CEQA Litigation
Exemptions
Environmental Impact Reports
Negative Declarations
Supplemental Environmental Review

Every few years, with El Nino-like regularity, a wave of interest in CEQA reform sweeps through the business community, accompanied by pleas to the legislature to overhaul the statute.  In the end, few substantive changes are made.  This year is no exception. (See June 14th post).

Many of the recurring concerns involve the unpredictability of litigation challenging EIRs.  As is illustrated by the recent appellate court opinion in North Coast Rivers Alliance v Marin Municipal Water District, that unpredictability arises not from deficiencies in CEQA’s standard for judicial review, but from the failure of some courts to apply it.

The trial court in North Coast Rivers put the EIR a water district had prepared for a desalination project under a microscope, and found its treatment of eleven separate issues “inadequate.”  By contrast, in a straightforward application of CEQA’s standard of review — which requires judicial deference to agency findings of fact and policy determinations — the court of appeal reversed the lower court judgment and upheld the EIR.

Among other things, the court of appeal’s meticulous and carefully reasoned opinion addresses:

  • AB 32 standards and greenhouse gas significance thresholds
  •  Significance thresholds for aesthetic impacts
  •  Mitigation standards and deferred mitigation
  •  Description of the affected environment
  •  Use of pilot studies to assess potential impacts
  •  Treatment of regulatory agency protocols for analyzing impacts
  •  Analysis of inconsistencies with relevant plans
  •  Triggers for recirculation of an EIR

A detailed summary of the trial and appellate courts’ contrasting rulings follows.
Continue Reading Judicial Review of Environmental Impact Reports: Is There Really A Need for CEQA Reform?

SB 731 (Steinberg)  CEQA Modernization Act of 2013.  (Last amended May 24, 2013.  Passed to Assembly May 30, 2013) 

  • Aesthetic Impacts in Transit Priority Areas Not Significant. Bill would provide that aesthetic impacts of a residential, mixed-use residential, or employment center project, as defined, within a “transit priority area,” shall not be considered

In response to a business community campaign calling for broad CEQA reform, California State Senator Senate President pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg released his highly anticipated CEQA “modernization” bill,  SB 731.  So far, the bill is more remarkable for what it lacks, than for what it contains: 

  • A Co-author.  2012’s chief CEQA reform champion,

After wading through a detailed discussion relating to biological impacts (see Perkins Coie Update), the court in Preserve Wild Santee v. City of Santee dove into issues surrounding an EIR’s analysis of water supplies.  The court found the EIR invalid in part because it failed to consider the uncertainty of State Water Project water

The County of Siskiyou certified an Environmental Impact Report for a project to expand an existing manufacturing facility to accommodate a cogeneration power plant housed on one acre of a 300-acre site.  Environmental groups claimed the EIR violated CEQA by failing to include adequate project alternatives and failing to fully disclose, analyze, and mitigate the

After obtaining the necessary permit, T-Mobile installed wireless equipment on an existing utility pole in a residential neighborhood in San Francisco.  The installation was part of a larger project to install similar equipment on existing utility poles scattered throughout the city.  Residents living nearby sought to have the city’s decision to issue the permit overturned,