An L.A.-based environmental justice group is appealing the Los Angeles County Planning Commission’s approval of Northlake, a proposed 3,150-home development in Castaic.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will hear the appeal from Golden State Environmental Justice Alliance on Sept. 25. The group is challenging the long delayed Northlake project on grounds that the county plans to relocate a pipeline to the project area without specifying exactly where it will go or what its environmental impacts will be.

“The County has not, apparently, identified where the pipeline will be relocated and we cannot confirm that it will not have impacts to habitat on the project site,” said the Alliance in its appeal.

The group also contends that the public part of the environmental review process should start over because the project would fill in an important stream, and that the environmental analysis inadequately addressed the effects the project would have on the Castaic Lake State Recreation Area.

“The (Draft Environmental Impact Report) should be recirculated because it did not and must address the impacts of increased density, noise and light upon the Castaic Lake State Recreation Area (SRA),” the Alliance said. “The (Final Environmental Impact Report’s) assertion that night lighting will be ‘directed away’ from the SRA does not mean those impacts will be reduced to less than significant levels.”

The group said that the county’s reliance on the 26-year-old Northlake Specific Plan was improper because the proposed project deviates from it.

“In addition, it appears that you are improperly relying upon the adopted 1992 NorthLake Specific Plan because you are adopting a Tentative Tract Map which is inconsistent with it,” the Alliance said. “For one thing, there is now a school site in the middle of the area designated for industrial development which is also poor and dangerous planning.”

The unbuilt portions of the Northlake development have been in the books in one form or another since the county conceptually approved the overall project in 1992. Current plans call for 588 single-family homes, 1,041 multi-family units and 345 senior units to be built on 1,330 acres on the west side of the Castaic Lake Reservoir. The remaining 610 acres would be developed at a later date in Phase 2.

The Planning Commission approved the project in April. The project site is located north of Lake Hughes Road and Ridge Route Road, east of 1-5, west of Castaic Lake and Lagoon in the unincorporated community of Santa Clarita Valley within the Castaic Canyon Zoned District.

The public hearing will take place at the Board of Supervisors meeting, Tuesday, Sept. 25, at 9:30 a.m., in Room 381 B of the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, 500 West Temple Street, Los Angeles, 90012. Interested persons will be given an opportunity to testify.

The Board will also consider the Supplemental Environmental Impact Report (SEIR) prepared for the Project, which includes the Final SEIR, Draft SEIR, Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program and the California Environmental Quality Act Findings of Fact, and a Statement of Overriding Considerations.

If you are unable to attend the public hearing, written documents in favor or opposed to the project may be submitted to the Public Hearing/Zoning Section, Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors, Room 383, 500 West Temple Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012 or at PublicHearing@bos.lacounty.gov with the Project No. in the “Subject.” Project status and information can be obtained online at: http://bos.lacounty.gov/Board-Meeting/Public-Hearings or you may also call (213) 974-142.

To view the appeal in its entirety, click [here].