Tracy Press

A controversial Lathrop development is drawing the ire of environmentalists who say the project was approved without accounting for global warming.

Environmentalists are suing the state Reclamation Board, citing that the state flood-control agency ignored global-warming effects when they OK’d the 11,000-home River Islands project in Lathrop.

The suit, which was filed Aug. 16 in Sacramento Superior Court, is spearheaded by the San Francisco-based National Resources Defense Council, with the Deltakeeper organization based in Stockton and the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance signing on as interested parties.

But River Islands’ Project Director Susan Dell’Osso said the NRDC picked the wrong example to use regarding global warming.

“Our levees are so high, we’re probably one of the only places in the world that won’t be under water (when it floods),” she said.

Global warming occurs when excessive levels of man-made carbon dioxide trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere cause temperatures to rise, causing ice and snow caps to melt and creating floods.

The defense council claims the board violated the California Environmental Quality Act when it failed to examine how sea level rise will affect levees.

It will be the first time global warming and a specific construction development has been cited in a court case. But Dell’Osso thinks the plaintiff is wrong to use River Islands to set a precedent case.

“We’ll fight them all the way to court,” Dell’Osso said.

The River Islands project has already built a 200-year-level flood levee surrounding the entire proposed 11,000-unit project. If sea levels rise and the San Joaquin River and Old River rise because of snow melt, “our levees are 5 feet taller than what they need to be if there’s a 3-foot rise in sea level,” she said.

River Islands built a 300-foot-wide “superlevee” to surround its development, surpassing the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s 100-year flood standard.

Bill Jennings, chairman of the sportfishing alliance, said the state board did not consider the consequences that an extra foot or two of sea level rise would have on neighboring islands to the Lathrop housing project before issuing a permit to proceed with construction. He said levees hinder the Delta’s natural drainage system, and a superlevee like River Islands’ could negatively affect neighboring islands and levees, such as Twitchell and Sherman islands, should there be a flood.

“It’s the board’s responsibility to protect us from a Katrina-style disaster,” Barry Nelson of the Natural Resources Defense Council said recently.

But Dell’Osso said her development is an example of how developments in the Delta should be done.

“We did the right thing,” she said, when they built their 200-year-old flood levees. “It makes you wonder why anyone would want to start something like this, with all this trouble.”

But River Islands’ parent company, Cambay Group, has spent millions on the development to date and isn’t about to back out now, she said.

“Lawsuits are dime a dozen,” she said. “Even if global warming is the case, we’ve got 5 feet to spare. Next they’ll sue for building in earthquake areas or wildfire areas.”

• To contact reporter Phil Hayworth, call 830-4221 or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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