‘Today you could not pass that project’: Controversial Harmony Grove project hit with new legal challenge

After the San Diego County Board of Supervisors again backed a controversial North County housing development in October, angry members of the public shouted “see you in court” at the dais.

That promise continues to be kept.

A new lawsuit — the latest legal challenge to the proposal — is challenging Harmony Grove Village South over fire safety concerns, and could drag it into more courtroom battles between the county, residents and environmentalists.

Wildfire concerns, specifically how future residents and surrounding communities would evacuate during a wildfire, have been a rallying cry for opponents of the development for nearly a decade.

The new suit, filed Friday, says the county improperly relied on a dated fire protection plan for the proposed project.

The development’s fire protection plan dates back to 2018, when supervisors approved the project the first time before a series of successful legal challenges.

Since then, there have been updates to state fire code that were not considered by the plan, the lawsuit says, noting the county did not re-review the plan to consider these updates.

“We’re not going to get into a debate on how safe or unsafe it is,” said J.P. Theberge, vice chair of the Elfin Forest Harmony Grove Town Council, which sued alongside the Endangered Habitats League.

“That argument has already been made,” Theberge said. “The argument here is they didn’t actually review it.”

The lawsuit follows a November court filing from the Sierra Club challenging Harmony Grove South under the California Environmental Quality Act, and echoes some of its claims.

The Sierra Club argues the county relied on an outdated environmental review from the project’s previous approvals, ignoring new state rules for studying how future residents of new housing developments would drive.

County spokesperson Sarah Sweeney declined a request for comment on the lawsuit.

David Kovach, a managing partner with RCS Harmony Partners, the developer behind the project, said Monday that the company was committed to moving forward with the development.

“This project has been thoroughly reviewed and repeatedly affirmed over the past decade by California’s highest courts — and all state, county and local fire safety, law enforcement and land planning authorities,” Kovach said. “We want our community to know that lawsuits will not deter us from our mission to create housing affordability and diversity.”

The proposed 450-home development features single- and multi-family homes on a stretch of land between Escondido and San Marcos that is considered at very high risk from wildfires. Fire-safety concerns about the project center on its evacuation route — a single, two-lane road called County Club Drive.

Project plans call for converting part of the road into a three-lane bridge running over Escondido Creek. When supervisors unanimously approved the project in October, they directed county staff to explore how a second road leading out of the development could be built.

Previous legal challenges to the project have centered on its fire protection plan. In 2020, a judge found the plan inadequate and asked the county to reverse its approvals. The following year, an appeals judge reversed that finding but demanded approvals still be rescinded, this time over the project’s lack of carbon emissions mitigation.

In the new lawsuit, residents think the smoking gun is a public statement made by David McQuead, the chief of the Rancho Santa Fe Fire Protection District, which would service the development.

At a community meeting in September, McQuead said that “today you could not pass that project” without a secondary road leading in out of the development.

Under new state regulations, the development must provide an alternative to its lack of a secondary access, the lawsuit says. That alternative has to have the “same practical effect” on residents’ safety.

“The county’s failure to seek the fire district’s analysis under current, more stringent state and local fire laws harmed petitioners and other county residents, who were deprived of the benefits and protections of these laws,” the lawsuit says.

In its environmental review of the project, the county argued it did not have to reevaluate the fire protection plan because it was addressed years ago in its original environmental review and deemed sound by the court of appeal.

In a September letter quoted in the lawsuit, McQuead told Ebony Shelton, the county’s chief administrative officer, that unnamed county planning staff directed his fire district not to complete an updated analysis of Harmony Grove South’s fire protection plan. Still, he told Shelton he thinks the plan properly mitigates the lack of secondary access.