When solutions are not forthcoming, people respond with efforts such as the Rural Heritage and Watershed Initiative, which is likely to be on the same ballot. With RHWI, we are saying that the growth should not go in most agriculturally-designated lands and growth should not go where there are currently no sewer or water services and it would be expensive to extend them. This is good growth for this area. We know that both these developers have the resources and the leadership to make it so. Contrary to those who imbue environmentalists with mythic powers, lesson number one in the fight against Los Angelization is that you can't just stop developers.
Developers have rights too.
But just as important, if not more so, they have money and power and friends in all the right places. You can stop or improve some things, some times, but at enormous cost and risk. Urban sprawl continues. Environmentalists and community residents are outmanned and outgunned at every turn. The Pardee deal has been carefully sweetened by their offer to contribute significant lands on Carmel Mountain, the last and largest remaining stand of an endangered habitat known as coastal maritime chaparral.