Santee makes another run at 3,000-home development with new evacuation report

Evacuating everybody in a proposed 3,000-home development and their nearby neighbors could take almost two hours, according to a rewritten environmental impact report from Santee officials.

The estimates represent the city’s renewed push for the long-planned Fanita Ranch project, after a judge halted the proposal earlier this year over wildfire concerns.

The public has until 5 p.m. on July 25 to weigh in on new portions of the report.

Superior Court Judge Katherine Bacal ruled in March the project failed to gauge how quickly residents could flee a fire, forcing the City Council to rescind its approval and pull a ballot question that would have let voters decide the development’s future in November.

Council members must now wait a year before green-lighting the project again, according to City Attorney Shawn Hagerty.

In the meantime, the city republished the required environmental report with little fanfare. While public comment has been open since June 10, the report has not been mentioned at recent council meetings and was not listed on the city’s homepage as of late June. (City Manager Marlene Best said in an interview that the records were released in the same way as proposals for other projects.)

While several sections were rewritten, the “Fire Protection Plan” and “Wildland Fire Evacuation Plan” were fully replaced since the judge’s ruling.

The latter now includes a detailed analysis of how long it would take residents to evacuate, prepared by San Diego-based consultants CR Associates.

The firm looked at nine scenarios.

To get everyone out of just the Fanita Ranch development would take 53 minutes, according to the estimate.

That number goes up when existing residents are considered. Evacuating everyone in the new development plus people already living north of Mast Boulevard would take an hour and 57 minutes, the longest amount of time listed.

Residents closer to safe areas would likely be able to get out faster. The estimates also assume the evacuation happens at night, meaning most people would be home.

However, the firm concluded the most likely fire scenario would threaten fewer than a thousand homes in the area, meaning affected families could get out in less than 20 minutes.

Santee Fire Chief John Garlow confirmed that a “targeted” evacuation was much more probable.

“We don’t necessarily evacuate the whole north end of the city because there’s a fire in the north,” he said in an interview.

He declined to comment on the specific times offered in the report but said his department had provided the consultants potential wildfire scenarios for their models.

Fanita Ranch would have two main exits: Fanita Parkway and Cuyamaca Street. Both generally have two lanes (one northbound, one south) though plans note that each could be expanded.

Officials have also pledged to connect Cuyamaca to Magnolia Avenue, a change recently added back to the proposal. (The judge had faulted the project for eliminating the planned extension and not giving residents more time to consider the change.)

The development is overseen by HomeFed Fanita Rancho, LLC.

Leaders will need about three to four weeks to review comments before they’re prepared to return to the city council and the judge, Jeff O’Connor, vice president of the Carlsbad-based HomeFed Corporation, said in an interview.

A lawyer for the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued to block the development, said they were still reviewing the new report.

If the revised review is enough for the project to survive another potential court challenge and voter referendum, the development would be built in the hills beyond Santee Lakes.

The project would include between 2,949 and 3,008 homes, depending on whether a school was included, according to city records. About 1,650 acres would be set aside as “habitat preserve,” and trails would connect to the Goodan Ranch Regional Park and the Sycamore Canyon Open Space Preserve, among other areas.

The environmental documents can be read online at “www.cityofsanteeca.gov/services/project-environmental-review,” under the section “Recirculated Sections of the Final Revised EIR Fanita Ranch Project.”

Records can also be viewed in person at the clerk’s office in city hall or at the Santee County Library.

Comments can be sent to Chris Jacobs, the city’s principal planner of the project, at cjacobs@cityofsanteeca.gov.

Jacobs can also be reached by mail at the Department of Development Services, City Hall, Building 4, 10601 Magnolia Avenue, Santee, California 92071.