this is in addition to the county's failure to do an accurate analysis of biological impacts. Known as Blue Ridge Estates, a.k.a. the Hawarden Development, the project was planned for a steep slope near Cedar Glen, an area of the San Bernardino Mountains considered hazardous for wildfire that was already largely burned by the catastrophic Old Fire of 2003. Moving forward with the development would have impeded the area's natural cycles and put it even more at risk of fire (not to mention all the other devastating effects of development). Get more on the case in the Press-Enterprise. http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/center/articles/2008/press-enterprise-10-27-2008.html