Sierra Club sues Coastal Commission to halt mountain-top housing project in Malibu

The hillside ridge, as seen from Malibu lagoon, which would be destroyed if the Sweetwater Mesa project is built. Sierra Club has sued to halt the project. Photo credit: Jim Kenney

Sierra Club's Angeles Chapter has long been a defender of local mountains and habitats, and now it's again being challenged.

The Chapter has sued to stop the Sweetwater Mesa project in the mountains above Malibu which would forever change the face of the surrounding 28,000 acres of native chaparral habitat. The plan to build a complex of houses will permanent destroy this rare habitat, and there's no way to mitigate its effect. Once it's gone, it's gone forever.

Chapter activists worked hard over the years to block the development at hearing after hearing of the California Coastal Commission. The commission gave its OK to the plan that would destroy a mountain ridge in Malibu. The lawsuit calls out the Coastal Commission for violating state law in approving the project.

Specifically, the commission:

--unlawfully approved a project that was inconsistent with the California Coastal Act and the Local Coastal Plan. Sweetwater Mesa was designated as open space in the Coastal Plan; and

--violated CEQA by failing to do a proper environmental analysis of the project. So there's no way to enforce measures to mitigate the project’s effects.

The Commission rightly denied the project in 2011, but was subsequently sued and pressured by the real estate developers to reconsider its decision.

The project is located in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreational Area, one of the greatest urban parklands in the country. Roughly 54% of the 160,000 acres is public or otherwise protected open space that's home to coyotes, bobcats and other wildlife.

But lacking funds to buy all the parkland, scenic viewsheds, habitat linkages, watersheds and trail corridors that need protection, it's imperative that the protective policies of the California Coastal Commission and and the Los Angeles County Coastal Coastal Plan be used to protect the land.