Group files suit against Newport

Newport Beach residents’ group Stop Polluting Our Newport on Friday filed a lawsuit challenging the city’s environmental report on proposed changes to the general plan.

The city has been working for several years to update the general plan, which outlines future development in the city. Voters will get a chance to approve the update in the November election.

The environmental report is deceptive because it claims the general plan update will reduce traffic while adding more homes, Stop Polluting Our Newport spokesman Allan Beek said Friday. The suit was filed in Orange County Superior Court.

“There’s obviously something wrong if you put in more dwelling units but get less traffic,” he said.

The updated plan would generate fewer car trips than the existing general plan, if all development allowed in the plans was built. But both plans probably would generate more daily traffic than the actual number of car trips in the city today.

The suit questions about 40 aspects of the environmental report. Beek said the court likely won’t take up the suit until after the Nov. 7 election because the general plan update could fail at the ballot.

The plan will be on the ballot as Measure V.

But even if voters reject the plan, he said, the environmental report would be considered valid and could potentially be used to back a future general plan change.

Newport Beach Mayor Don Webb said he’s disappointed that Beek’s group is questioning the work of the many residents who helped craft the plan.

“We feel that we are reducing traffic from the existing plan,” he said. “Yes, traffic will increase over today — it’s going to increase over today if we do absolutely nothing in our city.”

The lawsuit is the second court challenge filed this month against the city over the November ballot.

The Greenlight residents group sued Newport officials Aug. 14 over how the city worded its ballot measure. That suit is scheduled to be heard in orange County Superior Court Sept. 7.

In 2004, Stop Polluting Our Newport, one of two activist groups that lobbied with the city for restrictions on John Wayne Airport, filed a lawsuit against the environmental report on a luxury hotel proposed at Marinapark, a project voters rejected.