On Feb. 3, California Attorney General Rob Bonta was granted intervention in a lawsuit challenging San Benito County’s approval of the Betabel roadside attraction, a proposed 108,425 square-foot project on 26 acres with a 125-room motel, restaurant, outdoor movie screen, gas station and convenience store and 500-seat outdoor event center, livestock corral and trails to be built within a116-acre tribal cultural landscape known as Juristac, which holds significant spiritual and historical value for the Amah Mutsun.
The goal of the roadside attraction is to honor the memory of Errol McDowell who died at 18 of brain cancer by generating revenues to be used 100% for funding research to cure childhood brain cancer, the number one cause of death by cancer in kids. He passed by the property every week on his way to treatment at UC San Francisco, and his parents bought the property, a junkyard with decrepit buildings before he died in 2018, and has spent more to clean it up.
In the lawsuit, Bonta filed a petition in intervention alleging the County’s approval of the project’s Environmental Impact Report violated the California Environmental Quality Act, including the requirement that the County consult with California Native American tribes and address impacts to tribal cultural resources that would be irreparably harmed by the project.
The Attorney General’s petition requests the court to order the County to withdraw its existing Final EIR, reopen tribal consultation under requirements added to CEQA by Assembly Bill 52, fully analyze the project’s impacts on tribal cultural resources, and consider feasible mitigation requested by the Tribe.
“Ensuring that California Native American tribes are consulted about a project’s potential impacts to tribal cultural resources is crucial to support thriving tribal communities in the state,” said Bonta. “Project development and proper tribal consultation under the law are not mutually exclusive, and we’re committed to helping local governments find a sustainable path forward. At the California Department of Justice, we’re dedicated to elevating the voices of California’s tribal communities in asserting their rights under the law concerning their ancestral lands.”
A current look at the location of the Betabel Road Project.
CEQA includes important procedural requirements for public agencies to consult with tribes that are traditionally or culturally affiliated with a project site and analyze project impacts on tribal cultural resources during their environmental review process for a project.
The statute recognizes the expertise and knowledge of California Native American tribes with regards to their tribal history, practices, and cultural resources, and upholds tribes’ rights to participate in and contribute their knowledge to CEQA’s environmental review process. Furthermore, CEQA requires that tribal consultation must be “meaningful and timely” so that tribal cultural resources can be identified, and culturally-appropriate mitigation and monitoring programs can be adopted by the lead agency.
Bonta contends San Benito County rushed through its tribal consultation process such that it did not sufficiently consider or address impacts to tribal cultural resources.
Several tribal cultural resources were not identified in the Draft EIR, according to Bonta, and thus the impacts on those resources were not adequately analyzed or disclosed, and mitigation for those impacts was not considered by the decision-makers or the public.
The petition alleges the County violated CEQA because it failed to:
- Analyze impacts to all tribal cultural resources in the Draft EIR and adopt mitigation specific to each of these resources in the Final EIR.
- Begin consultation with the Tribe within 30 days of their request for consultation, as directed by the statute.
- Consult on topics, such as recommended mitigation measures or significant impacts on tribal cultural resources, as requested by the Tribe and directed by the statute.
The Attorney General originally sought to intervene in this lawsuit in San Benito County Superior Court in March 2023. But before the Court ruled on the Attorney General’s motion to intervene, it dismissed the lawsuit, finding that the Tribe and other petitioners in a related lawsuit had not met CEQA’s deadline for filing suit. The Tribe and other petitioners appealed that decision, and the Attorney General submitted an amicus brief in support of the appeal. The Sixth District Court of Appeal agreed with the Tribe and the Attorney General’s Office that the lawsuit was timely.
That decision sent the case back to the trial court and on Dec. 31, 2024, the Court vacated its prior dismissal, restarting the litigation.
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Read the Environmental Impact Report at: www.sanbenitocountyca.gov/departments/resource-management-agency/planning-and-land-use-division/betabel
Read about the project at: https://betabelproject.com/
TOP IMAGE: Artwork representing plans for the Betabel Road Project.