State blocked SLO County property owners from building homes. Now they’re suing
Local property owners filed two lawsuits against the California Coastal Commission in San Luis Obispo Superior Court after the state agency allegedly illegally denied them permits to build homes.
Alireza Hadian and Ralph Bookout are suing the California Coastal Commission following the entity’s March vote to deny coastal development permits for their proposed homes on two lots in northwestern Cambria. The lots are located in what’s known as “tract 1804” along Cambria Pines Road.
In their lawsuits, filed on Monday, Hadian and Bookout allege that their properties had long-established rights to water service and were therefore exempt from Cambria’s building moratorium.
Such “existing commitment” to water service, the property owners claim, meant that they were not required to show that the construction and use of their homes would not have negative impacts on Santa Rosa and San Simeon creeks, Cambria’s only sources of water.
Each property has had a water service connection installed since early 2001, a few months before the community’s building moratorium went into place, and the land owners are billed bimonthly.
“Now, suddenly, the commission claims that tract 1804 is an illegal subdivision, is not exempt from the moratorium despite clear language that carves out the entire tract 1804 and that Cambria has no water to serve these lots,” the lawsuits say.
The lawsuits further allege that the Coastal Commission’s refusal to grant the permits to build the homes was an “unconstitutional taking under the Fifth Amendment” of the U.S. Constitution.
That means the Coastal Commission deprived their properties in Cambria of any beneficial use by rejecting the permits, Hadian and Bookout say in their lawsuits.
The Coastal Commission unanimously voted in March to deny the two permits after reviewing two staff reports that said the community simply does not have enough water to serve its existing customers, nor any new ones.
“The commission has an independent requirement under the LCP (local coastal program) to evaluate whether or not projects are served by a sustainable water source,” Dan Carl, the Coastal Commission’s district director for the Central Coast, said during the March 11 meeting. “It’s our recommendation based on the evidence we’ve evaluated that there isn’t a sustainable water source that can serve these projects. In such a case, the LCP requires denial that, to us, is incontrovertible.”
The Coastal Commission’s vote came a month before its staff sent a letter to the San Luis Obispo County Planning and Building Department pleading that it stops any new water-using development in Cambria. The commission sent a similar letter to the county regarding Los Osos.
Separately, the Coastal Commission sent a notice to the Cambria Community Services District that it has violated the California Coastal Act because its water extractions from wells beneath Santa Rosa and San Simeon creeks are harming the fish and riparian species that rely on those water sources.
The Hadian and Bookout lawsuits ask the Coastal Commission to vacate its March vote and grant the permits to build their homes, along with damages incurred for the alleged illegal taking of their properties.
This story was originally published May 13, 2022 at 11:20 AM.
