Magazine June 2009

Magazine June 2009 THE LAST FRONTIER How efforts to build the largest master-planned community in California— 23,000 homes and a resort along the grapevine—have subdivided environmental groups By Edward Humes Company and its investors want to construct the largest master-planned Between the asphalt sprawl of the community California has ever Los Angeles basin and the fertile seen. This is the rough equivalent of flatlands of the Great Central Valley, dropping a Boulder, Colorado, into where the Okies flocked during the the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Dust Bowl days and The Grapes or a couple iterations of Harrisburg, of Wrath was set (and banned), a Pennsylvania, down into Yosemite. vast and surprising wilderness still thrives. After years of preliminaries, an initial environmental impact statement Broad pastures, granite-studded and a habitat conservation plan— hillsides, and icy blue mountain by Macduff Everton federally mandated studies that must lakes all lie within an hour’s drive be hashed out before a patch of grass of L.A. smog and concrete, hidden be at once humbled, enthralled, and can be disturbed—were released in plain sight as traffic snakes by on saddened by vistas that in years past for public comment in January. The the one major freeway through the defined California and the West by documents were pushed out the door Tehachapi Mountains. Ancient oak their plenty rather than their dearth. three days after Barack Obama took groves offer cool shade; thick stands The United Nations has recognized office and before new administration of piñon pines beckon in the breeze; the region encompassing much of the appointments had been made, despite forests of twisted Joshua trees grope ranch as one of 25 irreplaceable hot the new president’s memorandum to toward the clouds. spots of biodiversity in the world—a designation reserved for just 2.4 The landscape has barely changed percent of the earth’s surface. for thousands of years, which is why more than 80 rare or endangered The ranch’s owners want to build species continue to prey, roam, roost, a city there. Called Centennial, it flower, and rear their young here. would have 23,000 homes and at The nearly extinct California condor least 64,000 residents. They also comes to forage in small numbers plan to create a resort and shopping where long ago colonies nested in this malls, along with industrial parks, last Southern California wilderness, cargo terminals, and a system for this blank spot on the map 18 times delivering water no one in this the size of Manhattan. There is no drought-ridden state can spare. other place like it in California and Where cattle grazing and hunting few to rival it on earth. To stand on a have been the main activities for windswept hill at Tejon Ranch is to the last 150 years, the Tejon Ranch delay all environmental reports so themselves from contention by the Center for Biological Diversity, they could be reevaluated. signing the conservation agreement. whose representatives have called the agreement “a classic greenwash.” Normally this would have created It was a brilliant move by the This is the sixth group, the one that an uproar among California Tejon Ranch Company, a publicly opted out of the negotiations with environmental organizations. traded corporation with Wall Street Tejon. “If we can’t save a pristine Instead there has been silence. That’s money behind it—Third Avenue piece of wilderness that the United because a number of the biggest Management being the biggest Nations considers to be one of the environmental players in the state— investor, with nearly 30 percent of 25 most biologically important Audubon California, the Sierra Club, the company’s shares and a seat on on earth,” says Peter Galvin, the and the Natural Resources Defense the board. Sums as monumental as group’s 44-year-old cofounder and Council among them—that once the landscape are at stake. The raw conservation director, “what can we opposed the project as an ecological land alone was reportedly valued at save?” disaster are now working with the $1.5 billion in 1999, and if developed Tejon Ranch Company. Facing the as envisioned, the ranch would be On paper this scruffy outfit— likelihood of years of litigation, the worth up to 30 times that amount, a hodgepodge of 62 lawyers, owners of the Tejon Ranch last year perhaps much more when all is said biologists, activists, and ordinary agreed to something so extraordinary and done. More than 37,000 jobs folks—shouldn’t have a prayer that it fractured the environmental could be added to a struggling local against the political, economic, and opposition. They offered to dedicate economy. Completing the project legal resources behind SimCity. With up to 90 percent of the ranch land to would demand, on average, the offices scattered around the country, conservation, giving environmental construction of a new house every the center is headquartered in Tucson groups equal control of the property. eight hours, 365 days a year, for 20 in a cavernous, somewhat cluttered In one stroke, the single largest years. office in a former market, which the development in state history would staff must vacate one month each also become the single largest To those who see progress in a year when the landlord puts on the wilderness preservation project in bulldozer’s blade and beauty in city’s annual gem show. The space the state. the taming of nature, Tejon Ranch comes rent free and features a pair of is an irresistible plum: 270,000 rather dusty giant purple crystals that “This is one of the great conservation contiguous acres lying 60 miles from are too heavy to move. Compared achievements in California history,” downtown Los Angeles, a straight with operations like the Sierra Club, said Joel Reynolds, senior attorney shot up Interstate 5—the Golden the center’s $6.5 million budget is and director of the NRDC’s urban State Freeway transformed into the shoestring, but its biologists and program, when the deal was ultimate driveway to the ultimate attorneys are considered leaders in announced. “This agreement is the bedroom community. The New York Mount Everest of conservation.” Times admiringly described the plan as “Playing SimCity for Real.” There was a catch, however. Those The investors know the economic same environmental groups would downturn won’t last forever, and they have to drop public opposition to want their plans and permits ready the resort, the city, the industrial to roll as soon as the market picks parks, and all other development up. Sacrificing up to 90 percent of on the remaining 10 percent of the the ranch—more than half of which ranch, no matter what form it took. was too rugged or remote to ever be The greens would have to remain on developed—just may be the quickest the sidelines instead of digging into way to make that city a reality. those recently released reports. Five of six environmental organizations Standing in the path of this future that had been allied to fight the Tejon Ranch is a relatively little- ranch development have removed known environmental group with a small budget and outsize ambitions, by Mike Reagan their fields, particularly in the areas carte blanche to cut down ancient of marine and climate environmental trees on ecologically sensitive public law. lands. Its latest target is the most threatening source of environmental During the past 20 years, the Center damage, extinctions, and habitat loss for Biological Diversity has won yet—global warming—and Tejon close to 90 percent of its 500 cases. Ranch is ground zero. Though few outside the rarefied world of environmental litigation are The organization’s goal is to familiar with the center, evidence augment its usual battle over specific of its work is ubiquitous. Almost endangered species issues—in every species that since 2001 had Tejon’s case, the California condor— been grudgingly listed by the Bush with a broader campaign to show that administration as imperiled—a total projects such as Tejon are precisely of 63—has been protected because the sort of development, built far the center used the courts to force by Macduff Everton from existing cities and requiring the issue on a recalcitrant White residents to “leapfrog” through the House. The group’s most recent and hitting hard,” Suckling likes to say, outlying area to get to work, that widely heralded victory came when explaining the center’s technique must stop if we are to get serious it compelled the Bush administration of burying officials with flurries of about slowing climate change. It to grant the polar bear endangered lawsuits, investigations, petitions, argues that state and federal laws species protections and to specify and press releases. “It’s about should force developers at Tejon— global warming as the extinction jabbing the other guy over and over and elsewhere—to quantify their threat—a landmark finding. and over, before he has a chance contribution to global warming to recover.” Their aggressive use and then do everything feasible to Since the Endangered Species Act of science and lawsuits to compel eliminate that impact, from installing was passed in 1973, 70 percent of compliance with the Endangered solar roofs to mandating zero- the plant and animal species given Species Act and other environmental emission vehicles for residents. If the protection under the law have been laws has defeated off-roaders and developers refuse such mitigation, listed because of efforts by the offshore oil drillers, developers and then the project should be scuttled, center. More than 100 million acres Detroit automakers, adversaries, argues Kassie Siegel, the intense of wildlands have been preserved and an alphabet soup of government young attorney who runs the center’s as habitats for these endangered agencies from Washington State to new Climate Law Institute (and who species—an area more than twice Washington, D.C., and as far away dons her “Frostpaw the Polar Bear” the size of all the national parks in as Okinawa.

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