Source: https://www.thomaslaw.com/blog/category/mitigation-2/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 15:56:12+00:00

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On November 30, 2015, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Center for Biological Diversity v. California Department of Fish and Wildlife, 2015 Cal. LEXIS 1043, addressing Newhall Ranch, a proposed 12,000 acre development project. The Newhall Ranch Specific Plan area, located in northwestern Los Angeles County in a portion of the Santa Clara River Valley, was first analyzed and approved by Los Angeles County in 2003. In 2010, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) certified an environmental impact report/environmental impact statement (EIR/EIS), approved a resource management plan, adopted a conservation plan and a streambed alteration agreement, and issued incidental take permits necessary to implement the Specific Plan previously approved by the County. CDFW’s approvals were subsequently challenged under CEQA by a coalition of conservation groups.
While the Los Angeles County Superior Court granted plaintiffs’ petition for writ of mandate on several grounds, the Second District Court of Appeal reversed on all issues and directed the trial court to enter judgment in favor of CDFW. On review, the Supreme Court considered three issues and addressed, for the first time, what lead agencies must do to sufficiently analyze greenhouse gas emissions in an EIR.
Justice Werdegar filed the opinion for the five-justice majority, with Justice Corrigan writing a separate opinion concurring and dissenting and Justice Chin writing a lengthy dissent. This decision will have far reaching implications for future EIRs, but unfortunately, the majority opinion provides little clarity on how lead agencies will be able to survive legal challenges to greenhouse gas analyses.
The majority began its analysis by stating that the appropriate threshold for the EIR’s greenhouse gas emissions analysis was a question of law that the Court should review de novo because it pertains to “correct CEQA procedure.” This holding is in conflict with previous case law stating that a lead agency’s selection of a threshold is deferentially reviewed under the substantial evidence standard.
After conducting a de novo review, all of the justices agreed that lead agencies can use consistency with AB 32 as a threshold for determining the significance of greenhouse gas emissions under CEQA. The California Air Resources Board’s 2008 Scoping Plan implements AB 32 and sets forth a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in California to 1990 levels by cutting business-as-usual emission levels projected for 2020 by 29 percent. Plaintiffs argued that “business as usual” was an impermissible hypothetical future scenario under the Court’s prior ruling in Communities for a Better Environment v. South Coast Air Quality Management District (2010) 48 Cal.4th 310. The justices disagreed, holding that comparison to a “no development” scenario would be unrealistic as CEQA is not a population control measure and development would simply occur elsewhere if the project is not permitted.
The feasibility of providing evidence of this “quantitative equivalence” was questioned by both Justice Corrigan and Justice Chin, who would have found that CDFW did not abuse its discretion. According to the majority, in order to use compliance with the Scoping Plan as a threshold, the lead agency must “review the data behind the Scoping Plan’s business-as-usual model” and then “determine what level of reduction from business as usual a new land use development at the proposed location must contribute in order to comply with statewide goals.” Justice Corrigan opined that this technique would be of limited practical use. An additional consideration, noted by Justice Chin in the dissent, is that the majority “strongly hints” that the 2020 goal contained in the Scoping Plan will soon be insufficient and projects will need to meet a different goal established for a date beyond 2020. Thus, the usefulness of the Scoping Plan as a threshold is extremely limited with an upcoming (but unknown) expiration date.
The majority also took issue with the EIR’s use of the housing densities in the Santa Clarita Valley when determining the “business as usual” figure because those densities may not have been contemplated by the Scoping Plan. Justice Corrigan and Justice Chin agreed that this critique was “both hyper technical and insufficiently deferential.” Given the lack of agreement among experts about the level of greenhouse gas reduction needed at the project level, Justice Corrigan and Justice Chin would have resolved any reasonable doubts in favor of the agency’s decision.
The majority then offered two other approaches for conducting a greenhouse gas analysis, though it noted that it did not “guarantee that any of these approaches will be found to meet CEQA’s demands.” First, the lead agency can show consistency with the AB 32’s statewide goal by demonstrating compliance with regulatory programs designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for particular activities. Because the Scoping Plan does not propose statewide regulation of land use planning, the majority stated that local governments bear the primary burden of evaluating a land use project’s impact on greenhouse gas emissions. This can be achieved by referencing climate action plans or emission reduction plans that are developed at the local level, if the agency is fortunate enough to be considering a project in an area that has these plans in place. Second, a lead agency may rely on existing numerical thresholds of significance, like those created by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD). However, since the BAAQMD thresholds were created specifically for the Bay Area, they will be of little use to projects that are being developed in other regions.
Finally, the majority held that under the circumstances of this case plaintiffs exhausted their administrative remedies regarding certain claims by raising them during a comment period on the final EIS initiated by the US Army Corps of Engineers under NEPA. The majority classified this as CDFW creating an “optional comment period” on the final EIR under CEQA. The majority noted, however, that this was not a larger holding about EIR/EISs but pertained to the circumstances here, in which CDFW participated in the post-final EIS/EIR process, included responses to the late comments, and made responsive changes to the final EIR it certified.
Both Justice Chin and Justice Corrigan expressed concern about the delay caused by the majority’s opinion, noting that the litigation had already delayed the project by 5 years with further delay to come. Justice Corrigan wondered whether CEQA was becoming “a moving target, impossible to satisfy” while Justice Chin noted that “California’s environmental laws are not intended to prevent development that is needed to accommodate the state’s growing population.” Because of the majority’s decision, the 58,000 people who will eventually be housed by the Newhall Ranch project will continue to wait for a project that has been thoroughly reviewed and fully-permitted for 5 years.
A lead agency that uses a greenhouse gas emissions threshold that relies on the AB 32 Scoping Plan must include evidence in the record that similar projects with similar impacts were contemplated by the Scoping Plan. If that is not possible, which will be likely for many projects, the lead agency should use one of the other two methods provided by the Supreme Court for analyzing greenhouse gas emissions: demonstrating compliance with regulatory programs designed to reduce emissions or using a quantitative threshold. However, the Court noted that these methods were not guaranteed to be acceptable. Additionally, a mitigation plan for a project cannot include measures that call for the relocation of fully protected species.
After months of anticipation, the Supreme Court issued its ruling on City of San Diego v. Trustees of the California State University, S199557, affirming the appellate court’s ruling that the California State University (CSU) should have evaluated one or more possible project modifications to its Project to reduce or avoid unmitigated off-site traffic impacts.
The case centered on CSU’s plans to expand San Diego State University to accommodate more than 10,000 additional students – part of a statewide program to expand CSU’s statewide enrollment capacity by 107,000. Although CSU has budgeted substantial state and non-state funds to expand its campuses, CSU has repeatedly declined to use its financial resources to reimburse other public agencies for its self-determined fair share of mitigating its projects’ off-campus environmental effects. Instead, CSU argued that pursuant to City of Marina v. Board of Trustees of California State University (2006) 39 Cal.4th 341 (Marina) it may not lawfully pay to mitigate off-campus environmental effects of its projects unless the Legislature makes an appropriation for that specific purpose. CSU argued that, because the Legislature may not make appropriations for CSU’s off-site mitigation purposes, such mitigation was infeasible. Applying its interpretation of Marina, CSU certified the San Diego State University EIR based on a statement of overriding considerations, determining that the project’s benefits outweigh its unmitigated effects.
The Court rejected CSU’s interpretation of Marina, applying a de novo standard of review. The Court held that Marina did not justify CSU’s position that CSU may only contribute funds for off-campus mitigation if designated for that specific purpose. First, the Court held that CSU enjoys some discretion over the use of appropriations. (Citing Ed. Code, §§ 89770, 89771, 89771, 89773, 90083.) Second, neither Marina nor any other decision suggests that mitigation costs for a project funded by the Legislature cannot appropriately be included in the project’s budget and paid with the funds appropriated for the project; this is in-line with CEQA’s directive which requires that “[a]ll state agencies . . . shall request in their budgets the funds necessary to protect the environment in relation to the problems caused by their activities.” (Pub. Resources Code, § 21106; cf. County of San Diego v. Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College Dist. (2006) 141 Cal.App.4th 86, 101-105.) Third, no provision of CEQA conditions the duty of a state agency to mitigate its project’s environmental effects on the Legislature’s grant of an earmarked appropriation. Finally, the Board’s improper application of Marina depends on a legally unsupportable distinction between environmental impacts occurring on the project site and those off-site.
The Court stressed that CSU’s proposed interpretation of Marina would lead to unreasonable consequences. The Court recognized that such a holding would apply to all state agencies, effectively forcing the Legislature to sit as “a standing environmental review board to decide on a case-by-case basis whether state agencies’ projects will proceed despite unmitigated off-site environmental effects.” (Opinion, p. 19.) The Court also recognized that under CSU’s interpretation, if the responsible state agency were to proceed with a project without mitigation because the Legislature did not earmark funds, the cost of addressing a project’s contribution to cumulative impacts would place a financial burden on local and regional government agencies. Further, CSU’s interpretation would render off-site mitigation infeasible for many if not all state projects and more projects would proceed without mitigation pursuant to statements of overriding considerations. The Court also rejected CSU’s new arguments under Education Code section 67504, Government Code section 13332.15, and Education Code section 66202.5.
State agencies may not avoid their duty to avoid or mitigate the environmental effects of their projects simply because the Legislature has not earmarked funds for “mitigation.” Lead agencies have a duty to consider alternative mitigation measures or alternative funding measures for off-site impacts where its preferred mitigation is uncertain.

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