The Almanac
June 21, 2006

Environmental group sues Stanford over trail

By Don Kazak

The Palo Alto-based Committee for Green Foothills has filed a lawsuit against Stanford University and Santa Clara County over the county's approval of the location of a proposed hiking trail on the northern edge of campus, claiming that trail was approved without adequate environmental review.

The lawsuit asks Santa Clara County Superior Court to void the approval of the C1 hiking trail, which is to be located along Alpine Road in San Mateo County. The location of the proposed trail has been heavily criticized by environmental groups and residents along Alpine Road.

Stanford's proposal is currently before the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors. "It may be premature to take action because of the lawsuit," said Supervisor Rich Gordon. "If we took action, it might impact the suit."

Stanford attorneys think the lawsuit is "without merit," said Larry Horton, director of government and community relations at Stanford. "We feel there are errors of fact and law in the lawsuit."

Horton added that Stanford does not comment on the specifics of litigation, "but we will be responding to them in due time."

As part of the general use permit (GUP) approved for the Stanford campus by Santa Clara County in 2000, Stanford is required to build two hiking trails on its lands. But the location of the two trails has been hotly contested by Stanford neighbors.

"Stanford promised to build two trails to make up for the impacts from a massive expansion in campus development," said Brian Schmidt, Santa Clara County legislative advocate for Committee for Green Foothills. "Now they've pressured Santa Clara County to drop one trail requirement and simply expand an existing sidewalk along the heavy traffic of Alpine Road. The expanded sidewalk will have no recreational value, will provide little additional use, will be enormously expensive and cause environmental damage to hillsides and a major local creek."

Santa Clara County did an environmental review for a second trail, called the S1 trail, on the southern part of its lands. That trail location is not being challenged. But Stanford said it would accept approval of the S1 trail as long as the location of the C1 trail was approved at the same time.

The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors approved Stanford's request on a 4-1 vote last year with Liz Kniss, the supervisor representing Palo Alto, Stanford University and North County, dissenting.

The lawsuit alleges that the approval of the C1 trail violates the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) by not having adequate review of the environmental review of the impacts of the trail.

Many of the points raised in the lawsuit were made by Kniss last year, she said. Stanford's desire to build the C1 trail in San Mateo County also "creates a precedent of requiring a county to mitigate the impacts (of a project) on a neighboring county," Kniss said.

Marion Softky contributed to this report.

Page last updated September 13, 2010.