The City of Twentynine Palms is planning to give Ofland a free pass into Indian Cove and save them the cost of an Environmental Impact Report (aka EIR) making public the City's Initial Study (IS) finding that the project needn't do a costly and time-consuming EIR, because its moderate impact instead merits a far less expensive and onerous Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND). You can read the City’s Initial Study here.

The 20-day public review period for this MND runs through June 2. Submit your comments to Community Development Director Keith Gardner at City of Twentynine Palms, 6136 Adobe Road, Twentynine Palms, CA 92277 or via email to kgardner@29palms.org.

For more information, check out the Desert Trumpet’s first look at the flawed study.

Our concerns and observations include:

• Flawed environmental scrutiny: The Mojave desert tortoise’s new “endangered” status not addressed in the Study
• Zoning gymnastics: City's reliance on unrelated solar project for SB 330 compliance to offset housing lost in rezoning raises questions about planning logic
• Community impact: Significant change from very low-density residential zoning to resort-style development

We’ll be adding sample language for a comment letter shortly. Thank you for speaking up!