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A federal judge has blocked construction of a 314-acre mixed-use development project in California after environmental groups filed a lawsuit arguing it would “result in a significant loss of local wetland and vernal pool habitats” and threaten species, including a rare and endangered flower.
The ruling from Daniel Calabretta surrounding the proposed Stonegate Development Project in Chico states that “the Court finds that the government’s 2020 approval of the project is at least in part arbitrary and capricious,” adding that it cannot move forward until the completion of a “legally adequate Biological Opinion.”
“The location selected for the Project is host to seasonal vernal pool and vernal swale complexes, which are pools that form during the rainy season and dry out during the summer and fall months,” he wrote. “The vernal pools support a wide variety of wildlife, and the genetic makeup of species in a single vernal pool can vary from that of a nearby pool, making their interconnectivity critical to support the sharing of genetic information between the species.”
The Butte County meadowfoam – a “herbaceous annual found only in vernal pool habitat in Butte County” that is listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) since 1992 – and threatened species such as the vernal pool fairy shrimp and the giant garter snake call the area their home, according to Calabretta.
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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service describes the Butte County meadowfoam as a “small plant with white flowers that grows in seasonal wetlands along the edges of vernal pools.” It adds that the plant “is only found within a narrow 25-mile strip along (Rick Kuyper/USFWS)
The Stonegate Development Project would include 423 single-family residential lots, 13.4 acres of multi-family residential land uses, 36.6 acres of commercial land uses, 5.4 acres of storm water facilities, 3.5 acres of park and a 137-acre open-space preserve, the ruling said.
The court filing said that “if completed, the Project would permanently destroy 9.14 acres of wetlands, although some additional meadowfoam habitat may be established through mitigation efforts.”
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Calabretta wrote that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a Biological Opinion for the project in early 2020, which “acknowledged there would be harm to some ESA-listed species, but that the Project would not jeopardize the continued survival and recovery of the listed fairy shrimp, tadpole shrimp and meadowfoam.” It also did not analyze impacts on the giant garter snake, he added.
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The giant garter snake is among the species mentioned in the lawsuit. (Zarina Sheikh/USGS)
The lawsuit was filed by AquAlliance and the Center for Biological Diversity. They argued that the USFWS “failed to analyze climate change’s impacts on the ESA-listed species in contravention of the ESA,” according to Calabretta.
“It is true that the biological opinion references documents that themselves expressly discuss climate change and its impacts on the vernal pool species,” Calabretta said in his ruling. “But the biological opinion does not in fact expressly incorporate those documents — it simply refers readers to them and does not otherwise engage with their conclusions regarding climate change or work those conclusions into the biological opinion’s analysis.”
A vernal pool is seen at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge Complex in California. (Joe Silveira/USFWS)
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“The Court finds that Federal Defendants’ failure to consider potential effects on the ESA-listed giant garter snake was based on a faulty assumption that there have been no sightings of the snake within five miles of the project renders its Biological Opinion arbitrary and capricious,” he also said.
