City and AIM officials need to take Audubon Society’s threat of
a lawsuit seriously
… We believe it is in their best interests to make sure that
this doesn’t develop into a butterfly in the ointment for this
project
Morgan Hill City Council has given the controversial American Institute of Mathematics golf course and conference center project the go-ahead to begin complying with environmental laws, prompting a lawsuit threat from at least one environmental group.
We urge all parties to take a lesson from history, when concerns about the bay checkerspot butterfly’s habitat threatened to derail the much-needed expansion of U.S. 101 through South County. Elected officials, including County Supervisor Don Gage and former Morgan Hill Mayor Dennis Kennedy, brought the interested parties together and hammered out a compromise.
The centerpiece of AIM’s project is a 166,000-square-foot castle modeled after the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. The center will be devoted to expanding the frontiers of mathematical knowledge through focused research projects and conferences. It comes complete with a 76-car underground garage, large wine storage facilities, a library, a 145-seat auditorium, 20 guest suites, dining facilities, lecture halls, conference rooms, locker rooms, exercise facilities, a gift shop and a golf course fit for, well, a king.
The environmental problems date to the 1990s, when AIM flouted environmental laws and Morgan Hill officials failed to adequately enforce them. As a result, officials from both groups are trying to put together an after-the-fact assessment of what plants and animals lived at project site near the intersection of Foothill and Maple avenues before their habitats were changed by AIM.
It’s an impossible task, so, of course, environmental groups like the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society are concerned that the plan is inadequate. They’re especially concerned about the destruction of habitats that supported endangered or threatened California red-legged frogs, bay checkerspot butterflies, and numerous plants.
They’ve threatened a lawsuit, and both city and AIM officials need to take the threat seriously.
If the math institute project is important for the city and for AIM – and we believe that it is – then it is in their interests to make sure that this doesn’t develop into a butterfly in the ointment for this project.
Whether or not the Audubon Society eventually prevails in court, the reality is that a lawsuit has the very real potential to delay the project for years and to cost the taxpayers of Morgan Hill hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.
It’s a critical time. The consequences of flouting environmental laws and failing to adequately enforce them can be severe, or they can be mitigated. We hope all parties choose the latter.
