Crucial Vigneto permit suspended again, following lawsuit filing
For the second time in three years, a critical permit for the controversial
Villages at Vigneto development in Benson has been suspended.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers last week suspended the 28,000-home
project’s Clean Water Act permit. The move comes less than two weeks
after environmentalists filed a lawsuit alleging the Army Corps’ November
decision to approve the permit violated the Endangered Species Act and
National Environmental Policy Act.
The lawsuit alleged Phoenix-based developer El Dorado Holdings used a
dubious argument to persuade the Army Corps to dramatically limit its
scope of analysis when evaluating Vigneto’s potential environmental impacts.
The agency’s narrow analysis avoided any exploration of potential effects of
the project’s groundwater pumping for 70,000 anticipated new residents,
said Stu Gillespie, attorney for Earthjustice, the environmental law firm
representing the six plaintiffs in the Vigneto lawsuit. The plaintiffs are the
Lower San Pedro Watershed Alliance, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity,
Tucson Audubon Society, Maricopa Audubon Society and Cascabel Conservation Association.
“It’s hard not to come away from this (permit suspension) with the
impression they have understood there are legal flaws in their
permit that we identified in our lawsuit,” Gillespie said.
https://tucson.com/news/local/crucial-vigneto-permit-suspended-again-following-lawsuit-filing/article_c31fd6a7-54ec-58e7-89ba-7a0a9557331f.html