Escaping Harmony

By Jarrett Carpenter

Jarrett Carpenter is a journalist at USC Annenberg.

When the 2014 Cocos Fire exploded across a California mountainside, the Rev. April Cunningham only had time to save her pets — her dog Duke, her cat Mama Kitty, her dove Whitey, her cockatiel Teal and her two yet to be named parakeets. Her house, family photographs and church were destroyed by the blaze.

Her only evacuation route was a curving, single-lane road flanked by trees and dry brush.

“When I came back down that road, it would’ve just taken a little bit of time that the fire would’ve went across that road and trapped everybody in,” Cunningham said.

A decade later, developers seek to build 450 homes along the dead-end road in Harmony Grove, located south of Escondido. Residents have fought the project since 2018, arguing that without new exit routes, another fire evacuation could lead to a traffic disaster.

The housing development is financed by real estate investor and Mountain High Yogurt founder Marcel Arsenault, based in Denver, Colorado.

Environmental groups like Sierra Club have successfully appealed the City Council's approval of the project citing a faulty environmental impact report. After long political and legal battles, the development will be reconsidered in 2025.

A local organization and community members have led a renewed fight against the project. Their message: "Don't burn us."

At the southern end of Country Club Drive is Harmony Grove Spiritualist Association, the property that incurred the brunt of the Cocos Fire. Cunningham no longer lives on the grounds, where only five homes remain, but often visits to deliver sermons and catch up with friends.

Leaving the spiritualist association, Cunningham drives past Cordrey Drive, another dead-end street canopied by trees and lined with homes, one of which belongs to Jon Dummer. The 70-year-old originally moved to Harmony Grove in 1962 and built a house with his father and four brothers. Half of his father’s house was destroyed by the Del Dios Fire in 1997.

“Everybody who lives out here has been through their own fire, and I’ve been through several,” Dummer said. “You go outside and [the fire] is 100 yards away from you.”

Cunningham’s car passes the site of the proposed Harmony Grove Village South extension, an 111-acre plot in the foothills of the West Ridge mountains.

A fire risk analysis of the development conducted by San Diego County in 2016 found the Harmony Grove region was in a “historic wildfire corridor.” Escondido suffered the Witch Fire in 2007, which burned nearly 200,000 acres, and the Harmony Grove Fire in 1996, which tore through the same mountain range as the Cocos Fire and caused one fatality.

Thomas Cova, a University of Utah professor and wildfire evacuation researcher, estimates an evacuation of Harmony Grove Village, the proposed extension, rural areas and other surrounding neighborhoods along Country Club Drive could take five to 10 hours depending on the number of cars per household, according to a consulting letter.

Cova was hired by an environmental law firm representing Harmony Grove Elfin Forest Town Council, the organization heading the “Don’t Burn Us” campaign. JP Theberge, the town council chair, said Cova’s numbers could have underrepresented the threat.

“We’re talking about 3,500 vehicles hitting the same intersection at roughly the same time,” Theberge said. “That doesn’t include the hundreds of horse trailers with a farm community like this.”

The Harmony Grove Village South project was approved by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors in July 2018 and quickly met legal challenges from Elfin Forest, Endangered Habitats League and Sierra Club, among others.

The trial court decided the Environmental Impact Report didn’t adequately address fire safety risks and evacuation. Sierra Club also successfully argued that greenhouse gas mitigation measures failed to meet California Environmental Quality Act standards.

Despite the board revoking the project's permits in 2022, the project is once again being considered and is expected to be voted on in spring of 2025.

The duo behind the project are David Kovach, a San Diego-based developer, and Arsenault, who Theberge calls a “ponytail-wearing billionaire.”

Arsenault's press relations representative responded to Annenberg Media's interivew request within the provided Dec. 13 deadline, but Arsenault declined an interview.

According to OpenSecrets, Kovach and Arsenault’s PAC, RCS Harmony Partners, donated $1,000 to the San Diego County Republican Central Committee of California in October 2018, when Republicans held a majority of seats on the Board of Supervisors. The PAC donated $15,000 to the county Democratic Party in February 2022, when the board had a Democratic majority.

In 2024, Harmony Partners donated $35,000 to a PAC supporting former San Diego Mayor and supervisorial candidate Kevin Faulconer, according to campaign contribution records. Faulconer was pro-development during his time as mayor.

“We must change from a city that shouts, ‘Not in My Backyard,’ to one that proclaims: ‘Yes In My Backyard!’” Faulconer said during his 2019 state of the city speech.

The pro-Faulconer PAC received hundreds of thousands of dollars from development organizations such as the Building Industry Association of San Diego County and NAIOP San Diego, but Faulconer lost to incumbent Terra Lawson-Remer.

Real estate groups are no strangers to California politics. In November, Prop. 33 — a measure that would’ve allowed cities to enact rent control — failed after opponents raised $125 million, with over half that amount coming from the California Apartment Association Issues Committee, according to the Secretary of State’s office.

The HGVS developers are also attempting to donate to the Rancho Santa Fe Fire Protection District, the district that serves the Harmony Grove area. On Nov. 20, the fire district board of directors were scheduled to vote on a “voluntary future contribution” of $850,000.

The donation, which Dummer calls a “legal bribe,” was removed from the agenda after backlash from locals. Dummer said 100 residents sent letters to the district with four hours' notice of the meeting.

“We would’ve had 100 people [at the district office],” Dummer said. “But they sent a notice saying, 'Hey, the vote is not going to happen, you don’t need to bring your people.'”

Kevin Barnard, who will join the fire district board of directors on Dec. 18, is outspoken in his opposition to the HGVS development. He said if the contribution came up on the agenda again, he would vote no if it’s “quid pro quo.”

“If they think that that is greasing the skids for an unsafe development, then it ain’t going to happen,” Barnard said in an interview. “Not on my watch.”

The fight is personal for Barnard, who not only lives along Country Club Drive, but near a trail the developers claimed could act as a secondary evacuation route “in an emergency situation,” according to their fire protection plan. In 2021, an appeals court judge referenced the trail when he overturned the trial court’s original decision that the Environmental Impact Report failed to address evacuation measures.

Barnard said the trail is not viable and passes through private properties. He also said he rented a vehicle and placed a three-ton boulder in the middle of the trail “to prove a point.”

“[The developers] have been to court, and in my opinion, come close to perjury, representing this thing as some viable secondary access,” Barnard said.

The trail — fraught with rocks, shrubbery and dips — is accessed via an unmarked mountain road. At points, the distance between ill-maintained brush on either side of the trail narrows to five feet, or less than the width of a Mini Cooper.

As Cunningham’s car passes the development site and heads north toward the next main road, she drives over Escondido Creek, which occasionally floods over a sloping section of Country Club Drive.

“When it rains, you can’t get out of there,” Cunningham said. “I was stuck there for five days at a time sometimes.”

The developers’ fire plan proposed a three-lane bridge over the creek, but community members say the alteration still fails to address the lack of exits.

On Dec. 8, Theberge kicked off the annual Keepin’ It Rural 5K and 10K races by stressing the importance of community mobilization against "unsafe development."

“You threaten to sue, you get people to write in letters, you show up at meetings,” Theberge said in an earlier interview. “A few thousand people makes a huge difference.”

Runners zigzagged through the verdant mountains of Elfin Forest Recreational Reserve and crossed the finish line at the base of Olivenhain Dam, where runners drank beer, enjoyed a live band and chatted about advocacy.

Harmony Grove Village resident Leya Folio has competed in the 10K since the race’s inception nine years ago.

“I love supporting our community,” Folio said. “I see how hard JP [Theberge] commits himself and it makes me want to support that all the more.”

Her husband Steve Folio said fire danger has increased in the area due to strong winds. That morning, Folio said he received a power outage notification from San Diego Gas and Electric due to Santa Anas. On Dec. 10, SDGE shut off power for over 70,000 customers, mostly in rural areas.

The day after the race, Santa Ana wind gusts fueled the Franklin Fire in Malibu, which has burned over 4,000 acres as of Dec. 13.

Almost back home, Cunningham passes hundreds of signs lining the road that say “Don’t burn us! Say no to Harmony Grove Village South.” But other signs have started cropping up, signs that say “Stop Seguro!”

Next year, energy company AES hopes to begin construction on the Seguro storage project — one of the largest lithium-ion battery facilities in the state, just over a half mile north of the Harmony Grove limit. Theberge says the facility is another example of outside forces profiting off of rural America and another fire hazard.

AES’s annual report says in rare instances their batteries can “rapidly release the energy they contain by venting smoke and flames in a manner that can ignite nearby materials.” A petition to halt the project has amassed 4,700 signatures.

Cunningham, now home and comfortably resting in bed, is hardened by the interminable battle between developers and rural America.

“It was all nature and beautiful and I’ve seen it get pecked away,” Cunningham said. “It’s heartbreaking and unfortunately, it seems like it’s unstoppable.”