The Santa Clarita environmental group SCOPE challenged the Newhall Ranch development project in court Wednesday over concerns of greenhouse gas emissions and water.

The Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment (SCOPE) and lawyers for the Newhall Ranch developer, FivePoint, stood opposite one another inside a Los Angeles County Superior Court courtroom last week.

SCOPE, along with Friends of the Santa Clara River, filed a suit back in Aug. 2017 after the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved the Newhall Ranch development project.

The Newhall Ranch project includes 21,500 units of mixed-use development built along six miles of Highway 126 west of the I-5 in Valencia.

Related: Newhall Ranch Developers, Environmentalists Reach Agreement

The lawsuit claims the water supply secured by the developer is not adequate enough for the proposed 21,000 homes in the Santa Clarita Valley.

The suit states that the California drought has caused a drop in the groundwater table that closed many groundwater wells, even some in the center of the city, according to the environmental group.

“Our concern is that if those many wells were closed at the same time as state water is cut back with the proposed doubling in population from all the development approvals, that this would lead to serious shortages,” said Lynne Plambeck, SCOPE president.

This is not the first time the Newhall Ranch development has been taken to court. Since it was first proposed in the 1980s, the development has been subject to numerous state and federal legal challenges by conservation groups.

SCOPE filed another lawsuit back in 1998, which reached the California Supreme Court after being denied by the lower state courts.

Related: Newhall Ranch Development Lawsuit Appeal Denied By Ninth Circuit Federal Court

The California Supreme Court ruled against SCOPE in the previous lawsuit, and an appeal was denied by the Ninth Circuit Federal Court.

After questioning and hearing responses, Judge Richard L. Fruin ordered transcripts of the testimony for review. No further court date has been set as of Friday.

FivePoint officials had not returned a request for comment as of the publication of this article.

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