Sierra Watch v. Placer County CA3

BACKGROUND

In 1983, the County adopted the Squaw Valley General Plan and Land Use Ordinance to “guide development and growth within the [Olympic] Valley area” (formerly known as Squaw Valley) — a 4,700-acre area that lies a few miles northwest of Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada. Three decades later, in 2011, Squaw Valley Real Estate LLC (Squaw) proposed the first specific plan under that general plan, which it called the Village at Squaw Valley Specific Plan. In 2012, the County began environmental review for the proposed project under CEQA, and three years later, the County released a draft document, called a draft

2 Environmental Impact Report or draft EIR, analyzing the project’s potential impacts. As described in the draft EIR, the proposed project would include two components: an 85- acre parcel called the Village — which would include, among other things, up to 850 lodging units, almost 300,000 square feet of commercial space, and over 3,000 parking spaces — and an 8.8-acre parcel called the East Parcel — which, for the most part, would serve to house up to 300 employees for the project. These two components, the draft EIR explained, would be built over 25 years. After the…