The Gaviota Coast Conservancy is suing Santa Barbara County supervisors for allegedly violating land-use policies and environmental laws when the board approved a “mega-house and wall of dirt” on a prominent coastal ridge west of Goleta.

The suit filed Aug. 21 in Santa Barbara County Superior Court seeks to overturn a 3-2 decision by the board in July that would allow an 11,535-square-foot house on 17 acres off Farren Road. That foothill property, owned by Lynn Ballantyne, is just west of the Rancho Embarcadero subdivision and about a quarter-mile north of Highway 101.

In addition to an unusually large home with sweeping views of the ocean and mountains, the project includes a 1,368-square-foot guest house, a 1,798-square-foot garage and a 1,200-square-foot barn. An earthen berm, 10 feet high and 600 feet long, would be built to obscure the view of those structures from the south and Highway 101.

During three years of county review and public hearings on the project, Gaviota Coast Conservancy members and other critics contended county policies prohibit such a large and highly visible house on that prized stretch of coastline. A county environmental analysis concluded, however, that “the project would have no impacts or less than significant impact on aesthetics, land-use and other environmental resource areas.”

Those findings are challenged in the lawsuit, which probably won’t have a full hearing before a judge until sometime next spring.

“The Gaviota Coast Conservancy determined that this egregious project could not stand unchallenged,” the group’s president, Mike Lunsford, said in a written statement released Friday. “The supervisors ignored arguments that the house, barn, guest house and garages do not conform to the (county) General Plan, are inconsistent with the surrounding area, and that the approval violates CEQA,” the California Environmental Quality Act.

The dissenting votes in the board’s 3-2 decision July 15 were cast by its two South Coast representatives, Salud Carbajal and Janet Wolf.

Advertisement

Neither county lawyers handling the lawsuit nor the county’s official spokesman, William Boyer, could be reached for comment Friday.

However, county Supervisor Brooks Firestone, whose 3rd District includes the Ballantyne property, defended the board majority’s approval of the project.

“I don’t think we did” violate land-use policies or environmental laws, he said by phone Friday afternoon. “I thought the (review) process was very comprehensive. I would say it was a valid decision.”

Chuck Schultz can be reached at 925-2691, Ext. 2241, or cschultz@santamariatimes.com.

September 6, 2008