County Plans Appeal to Halt Prison Construction : Lancaster: The state has already started building the facility. Local officials criticize the project’s environmental impact report.
Los Angeles County will ask the state Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling and block construction of a 2,200-bed state prison on county land in Lancaster, a spokeswoman for County Supervisor Mike Antonovich said Wednesday.
The county appeal, however, will be made without the support of the city of Lancaster, which had joined with the county in a 1 1/2-year legal battle against the prison. Lancaster officials, who had already spent about $125,000 in legal fees on the fight, said Wednesday that they will accept the Court of Appeal decision rejecting the lawsuit.
Victoria Fouce, Antonovich’s assistant chief deputy, said the supervisor’s office directed county attorneys to file an appeal because the county remains opposed to the state’s selection of county-owned land for the prison.
Fouce said Antonovich also believes that the state should not pursue the prison at a time when the state budget crisis may be undermining a related prison planned for East Los Angeles.
The two prison projects were part of a “pain for pain†accord by the state Legislature in 1987 to give Los Angeles County its first state prisons--one in the heavily Republican Antelope Valley area, and the other in the predominantly Democratic Eastside of Los Angeles.
The three-judge Court of Appeal in Los Angeles issued a 19-page opinion on June 4 dismissing all of the county’s and the city’s challenges to an environmental impact report on the $207-million project. The ruling, by Justice Miriam A. Vogel, called the claims “wholly without merit†and “nit-picking.â€
The city and the county had argued that the state’s environmental report did not adequately consider other sites and configurations for the prison or its effect on surrounding areas. But the appeal court disagreed, saying the report “fully complies with the letter and spirit†of state law.
The court said the city and county had misperceived the purpose of such reviews. The court said state law “does not guarantee that every project will be environmentally perfect,†only that the public and government officials will be made aware of environmental issues.
The city and county had filed lawsuits, which were later consolidated, in January, 1990. A Superior Court judge in Los Angeles ruled against the city and county in September, 1990, and the state began construction on the 262-acre prison site about a month later.
Two of the three sections of the prison, totaling 1,200 beds, were originally to open next April, but the state Department of Corrections recently postponed the opening to October, 1992, a move intended to delay about $5 million of the costs until the state’s 1992-93 budget.
The prison site is between 50th and 60th streets west and avenues J and I on the west side of Lancaster. The site is owned by the county, which had hoped to use it for a future jail or other facilities. But the state has filed a condemnation lawsuit to acquire the property.
If the legal challenges are resolved, the state still must deal with a section of the “pain for pain†agreement that bars occupancy of the Lancaster prison until construction begins on the East Los Angeles facility.
The city of Los Angeles and others are challenging the environmental impact report for that project in a lawsuit pending before the Court of Appeal. However, unlike the Lancaster project, the state cannot begin building in East Los Angeles until all the legal disputes there are resolved.
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