Christmas came a week early for some here in Kern County, where justice and private property rights may prevail after all.

Kern County Superior Court Judge Kenneth Twisselman's ruling that the city must do an environmental impact report on the hillside ordinance it approved last year is a sweet victory for the land owners targeted by the ordinance, though with the final ruling still to come they're too circumspect to say so.

Please, allow me.

With his ruling last week, Twisselman basically told city officials they must follow the same rules as developers -- if they're going to pass an ordinance impacting the environment, they must complete an EIR.

What a concept. One that apparently didn't occur to the council last year in its rush to approve the ordinance before its head cheerleader, Mike Maggard, exchanged his council chair for a seat on the Kern County Board of Supervisors.

Twisselman won't make his final ruling until next month, but possible options include suspending the hillside ordinance while the city gets its act together, or voiding it altogether. Should he decide on the latter, the 1999 version of the hillside ordinance -- yes, the city already has one -- would remain in force.

Whatever his final decision, the judge's ruling surely came as a shock to those who have labored mightily to demonize the private land owners who plan to build homes near the bluffs. Land owners who harbor the crazy notion that in the land of the free they should be able to develop their own property in any environmentally sound way they wish. Or be reasonably compensated if the city deems otherwise.

Editorials bemoaning the judge's ruling insist the new hillside ordinance is essential to ensure that newly built homes are "set back from bluff ridges," where no developer ever considered building in the first place.

The new ordinance, its supporters say, will make certain that firefighter access and open space will be protected and preserved -- even though Canyons LLC, the developer at the heart of the controversy, reserved 284 of its 889 acres for open space in the original plan deemed complete by the city in July 2005.

But let's not cover old ground. The question now is whether the city will go the costly EIR route -- some speculate that an EIR could cost WAY more than the $250,000 suggested by City Manager Alan Tandy -- and how that lengthy process might impact the Canyons project.

Tandy declined to speculate, saying he'd prefer to wait for the judge's final ruling. But Canyons project manager Bob Kapral said the city's EIR, which may take a year or even two to complete, will have no impact on the development.

"We are scheduled to present our own draft EIR for public circulation on January 7," Kapral said. "It shows it's going to be a safe project and there's no reason for it not to be approved."

Which means the Canyons project -- with its upscale, gated communities, 17 gross acres of public parks and nearly 10 miles of public trails -- would go forward as the city scrambles to complete an EIR on the ordinance specifically designed to defeat it.

Does that make sense to anybody? Sound like something the city should go for? Hardly. But then, the hillside ordinance was never a sensible or even necessary proposition in the first place.