Is this any place to build a resort? The Chemehuevi Indian Tribe Reservation in San Bernardino County is a vast field of parched, brown earth where temperatures can reach 120 degrees in the summer. To the southwest is the impressive desert landscape of the Whipple Mountains, a fine place to observe raptorial birds and wind-carved canyons, perhaps, but not a major tourist draw.

For the first time ever, San Joaquin County became the focus of ballot-box planning in California during the November election. Voters in Stockton sent mixed messages about growth, but the electorate in the south-county city of Tracy delivered two solid blows against development.

The environmental review of a proposed mining reclamation plan need not consider the impacts of the actual mining, the Third District Court of Appeal has concluded.

The Fifth District Court of Appeal has published its opinion in which the court invalidated the Castaic Lake Water Agency's urban water management plan.

Imperial County is experiencing an unprecedented housing boom, with at least 1,000 new units a year going up. Depending on who is counting, somewhere between 12,000 and 20,000 additional units are in the pipeline - in a farming county with a population of only 155,000.

The First District Court of Appeal has refused to excuse a citizens group's failure to comply with a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) procedural requirement, and has upheld dismissal of a lawsuit.

An environmental study of a rock quarry proposed in northern San Diego County has survived a second court challenge.

A plan by Santa Clara County to build a concert theater on a portion of the county-owned fairgrounds in south San Jose has drawn the ire of the City of San Jose and the downtown merchant community. Opponents of the county's project say a new performing arts venue belongs downtown, not in the mostly residential area where the fairgrounds is located.

After years of false starts and stumbles, the federal government has renewed its commitment to the troubled California Bay-Delta Program, breathing new life into the ambitious effort to fix the troubled centerpiece of the state's water system.

The day after he was elected to a second term, President Bush conducted a press conference in which he highlighted four issues as the cornerstones of his second-term domestic policy agenda: tort reform, education, the tax code, and Social Security. This list is hardly surprising. But for the planning and development community in California, the list is notable for what is lacking: environmental policy.