Lawsuit against Tejon Ranch Co. raises concerns about agreement
A landmark conservation deal appears at risk of falling part as environmental groups and local landowner Tejon Ranch Co. accuse each other of violating a 2008 agreement that bars development on 240,000 acres of wilderness near The Grapevine in exchange for a truce on the company’s nearby housing projects.
Lebec-based Tejon Ranch confirmed Monday it has stopped sending quarterly payments of $200,000 to a conservancy set up to steward the property. The company said it quit paying after other parties to the agreement helped indirectly challenge a master-planned residential project called Centennial, proposed north and east of Highway 138 and Interstate 5.
Whether the company was justified in halting the payments is the subject of a lawsuit filed last week in Kern County Superior Court. In it, five signatories to the accord say Tejon Ranch previously indicated it was withholding the money because of financial difficulties.
The dispute undermines an accord heralded at a signing ceremony 12 years ago as a historic agreement protecting a pristine swath of diverse habitat prized as a home to endangered California condors.
Joel Reynolds, western director and senior attorney at the New York-based Natural
Resources Defense Council, said Monday he expects the conservation agreement to outlive the legal challenge as well as the financial disagreement it seeks to resolve.
“Whatever happens in the lawsuit, we are determined to … maintain the conservancy as a viable agent of conservation,” he said.
The conservation agreement called for preserving 90 percent of Tejon’s 270,000-acre ranch. In return, environmental parties to the agreement agreed not to oppose — without necessarily endorsing — Tejon Ranch’s plans to build Centennial and two other residential projects proposed on the remaining 10 percent of the company’s land.
As part of the deal, the company agreed to help fund a nonprofit called the Tejon Ranch Conservancy that manages the 240,000 acres. Tejon Ranch said it has paid $11 million to the conservancy to date but that its most recent payment has been deposited in an escrow fund until the dispute can be straightened out.
A key legal point could be whether the NRDC and others broke the agreement through their participation in a planning effort focused on the Antelope Valley.
In a written statement, Tejon Ranch said several signatories to the accord contributed to a regional biological study that included ranch lands “despite assurances they would be removed.”
It said the draft study was later used by groups including the company’s legal nemesis, the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity, to oppose Centennial.
“When Tejon Ranch brought this (contractual) breach to the attention of the conservancy and signatories to the (agreement) … they stated they were not going to correct the breach,” the company stated. It added, “The ranch will be aggressive in holding accountable those who breached” the agreement.
But Reynolds said the 2008 accord specifically permits signatories to participate in such studies providing they are regional in scope, which he asserted the Antelope Valley study was. He added that such work is part of what advocacy groups “always do.”
“The company, for whatever reason, is now pretending that the (regional exemption) provision doesn’t exist,” he said.
The company’s direct financial contribution to the conservancy was scheduled to end next year, after which time funding for managing the conserved lands was to come from transfer fees on Tejon Ranch’s residential sales.
The lawsuit said Tejon Ranch initially stated in April its payments to the five-employee conservancy would be interrupted because of financial concerns related to the pandemic.
The company later made up its back payments. But in October it said it would put them in an escrow account instead of sending them to the conservancy.