COUNTYWIDE : Anaheim Project Sparks County Suit

Lawyers for Orange County government filed a lawsuit against the City of Anaheim on Monday, charging that the city overlooked key environmental issues when it approved plans for a huge new housing development in Gypsum Canyon.

The lawsuit, which could bottle up the city’s efforts to forge ahead with the proposed Mountain Park development, is largely intended to buy time for the county. A majority of the County Board of Supervisors hopes to build a jail or a landfill in the canyon, even though the county has no money budgeted for either facility and a ballot measure to pay for the jail was soundly defeated in May.

The lawsuit asks a Superior Court judge to block the city from issuing any construction or development permits until the city amends the disputed environmental impact report.

“It may sound somewhat futile,” said Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, a leading proponent of the Gypsum Canyon jail. “But given that it’s the only option we have right now, we have to play the game out and not just fold our cards.”

The county’s action represents the latest development in a long political and legal fight between city and county officials. At the center of the tussle is 2,500 acres of Irvine Co. land in Gypsum Canyon, just east of Anaheim.

A three-member majority of the Board of Supervisors in 1987 named that canyon as its preferred site for a new jail, reaffirming that choice last year. Anaheim officials, who strongly object, filed a lawsuit in 1989 challenging the county’s environmental assessment of the jail project.

That suit eventually was withdrawn.

Fearful that a jail could someday be built in the canyon, city officials have supported the Irvine Co.’s proposed Mountain Park development, a 7,966-unit project. The Anaheim City Council voted last month to approve the environmental assessment of that project.

But in its lawsuit, the county argues that Anaheim’s environmental review of the proposed housing development failed to take several issues into consideration.

According to the lawsuit, the city’s environmental impact report “inadequately deals with several crucial environmental impacts, including . . . grading and blasting, biological resources, land-use, traffic/circulation, (and) public services.”

The county also maintains that the city failed to mitigate possible environmental hazards and ignored alternatives to some of the problems that could be created by the project.

Anaheim officials, however, dismiss the lawsuit as merely a stall, and they criticized the county for wasting time and money pursuing a jail that the city says will never be built.

“I think the County Board of Supervisors is hellbent on putting a prison in a residential area,” Anaheim Councilman William D. Ehrle said. “They’ll stop at nothing.”