Santa Maria Sun / News

Laetitia project's road to development gets even longer

BY COLIN RIGLEY

A proposal to transform land currently occupied by Laetitia Vineyard and Winery into an agricultural cluster subdivision project has hit another snag in the development process.

The most recent problem: Is there enough water for the facilities?

If approved, the Laetitia project would include 102 residential lots, a sewage treatment plant, and a dude ranch, all spread across 1,910 acres. The project also requires the removal of 113 acres of grape vines, later to be replaced with 140 acres elsewhere on the property.

Originally proposed in 2005, the project’s draft environmental impact report wasn’t completed until late 2008. That draft is still undergoing
scrutiny.

On July 13, San Luis Obispo County supervisors approved a $167,487 contract amendment to the draft EIR for a peer review of the hydro geological analysis—a study of whether there’s enough water for the homes. It will be the second peer review in a year. The original water study was found to be incomplete, according to the firm Fugro West. Another firm out of the Bay Area has been hired to draw a clearer picture of the water table beneath Laetitia.

“It’s probably fairly rare to have a third party, or a second peer review,” county planner Brian Pedrotti said.

The county fronted the contract-
amendment costs, but the bill ultimately goes to the applicant, John Janneck, a Los Angeles-based developer. In total, the entire EIR could cost up to $357,522 once finished.

According to Mike Winn, who serves both on the Nipomo Community Services District and the San Luis Obispo County Water Resources Advisory Committee (WRAC), there’s probably not enough water to serve the project’s proposed
houses—maybe not even enough to sustain the winery operations in the future.

“They have no other source of water,” Winn said. “What’s in the fractured shale under them is the only water that they have and water that they can have. Those homeowners would be buying their home strictly at their own risk.”

Winn described fractured shale as an underground sieve. Unlike traditional underground basins, fractured shale is full of cracked volcanic rock, and even experts have trouble predicting underground water supplies in that kind of terrain.

Last March, WRAC warned in a letter to the county: “The greatest single weakness in the Laetitia project is that the water supply is uncertain.”

The letter also repeated past criticism that wine operations drained Los Berros creek, which could be made worse by homes.

Beyond water, the Laetitia draft EIR lists 23 environmental impacts that can’t be avoided. In fact, Laetitia creates impacts in all but four of the 13 possible categories listed under state law. In contrast, the highly contentious Santa Margarita Ranch Project had just 11 unavoidable impacts.

“Santa Margarita Ranch was the previous record-holder,” said Andrew Christie, chapter director of the Santa Lucia Sierra Club. “So yeah, this breaks that.”

It’s been speculated by sources close to the project that applicant Janneck had planned on his project going before a different Board of Supervisors.

“There’s a different board now,” Supervisor Adam Hill laughed. He said he hadn’t reviewed the project thoroughly and couldn’t yet give an opinion but didn’t “know how you overcome that number of [unavoidable] impacts.”

In fact, it appears Janneck did all he could in 2008—the same year the draft EIR was released—to ensure staunchly pro-development former supervisors Jerry Lenthall and Harry Ovitt remained in office. He contributed $1,000 each to Lenthall’s and Ovitt’s campaigns in January, and another $1,000 to Lenthall that May. However, the incumbents were unseated by Hill and Frank Mecham. As of press time, Janneck didn’t return a call for comment.

Though based in Los Angeles, the developer has a brief history in SLO County. He was behind the 1,320-home Woodland Hills project in Nipomo, which Winn said is the largest subdivision in the county’s history.

But the Laetitia project is bound to break all previous records. If it were still 2008, the project may have had a shot. But today, despite being under review for at least five years, it seems headed for denial.

“I would say it’s pretty clear that the board has gone in the opposite direction,” Hill said.