Land Use and Sustainable Development

Land_Use.jpgAdams Broadwell Joseph & Cardozo has extensive experience participating in complex land use planning and project entitlement proceedings before local governments and regional bodies throughout California. ABJC advises on matters involving California Planning and Zoning Law, the Subdivision Map Act, the California Coastal Act, the federal Coastal Zone Management Act and local land use laws and regulations. ABJC participates in planning, permitting and other regulatory proceedings seeking outcomes that minimize public health and environmental impacts, ensure access to public services, and maximize community benefits.

In representing the Grassland Water District over more than two decades, the firm’s work was instrumental in protecting the Grassland Ecological Area (GEA), a 240,000-acre area in western Merced County that is the largest remaining freshwater marsh complex in the western United States and is recognized by international treaty as a resource of national and international significance. The firm settled a lawsuit against the City of Los Banos securing the City’s commitment to amend its General Plan to create an eastside urban limit line and redirect growth away from the GEA. The firm worked with Merced County and other local jurisdictions to ensure that their planning documents also recognized and protected the GEA ecosystem. The firm also successfully opposed a number of large development projects that would have directly threatened the resource.