Edited From JP Theberge
Following the October 2025 approval of the Harmony Grove Village South (HGVS) project by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, a number of groups filed a lawsuit challenging the County’s decision, citing serious wildfire safety risks and violations of state and local law. These groups include the Elfin Forest / Harmony Grove Town Council and the Endangered Habitats League.
The approved project would allow more than 450 homes to be built in a designated Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone, relying on a single dead-end road as the only evacuation route. That road far exceeds current fire safety limits, and the project was approved without secondary access that is required to protect residents and first responders during a wildfire.
The Town Council represents residents of the largely rural, fire-prone Harmony Grove and Elfin Forest communities near Escondido. Endangered Habitats League is a statewide environmental organization that opposes unsafe, fire-prone sprawl development.
The lawsuit alleges that after a court previously ordered the County to rescind all approvals for the project, the County was legally required to reassess fire safety under today’s stricter wildfire regulations. Instead, the County reapproved the project without obtaining an updated fire safety review, relying on analyses conducted nearly a decade ago— before major changes to state fire law and wildfire risk standards.
According to the petition, County staff directed the Rancho Santa Fe Fire Protection District not to conduct a new review of the project. Fire Chief McQuaed later acknowledged publicly that the project would not be approvable under current fire safety requirements because it lacks secondary evacuation access. In a subsequent letter, the Fire Chief confirmed that he did not review the project’s Fire Protection Plan prior to going to the Board of Supervisors hearing, although he did testify about the project’s safety.
Nearly a dozen independent fire behavior, evacuation, and emergency management experts— representing more than 200 years of combined experience—submitted analyses concluding that the project creates a serious risk of evacuation failure and entrapment during a wildfire. One evacuation study found it could take more than seven hours to evacuate the area under realistic conditions. Separate modeling by Ladris Technologies— an evacuation modeling company representing over 40 state and local agencies and staffed by high-level former CalFire executives—presented a video simulation to the Board demonstrating that wildfire spread would likely overtake evacuation traffic even under conservative assumptions.
A 2022 CAL FIRE analysis of the area concluded that the existing dead-end road already requires secondary access, even without additional development. Adding hundreds of homes to that same road would significantly increase the risk of catastrophic loss of life (link).
More than 1,200 Harmony Grove and surrounding residents signed a petition opposing the project, which was hand-delivered to the Board of Supervisors. The County also received more than 1,000 letters urging denial of the project as proposed. And a coalition of over 20 environmental groups including Climate Action Campaign, SD350, Sierra Club and Wild Coast submitted a letter in opposition.
“We cannot let political expediency or out-of-state development interests dictate the safety of our communities,” said JP Theberge, Vice Chair of the Town Council. “The County cannot ignore modern wildfire realities or sidestep its own fire codes. This project puts future residents, first responders, and surrounding neighborhoods at unacceptable risk. The County needs to go back to the drawing board and come back with a plan that actually meets today’s safety standards.”
The lawsuit asks the court to overturn the approvals for Harmony Grove Village South and require full compliance with current fire safety laws before any development can proceed.
Community website: www.dontburnus.org
