A lawsuit against the City of Long Beach over its approval of a Home Depot and retail complex on the edge of the Los Cerritos Wetlands is being heard today in Norwalk Superior Court.

The suit was filed jointly by the University Park Estates Homeowners Association and the Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust. It charges that the Environmental Impact Report that justifies the 155,000-square-foot development does not meet the qualifications of the California Environmental Quality Act.

The Home Depot project is supported by some of Long Beach’s wealthiest and most-influential movers and shakers — which is to say, political contributors. Tom Dean, a Naples resident who has recently been buying huge chunks of real estate in the wetlands, owns the land where the Home Depot is proposed. And Chris Pook, the Long Beach promoter who is so enmeshed in city affairs that he often operates as a quasi-governmental official, is working for Home Depot to make things happen at City Hall.

Maybe that’s why the EIR for the huge retail center was approved by the City Council by a 6-3 vote — over the dissent of Rae Gabelich, Gerrie Schipske and Patrick O’Donnell – in October 2006. For a detailed account of that meeting, check out Bill Pearl’s account on LBreport.com.

As proposed, the environmental damage wrought by the Home Depot would include trash and runoff  into Long Beach’s last salvagable wetlands, an increase in traffic of some 8,000 vehicles per day and the nighttime illumination of an area that is currently dark — traumatizing wildlife – with 50 light poles.

The Home Depot project had been scheduled to be heard by the California Coastal Commission on Oct. 10, 2007, but a scathing report by the Commission’s staff laid out so many objections — including the fact that the land was not even a legally registered parcel — that Home Depot asked for a continuance on Oct. 4.

Tags: california coastal commission, Chris Pook, Dave Wielenga, home depot, Long Beach, Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust, Tom Dean, University Park Estates