Four Montecito property owners are taking legal action against Santa Barbara County over the government’s attempt to create up to 62 parking spaces for access to the Hot Springs Trail on East Mountain Drive.
A hearing for a preliminary injunction against the county is set for May 6.
Christopher Anderson, Ross Bagdasarian, Peter Barker and James Moreley are looking to stop the county from pursuing its Hot Springs Trailhead Parking Design & Construction Project, citing environmental and evacuation concerns with the increased traffic.
The petition came after the county sent letters to three separate, unidentified property owners, ordering them to remove any public improvements in front of their homes in the right-of-way on East Mountain Drive, threatening them with fines if they don’t comply. Anderson, Bagdasarian, Barker and Moreley learned about the project through those letters and are seeking legal remedy to protect their East Mountain Drive properties.
The county contends that private homeowners have deliberately blocked public access to the Hot Springs Trail by placing boulders, walls, landscaping, illegal “No Parking” signs and other unpermitted private encroachments in the county road rights-of-way that otherwise would be available for parking.
Anderson, Bagdasarian Barker and Moreley are represented by the firm Cappello & Noël.
“The county has not even considered whether the environmental impact the addition of any parking spaces, much less the 62 that are contemplated, must be studied as required by the California Environmental Quality Act,” attorney David Cousineau, an attorney with the firm Cappello & Noël, contends in the Santa Barbara County Superior Court petition.
The complaint states that if each car brings two people to the new parking spaces, it would mean 162 new people would vist a day, resulting in “a thousand more hikers over an average week.”
Hot Springs Canyon is home to California steelhead, California red-legged frog, coast range newt, southwestern pond turtle, two-striped garter snake, Cooper’s hawk and several other plant species, the complaint states.
“Such an increase in foot traffic undeniably satisfies the threshold required to perform the CEQA analysis,” the petition for write of mandate states.
The Cousineau filing also states that the county has not considered evacuation plans for East Mountain Drive, Hot Springs Road and Riven Rock Road if they were to add the spaces.
“The county is rushing to add these parking spaces before the late-May release of the comprehensive wildfire evacuation report from the Montecito Fire Protection District,” the complaint states.
The county’s original letters to the homeowners attempted to order them to remove any improvements in the right of way by April 8.
Hot Springs has long been one of Santa Barbara and Montecito’s most popular local trails. About eight legal parking spaces exist near the front of the trailhead. For years, locals also would park on the sides of the road, including on East Mountain, Riven Rock and other narrow Montecito streets.
The trail, however, jumped in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic — largely because of viral TikTok and social media videos of people enjoying the hot springs.
The problem got so bad a year ago that the California Highway Patrol restriped parts of Riven Rock Road to make it clearer that it was illegal to park on the street. In addition, many homeowners complained that the cars were blocking their views and access in and out of their driveways.
The county alleges that some homeowners placed signs, boulders and other obstructions in the public right of way to prevent people from parking on the street near their homes. The county included photographs of some locations in its response to the Cappello filing.
On Saturday morning, all of the eight public parking spaces were full, and there were people parked on East Mountain Drive and on the side of Riven Rock Road.
The county’s legal filings suggest that it is not “adding spaces,” but restoring ones that have been taken away.
The homeowners’ attorney contends that environmental review is still needed.
“Adding additional parking will only bring more people to the trail, unless the county prevents people from using the illegal spots that they are using,” the response states. “Based on the experience with Riven Rock, that is unlikely to happen. Therefore, absent some plan to ensure that people will not be able to continue parking in illegal spots, there is no basis to say there will be no net increase in parking.”
The attorneys for the homeowners concluded that the trail should be accessible to the public, but that increasing access to the trail must follow the law.
“The county must study how many spaces it can install without creating significant environmental impacts, including fire evacuation risks, and it must disclose how many spaces it believes it can add so the public can assess and challenge that number if appropriate. Until it does so, it cannot pursue the project,” Cousineau states in the petition.
By Joshua Molina, Santa Barbara Noozhawk Staff Writer, Photo Credit: Joshua Molina/Noozhawk photo
Santa Barbara Noozhawk, April 23, 2022
