Coastal Litigation

Victory in Edge Sweetwater Mesa Litigation

On March 21, 2019, the California Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the Sierra Club in the Club's lawsuit against the California Coastal Commission challenging the coastal development permits the Commission issued in 2015 for the Sweetwater Mesa Development in the Santa Monica Mountains north of Los Angeles. Advocates for the Environment represented the Sierra Club in the lawsuit. Following the issuance of the Court of Appeal opinion, the Edge's lawyers sought review of the case in the California Supreme Court, which denied review on June 12, 2019. This denial provided a definitive end to the case.

The project was the brainchild of David Evans, aka "The Edge," the lead guitarist of the rock group U2. He should be ashamed of proposing such an outrageous, selfish, environmentally damaging project when his group espouses environmentalism so loudly. The Sierra Club opposed the 155-acre development located in the middle of a large undeveloped area in the Santa Monica Mountains situated between parkland managed by the National Park Service and the California Department of Parks and Recreation.

The proposed project included five luxury mansions, each close to 10,000 square feet plus swimming pools, garages, etc., on a prominent ridge in full view of many locations around the Santa Monica Mountains. The project would have had an outsized environmental impact.  The access road would have been a huge engineering project: almost half a mile long, requiring 168 reinforced concrete caissons, with an average diameter of 50 inches and an average depth of 56 feet. The road would have needed protection from almost a thousand feet of retaining walls and “stabilization devices,” due to the extreme instability of the hillsides. The water line, 8 inches in diameter, would have been a mile and a quarter long, and would have run under other properties in the mountains. The project would be highly visible from numerous locations around the Santa Monica Mountains and would encourage more development, by bringing infrastructure into an area that should be preserved as open space.

“There is a long road ahead for the Edge now. They’ll have to re-apply to Los Angeles County, and do a full Environmental Impact Report,” says Eric Edmunds, Chair of the Sierra Club’s Santa Monica Mountains Task Force, the plaintiff in the lawsuit. “There’s a very good chance that, even if they spend years going through the approval process, the County will deny them permits for the project, given past opposition expressed by some supervisors.”

Edge Development Project

"The Edge" is David Evans, the lead guitarist of rock band U2. When he and his Irish investors purchased the 155-acre site on which he wants to build five houses, it was zoned as open space. He therefore had no reasonable expectation that he could develop the land and build houses on it. He pushed forward anyway.

The land he wants to develop is smack dab in the middle of park open space in the mountains. The National Park Service and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy both oppose the Edge Project, because the site should be publicly owned and integrated into the surrounding parkland.

Map of the area surrounding the Edge Development parcels, with public lands shown in green. The proposed configuration of the five houses on the Edge Property has changed since this map was issued. The Edge Development would open up development of the privately owned parcels to the east, which are slated to become parkland.

Violations of the Coastal Act

The Edge started submitting applications for a Coastal Development Permit to the Coastal Commission in 2007. The permit is required for any development in the Coastal Zone, under the California Coastal Act. The Coastal Commission is required by law to ensure that proposed development complies with the Coastal Act and the applicable Local Coastal Plan (LCP) before issuing a development permit. The Edge Development Project does not comply with the Coastal Act in numerous ways, including the following:

• the Coastal Act and LCP are very protective of Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Area (ESHA), which is irreplaceable native habitat such as coastal sage scrub and protected plants. ESHA abounds on the Edge Site, and the development would disrupt or remove a lot of it.
• The Coastal Act and LCP require development to be sited to protect views from public areas along the coast, but the Edge Project would be highly visible: five huge houses right in the middle of a big area of open space.
• The Coastal Act and LCP require stringent protection of water quality, but the project would add impervious surfaces, creating polluted runoff, and would channel water in ways that would damage the hydrology of the area.
• The project would extend roads and water lines and other infrastructure out into the area that the National Park Service and California state agencies want to integrate into the surrounding parkland. This would encourage further development in this area and make it much more difficult to purchase parkland.

Violations of CEQA

The Coastal Commission also violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) when it approved the Edge Project. CEQA requires agencies to document all the significant environmental effects before it approves a project, but the Coastal Commission failed to do so in its staff report.

CEQA also requires the agency approving a project to evaluate a reasonable range of alternatives, including a "no project" alternative. The Commission didn't evaluate a no-project, or a single-house alternative.

And CEQA requires the entire project to be evaluated in a single document. But the Edge Development will require extension of Sweetwater Mesa Road in the City of Malibu. The effects of that road extension should have been evaluated in the Coastal Commission's staff report on the project, but they were not, another CEQA violation.

The Edge's Lawsuit Against the Coastal Commission

After the Commission denied The Edge's CDP application in 2011, he sued the Coastal Commission in four lawsuits filed by four separate law firms. The Commission settled that suit in a way that required the Commission to consider a scaled-down version of the project. The Commission approved the revised project on December 10, 2015, under threat of the lawsuit, which was still pending.

The Coast is for Everyone, Not Just the Privileged Few

As Steve Lopez said in a recent column in the Los Angeles Times, the Coast is for everyone, not just the privileged few. The public has a right to develop the Santa Monica Mountains as parkland. The National Park Service has been working with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and other public agencies on this project for decades.

The Coastal Commission has regularly stood up to owners of beachfront homes who have tried to exclude the public from the public beaches in front of their homes, because the Coastal Act mandates access for all. The public has rights to make sure that land it has zoned as open space remains open. It has the right to preserve irreplaceable habitat near the coast. And it has the right to make sure that public views of the mountains aren't marred by a series of huge houses placed in the middle of parkland. Too bad the Commission hasn't stood up for those public rights this time.

The opinions expressed on this page are those of Advocates for the Environment, not the Sierra Club.