By Kate Callen

Years ago, when attorney Everett DeLano challenged the City of San Diego for violating the Clean Water Act, the city insisted it should not have to pay penalties because taxpayers would have to foot the bill.

“In the legal system, we call that ‘externalizing the costs,’” DeLano told a packed audience at a January 17 San Diego Community Coalition forum. “You make other people pay. And that applies now.

“State laws are encouraging a tremendous amount of development. But we’re in a situation where we have a lack of infrastructure, so communities are paying the costs.”

Today, DeLano is one San Diego’s foremost land use attorneys. His recent victories against high-density projects include the Save Our Access lawsuit to restore the 30-foot height limit in the Midway/ Pacific Highway area, which includes Mayor Todd Gloria’s pet Midway Rising project.

DeLano didn’t start out fighting predatory development. He began his career as an environmental lawyer with the Sierra Club in Denver and the Natural Resources Defense Council in Los Angeles pursuing what he calls “natural resources defense.”

His abiding belief in environmental protection – whether the “environment” is an estuary or a neighborhood – has propelled DeLano into a string of court wins to mitigate the harsher impacts of rampant growth.

DeLano’s talk, co-hosted by the Community Coalition and Neighbors for a Better San Diego, brought an enthusiastic crowd of community leaders to the La Jolla-Riford Library. Here are excerpts from his remarks:

On fighting outlier projects: “Your best strategy is like a three-legged stool. There’s the legal component, there’s the political, and there’s organizing. The more you combine the three together, the better. The politicians hate it when we get out in force and challenge them on this idea that we just need to build more houses. That’s a fallacy, and it needs to be called out.”

On housing and height limits: “The city is claiming that they can use provisions for increasing density as a basis for building a Sports Arena in Midway Rising. But that’s not housing-related at all. What if they just wanted to put up a massive statue? I really think this is going to be litigated. There is also a related question about whether there’s an adequate basis to claim that they need the height to make the project feasible.”

On complying with state law: “The city often argues they’re only implementing the state law. But when you look at the state law, it doesn’t require them to go to nearly the levels they go to. We need to continue to call them out on this.”

On the importance of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA): “In the battle over the height limit in the Midway-Pacific Highway district, the appellate court wrote a unanimous strong decision that the city did not conduct an adequate environmental impact review. And even with the governor and the attorney general supporting the city’s appeal, the Supreme Court threw out the appeal without comment.

“What does that say? It was a powerful statement that the CEQA law is still alive and that cities have to listen to it. So it’s a great decision. The courts are saying one of the reasons CEQA is so important is that a lot of these projects are getting approved ministerially. It’s all the more important that we do environmental analysis completely, above board, and publicly beforehand.”