FAIRVIEW — Fred Tomlinson knows the former horse pasture behind his house will not be a bucolic patch of grass for long.

The 1.89-acre site is slated to become Bayview Heights, a development of 11 two-story homes that Alameda County planners approved in 2007.

That is too dense, said Tomlinson, who is appealing a judge's ruling that the county acted reasonably when it gave the project the go-ahead despite a lack of environmental review. Tomlinson and his wife, D'Arcy, will file papers with the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco this week.

"We tried to work with the county, to play by their rules, but they ignored us," Tomlinson said.

County planners said the project was exempt from California Environmental Quality Act regulations as an urban infill development.

Tomlinson, who has a petition of support signed by more than 80 neighbors, said the exemption is erroneous "by the letter of the law" because it applies only to projects within city limits. Fairview is in unincorporated Alameda County.

The judge ruled that the charges are moot because they were not brought up in public hearings on the matter, which is a condition of litigation under CEQA rules.

That does not sit well with Tomlinson.

"A higher judge might look at it differently," he said. "The county went out of their way to mislead people into thinking there's an (environmental) exemption."

Moreover, he said the project is the

"No one is looking at the cumulative effects that these infill projects will have," he said.

County officials have recognized that the projects do add up.

"It's sort of like you keep putting in little projects, little infill projects, and ultimately 10 projects of 10 houses is a hundred houses," said Supervisor Nate Miley at a Board of Supervisors meeting in 2007. "So how do you evaluate that or when do you evaluate it?"

Miley spokesman Seth Kaplan said that when Bayview Heights was approved, there was no guideline for managing the aggregate effect of small infill projects. However, he said there is work under way to change that.

"The (area plan) needs to be updated, and we're working with the county Community Development Agency, and all the other agencies that serve Fairview," he said. "We came to the conclusion that there is no way to address that, and we have to look at the whole area. In the end there will be a new specific plan."

Kaplan said there is no timeline, but they plan to begin holding meetings in the near future and the process will take at least a year.

That is too late for Tomlinson, whose lawsuit was dismissed by a Superior Court judge in April. He disagrees with Kaplan's assessment, and said current rules wouldn't have allowed the Bayview Heights approval without environmental review, if those rules were followed.

"The Planning Commission should have known it couldn't claim that exemption," D'Arcy Tomlinson said. "It shouldn't be on us to find out all these things that have to be met. If they're not going to follow the rules, they should just throw out the rules."

Reach Eric Kurhi at 510-293-2473.