Desert tortoise burrows dot Cindy Bernard’s property in Indian Cove, a sprawling residential neighborhood just outside Joshua Tree National Park.
Some are so well known by local humans that they have names. There’s Big Boy, a hefty male who likes to roam. And Squiggles, a female who leaves wavy tracks in the sand.
But when consultants hired by developers seeking to build a luxury eco-resort next to Bernard’s 40 acres conducted a field survey, they said they found no members of the species — which is listed as endangered by the state of California. And the city of Twentynine Palms, where the land is located, concluded the project did not require a full environmental impact report under California law.
"The same noise and light issues that might disrupt our ability to see the night sky or enjoy the quiet will also affect the wildlife here," Bernard said on a recent afternoon as she pointed out a crescent-shaped hole in the ground from which she saw a tortoise emerge just days before. "We're not against this project. We're against it here."
The proposed Ofland Twentynine Palms hotel is now the subject of a lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity and community group Indian Cove Neighbors, which Bernard co-founded. The groups allege Twentynine Palms failed to adequately assess and mitigate potential environmental harms including traffic, water, air quality and wildlife impacts.
They note that the 152-acre project site — an undeveloped swath of creosote scrub about a half-mile from the national park boundary — may support at least 10 plant and 17 animal species that are either listed as threatened or endangered or recognized as species of concern, including loggerhead shrikes, golden eagles, burrowing owls and, of course, desert tortoises such as Big Boy and Squiggles.
Read more: 'Gitmo' in the Mojave: How the Marines are saving endangered desert tortoises
The project is also slated for the center of a wildlife corridor that enables bobcats, badgers and dozens of other species to move between the national park and large tracts of undeveloped land, yet documents approved by the city contain only a cursory analysis of the potential impacts on wildlife movement, states the lawsuit filed Wednesday in San Bernardino County Superior Court. The lawsuit requests the court to direct Twentynine Palms to rescind its approval of the project.
“You’re placing a luxury glamping resort right in the middle of a residential area so there are going to be impacts on people’s lives and on the species that are coming through,” said Meredith Stevenson, staff attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. ”But the city just completely overlooked so many impacts and then found they weren’t significant because they weren't even disclosed or assessed.”
Stone James, the city manager of Twentynine Palms who is also an Indian Cove resident, declined to comment on the lawsuit. But he passionately defended the project, saying it will provide much-needed jobs and revenue to an area where many struggle to eat. (The area has 15.6% poverty rate compared with 12% in the state as a whole, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2023 American Community Survey.)
James said that state environmental laws intended to help communities evaluate project impacts are now at times weaponized to crush development. And he called complaints that the city should have required an environmental impact report “a ruse,” saying the project simply did not meet the requirements established by the state.
“We have a project that’s consistent with the core identity of our community, a conservation-based project that would allow people to come in[to] our community in a respectful manner and enjoy the beauty of Twentynine Palms, enjoy the beauty of the national park, visit the artists and people who are starting businesses in our downtown, and we're going to say no to that?” he said. “There are many levels to this but what’s so disheartening is to see the few wealthy elite say, ‘We got ours. We don’t want anyone else to have something here.’”
Bernard pushed back on that assertion, pointing out that many members of Indian Cove Neighbors are on fixed incomes. “There are no wealthy elites in the Morongo Basin,” she said, referring to the high desert region that includes Twentynine Palms and other towns near the national park.
The project calls for 100 small cabins, two lodges, multiple pools, a stargazing area and an outdoor movie screen, plus a wastewater treatment plant that will process more than 13,000 gallons a day. It would be the largest development undertaken by Las Vegas-based Ofland Hotels, which in 2021 opened an outdoor boutique hotel in Escalante, Utah, and has been greenlighted for a second hotel near the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee.
Read more: After five years of closure, 'glamping' back again in Yosemite National Park
According to Luke Searcy, head of development for Ofland Hotels, the company was drawn to Twentynine Palms by its "natural beauty" and "unique culture." The hotel buildings will be single-story to protect views and located at least 500 feet from neighboring properties to mitigate noise, he said in an email. The hotel also plans on obtaining a Dark Sky International Lodging Approval Certificate, which is above and beyond city light-pollution standards, he noted.
The company estimates that groundbreaking will take place in early 2027, Searcy said. It plans to build the hotel on 42 acres at the center of the site, with the remaining 110 acres set aside as open space. Still, the Center for Biological Diversity notes that open space will contain roads and the wastewater treatment plant, which could subject wildlife to pollution and increase the risk of getting hit by vehicles.
The city last month approved the project, adopting what’s known as a mitigated negative declaration. California environmental law allows the shorter, less detailed document to be used for projects when initial studies identify environmental impacts but changes to the plans can reduce those impacts to an acceptable level, Stevenson said.
But if substantial evidence supports a fair argument that a project may result in significant impacts, a full environmental impact report must be prepared, she said.
Stevenson argues that in the case of the Ofland project, the mitigated negative declaration did not provide enough information to understand the project impacts, and the city overlooked evidence that such impacts may be significant.
For instance, Stevenson said, the mitigated negative declaration states the project will add nearly 900 vehicle trips a day but did not take into account traffic from employees or vendors that will service an on-site restaurant.
The city did not commission a vehicle-miles-traveled analysis, even though Caltrans recommended that it do so, she said. And although the California Department of Fish and Wildlife identified numerous deficiencies in plans to mitigate impacts on plants and wildlife, the city said it would adopt only some of those recommended changes, she said.
Read more: California approves an unprecedented plan to protect Joshua trees from climate change threats
The lawsuit also alleges that, by approving the project — and in the process, rezoning the land from residential to "tourist-commercial" and "open-space conservation," the city violated state housing law. The move technically reduced the potential for new housing units on the land by 61. And California housing law prohibits cities from taking any action that reduces the legal limit of new housing within their borders. In other words, according to the suit, Twentynine Palms should have found a way to add 61 more potential units elsewhere within city limits, Stevenson said.
Neighbors also said the move to redesignate the land amounted to allowing developers, rather than residents, to drive the zoning process.
Local bakery owner Travis Poston said his Indian Cove home has provided a much-needed respite from the stress of running a small business. He fears that the approval of a commercial project in the residential area will set a precedent that could mark the start of a larger development push.
"If this goes in, what’s next?" he said. "The whole area is on the chopping block at this point."
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Comments