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By Kirsten AndelmanApril 17, 2024 (La Posta) -- There was a glaring error on the Major Use Permit application filed with the County of San Diego on April 6, 2023 for the proposed Crescentwood Cemetery: the address listed for the project, at 35252 Old Highway 80 in La Posta.
But 35252 is also the location of Ben and Trina Good’s green clapboard home, which sits across Old Highway 80 from the 38 acres where Crescentwood wants to build a new cemetery. The proposed cemetery land has a “parcel number” -- but no assigned street address. So the applicants, SD Crescentwood Services, used the Good’s address on their application.
Within a week or so, the county had mailed area neighbors a required “Notice to Property Owners” informing them of plans for a cemetery at 35252 Old Highway 80.
Ben Good said he never received the notice, and only learned about it in a string of angry phone calls that started one morning last April. And he hasn’t caught his breath since.
“No one ever asked me [for] permission to put my address on the application,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t want to look out the window at a cemetery – so why would I do that?”
Photo: Ben Good looks at big pile of red shank, oak and chaparral bulldozed to make way for new road
The County recently gave Crescentwood permission to start building a driveway road into the cemetery, and construction took place over two days early in January. An area about 25 feet wide was cleared, extending about 500 feet into the property.
His friends in the community started asking him how many millions he had gotten by selling out to a cemetery developer -- or if he had stopped to consider the groundwater that they all relied upon. The proposed site sits above a “single-source aquifer” (an EPA designation, from 1984, offering protection to residents of areas who depend solely on groundwater).
Good says people have cooled towards him, and that some have even stopped referring him business.
By late April of 2023, a public Facebook group shows multiple people expressing concern about the impact on groundwater, and one thread includes Ben Good himself trying to explain the address mishap: “The address is incorrect. I am the owner of 35252 old High way 80. It is not our project,” Good wrote on a community Facebook thread about the cemetery, in late April of 2023. “I know me and my family are absolutely 100 [percent] opposing this project. We oppose any cemetery[,] regardless of what affiliation.”
He said he would tell anyone who would listen that he had no relationship with the cemetery developers, and that he, too, feared for the groundwater. And that as the physically closest neighbor, he had more to lose than a view; he wondered aloud if his property would lose over 50% of its value.
Up until that point, Good said he had met the new owners several times, and that they had explained that they were first trying to discern if they could even reach groundwater on the property through a well. The friendliest of the men, “Mohamed,” explained to Ben Good that he was an “uncle” or “elder” of the family, and that they were looking to build a mansion for their large, extended family. He said that he verbally gave the men permission to drive over his land just that day, in order to see if they could reach water.
At one point, Good says, the men asked to buy water from him, which they needed for their exploratory equipment. He invited them to his home, and gave them about 600 gallons of water, refusing to take money from what he thought was the family that would soon be his closest neighbors.
Good said that he was under the impression that only one house could be built on the 38-acre parcel, as he had considered buying it himself over a decade ago, but was told by the County that he’d be unable to split it into three lots for his extended family.
He watched the property change hands about four times over the last two decades, and he said he was initially joyful about the warmth he felt from his new neighbors. He said the men talked about having goats, and of putting up a grand estate, and that with that many acres between them, he had zero concerns. “I was kind of looking forward to it,” Good said of the few interactions that occurred before he learned of the cemetery plans. “I liked Mohamed. I still like Mohamed.”
But now, Good fears that his initial hospitality will fuel the impression that he helped get the project going. If he had consulted counsel, he believes, he would have been advised to not do anything to help them in their exploration, which was ultimately successful at hitting water and building a well.
While he thought he was helping his future neighbors, he now wonders if he was being used to give the impression that he was a party to the entire project. Seeing his home address splashed across the “Major Use Permit” and the “Notice to Neighbors” brings a pit to his stomach, he says now, as he worries that it led to the belief by some that he was behind the project.
“I was bamboozled,” Good told East County Magazine.
Good also said that when the well was successfully reached, his family was still operating under the belief that one home was coming. He wonders if the permit to dig the well was obtained under similarly false pretenses, and if the true nature of the plans was concealed until water was confirmed.
ECM could not get answers from Crescentwood as to why the Good’s address was listed on the application.
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