San Jose Development Project Under Fire
Jul. 29–Santa Clara County sued San Jose on Thursday alleging that the city’s approval last month of intensified North San Jose development failed to properly consider the broader traffic problems that would result.
The San Jose City Council voted June 21 to allow an additional 20 million square feet of new industrial, office and research space, and 24,700 new housing units, in the nearly 5,000-acre Rincon de los Esteros redevelopment area in northern San Jose.
The lawsuit alleges that in approving the development, the council improperly certified a legally required environmental impact report that failed to adequately analyze expected traffic problems on county roads and feasible measures to alleviate them.
“We appeared before the city council to object to their failure to mitigate the negative impacts; we sent them a letter, and they essentially ignored us,” County Counsel Ann Ravel said.
The city of Santa Clara also filed a similar lawsuit against San Jose on Thursday. Milpitas’ city attorney said that city planned to sue as well, and would take issue with the project’s effect on traffic and wastewater treatment capacity.
Assistant San Jose City Attorney Bill Hughes said he could not comment because he has not seen the complaints.
The suit is the latest in a series of land use legal squabbles between the city and county. San Jose last year sued the county, accusing it of violating a land use pact with its plan for a concert hall at the county fairgrounds.
The county sued back this year, accusing San Jose of violating the same deal by undermining the fairgrounds music project, dragging its feet on annexing pockets of county land and failing to consult county officials before seeking state legislation to extend redevelopment areas.
The county’s latest lawsuit accuses San Jose of violating the California Environmental Quality Act. The state law prohibits cities and counties from approving development projects without fully considering the resulting traffic, pollution, resource depletion and harm to wildlife that would result, and taking reasonable steps to relieve them.
Environmental impact reports required under the act are supposed to inventory the expected problems, assess if they are “significant,” and if so, explore measures to avoid or alleviate them.
The environmental report for the North San Jose project acknowledges that it would cause “severe” traffic congestion at many major intersections in neighboring cities, especially during commute hours. Affected expressways include Montague, Central, Lawrence, San Tomas and Capitol.
The report said 22 expressway intersections would suffer from the project, but proposed mitigation measures for just six of them, the suit said. But the report does not propose mitigation for most of them on grounds that they are not in San Jose’s jurisdiction.
Ten intersections in Santa Clara, six in Milpitas and one in Campbell would suffer unacceptable traffic. The project also would significantly affect traffic on 72 freeway segments, the suit said.
Ravel said the city’s excuses for not fixing the traffic mess don’t cut it.
“We think the fact that it’s not in their jurisdiction is irrelevant,” Ravel said. “They’re the lead agency, and they need to assist us economically to deal with the negative impacts.”
The suit, filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court, seeks an injunction prohibiting San Jose from moving forward with the project. It also asks the court to void San Jose’s environmental impact report on the project.
San Jose Planning Director Stephen Haase said the city cannot legally commit as part of a project approval to mitigation it has no control over because it’s outside the city’s jurisdiction.
San Jose chose to press ahead with the North San Jose project because the city could not afford to wait for years until road improvements in neighboring cities are built.
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