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Water, money shortages make store bad idea
By Celeste Doyle / Joshua Tree
On July 30, 2008, two lawsuits were filed challenging Yucca Valley’s approval of the Wal-Mart Supercenter. One lawsuit was filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, the other by a Consortium of groups in the Morongo Basin.
The Center’s lawsuit challenges the Town’s failure to properly analyze or fully mitigate the project’s significant environmental impacts on greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.
The Town and its promoters are quick to play up the area’s clean air, but the truth is that the air here is polluted, and routinely falls below state and federal standards. The majority of the Town Council believes it can do nothing about this, and so chooses not to burden new development with requirements that would limit local air pollution.
The lawsuit brought by the Consortium challenges the Town’s decision on several counts.
Chief among them are the Town’s reliance on out-dated market analyses, and the refusal by the majority of the Town Council to acknowledge or consider current market data, or the economic degradation and urban decay that such data show will come if the Supercenter opens.
Many local business people and residents spoke and wrote against this project, not because they dislike Wal-Mart (many said they were regular Wal-Mart shoppers), but because they know the Morongo Basin economy is poised to suffer, rather than benefit from this project.
Much of the market data used to justify the new store was outdated when the draft Environmental Impact Report was circulated in 2007.
Some of it has never been made available to the public.
To justify the project, the old data predict and the adopted EIR assume steady residential and economic growth in Yucca Valley, comparable to the few years leading up to 2007. That growth has stalled and is not likely to pick up again any time soon. There are over 600 empty homes in Yucca Valley. New home construction has virtually stopped, and the water district reports over 900 inactive connections.
Retail and commercial growth have also slowed to less than a crawl, and there is more than 119,000 square feet of vacant retail space in Yucca Valley.
The EIR also relies on an outdated and unapproved water supply assessment, which has been superseded by the governor’s declaration of a state-wide drought, and restrictions on withdrawals from the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta, the source for Yucca Valley’s supply.
The town is barely able to purchase enough water to meet current demand without having to tap reserves, and future supplies are uncertain at best. This means there may not be water for the new housing developments and new residents that are the justification for the Supercenter.
The approval for the Wal-Mart Supercenter is built on a house of cards, and it will come crashing down on Yucca Valley and the whole Morongo Basin if this facility is ever built.
The Center’s lawsuit challenges the Town’s failure to properly analyze or fully mitigate the project’s significant environmental impacts on greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.
The Town and its promoters are quick to play up the area’s clean air, but the truth is that the air here is polluted, and routinely falls below state and federal standards. The majority of the Town Council believes it can do nothing about this, and so chooses not to burden new development with requirements that would limit local air pollution.
The lawsuit brought by the Consortium challenges the Town’s decision on several counts.
Chief among them are the Town’s reliance on out-dated market analyses, and the refusal by the majority of the Town Council to acknowledge or consider current market data, or the economic degradation and urban decay that such data show will come if the Supercenter opens.
Many local business people and residents spoke and wrote against this project, not because they dislike Wal-Mart (many said they were regular Wal-Mart shoppers), but because they know the Morongo Basin economy is poised to suffer, rather than benefit from this project.
Much of the market data used to justify the new store was outdated when the draft Environmental Impact Report was circulated in 2007.
Some of it has never been made available to the public.
To justify the project, the old data predict and the adopted EIR assume steady residential and economic growth in Yucca Valley, comparable to the few years leading up to 2007. That growth has stalled and is not likely to pick up again any time soon. There are over 600 empty homes in Yucca Valley. New home construction has virtually stopped, and the water district reports over 900 inactive connections.
Retail and commercial growth have also slowed to less than a crawl, and there is more than 119,000 square feet of vacant retail space in Yucca Valley.
The EIR also relies on an outdated and unapproved water supply assessment, which has been superseded by the governor’s declaration of a state-wide drought, and restrictions on withdrawals from the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta, the source for Yucca Valley’s supply.
The town is barely able to purchase enough water to meet current demand without having to tap reserves, and future supplies are uncertain at best. This means there may not be water for the new housing developments and new residents that are the justification for the Supercenter.
The approval for the Wal-Mart Supercenter is built on a house of cards, and it will come crashing down on Yucca Valley and the whole Morongo Basin if this facility is ever built.
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ken@wondervalley wrote on Jan 13, 2009 2:36 AM: