REGION: Fast-track lawsuit not going away

David Downey The seven-year fight over Liberty Quarry may be over, but a lawyer says he isn't dropping a lawsuit challenging Riverside County's fast-track process. Temecula attorney Ray Johnson said Friday that he will continue to work to nullify the Board of Supervisors' recent action to make surface mines eligible for accelerated review. That action, coupled with the board's Nov. 6 decision to put Granite Construction Co.'s project on the fast track, raised the specter of a vote approving the open-pit mine as early as Dec. 11. But the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians announced Thursday it had struck a $20.3 million deal with Granite to buy the site and settle the dispute, effectively killing the project. It was a huge mistake, Johnson said, for the county to add mines to a list of commercial ventures that may be fast-tracked if they invest significant amounts of money and employ many people. "I think fast track is inappropriate for mining projects generally," he said. "There probably isn't a more impactful project than a surface mine." Johnson filed the suit Oct. 23 on behalf of Save Our Southwest Hills, a Temecula-area environmental group. The county recently struck a deal in which Granite agreed to defend the county at company expense against four lawsuits related to the quarry. County spokesman Ray Smith said last week's sale of the quarry property does not negate Granite's obligation to continue defending the county if one or more suits are pursued. Meanwhile, Supervisor Jeff Stone of Temecula wants to change the way consultants are selected to prepare crucial environmental impact reports, such as the one written for Liberty Quarry. He said he will ask colleagues Tuesday to adopt a policy that ensures applicants won't receive favorable treatment. "No longer, with the passage of this new policy, will the proponents of a project hand-pick their consultants," Stone said at Thursday's news conference announcing the sale. "They will be picked by the county of Riverside from now on." In a huge twist in a nearly eight-year debate, the Pechanga band announced it would buy 354 acres for $3 million. The tribe and Granite also reached an agreement that reimburses the company for a significant chunk of the money it sank into the project. Granite planned to immediately withdraw its revised application. But Johnson said he had no intention of withdrawing the fast-track lawsuit. "It's bad policy, I think, for the county because you have a stated intent which is to try to get projects to create jobs," he said. "But I think the real intent is to prevent the public from having input on projects. And Liberty Quarry is probably the poster child for that." After more than 80 hours of public hearings on the original Liberty Quarry, and a February vote rejecting the open-pit mine, Granite submitted an application for a "new" project in July. That was the same month sale talks began with the Pechanga tribe. Granite's original project called for extracting up to 5 million tons of rock annually from the mountain just north of the Riverside-San Diego county line, for as long as 75 years. The "new" project was a scaled-down version of the original that sought authorization to mine a maximum of 4 million tons a year, for a maximum of 50 years. It also had a sweetener: a per-ton mining fee that would have generated millions for county coffers. After all the debate over the original quarry, the "new" project was on a path to skip a review by the Planning Commission and go straight to a hearing and potentially decisive board vote next month. There was a scheduled Dec. 11 hearing ---- a mere five weeks beyond the board vote that put Liberty Quarry on fast track. And according to a news release, a county staff analysis was going to be made publicly available just 10 days before the hearing. Johnson said he had major concerns with the timing. He said it would have given the public little time to react to what undoubtedly would have been a hastily assembled but voluminous report. "It's really bad policy that fundamentally deprives the public from the ability to really understand what's going on," he said.