Source: https://www.ceqadevelopments.com/2018/06/04/filtering-the-ceqa-noise-first-district-upholds-santa-rosas-negative-declaration-for-dream-center-youth-housing-project-holds-non-expert-predictions-of-significant-nois/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 14:44:13+00:00

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Published cases upholding negative declarations are always noteworthy because the low threshold “fair argument” test renders such CEQA documents extremely vulnerable to litigation challenges. In some ways, this case’s result might be viewed as a matter of “white hats” versus “black hats.” The so-called “Dream Center” project at issue is a particularly sympathetic one. The well-established, non-profit youth support organization Social Advocates for Youth (SAY) proposed, and the City of Santa Rosa approved conversion of the defunct Warrack Hospital (closed in 2008) into a 69-bed facility to house 63 young adults (ages 18 to 24) and provide counseling, education and job training, a health and wellness center (for ages 5 through 24), and activities for residents including a pottery making area, half-court basketball area, and resident-tended garden. The Dream Center would provide services to physically, sexually and emotionally abused children, runaways, homeless youth, former foster youth, and homeless young adults unable to afford housing or find employment. What’s not to like?
Appellants’ attorney’s letter mentioned and included a copy of another noise study performed by SAY’s acoustical engineer (Svinth) at a different Santa Rosa site for a 24-hour convenience store/gas station project (the Tower Market Study), but they failed to articulate to the City either in the letter or at the hearing the detailed calculations and arguments they would later include in their appellate briefs. As an aside, while an agency or real party expert’s own evidence can sometimes effectively be used to undermine that expert’s conclusions or to show an overlooked impact where it clearly pertains to the project at issue, it is obviously the better course of action (assuming that time and resources permit) for negative declaration challengers to hire their own qualified expert to place a contrary, fact-based opinion in the record to support the requisite “fair argument” of potential impact. That course was not followed by the “black hats” here, who instead pursued the much riskier tactic of relying on attorney argument to substitute for actual expert opinion evidence – a choice that ultimately proved fatal to their CEQA action.
The neighbors then sued under CEQA to set aside the project approvals and compel preparation of an EIR. The trial court was unpersuaded by their case, and denied their petition for writ of administrative mandate. Undaunted, they appealed, claiming traffic noise from the Project’s south parking lot and noise from the residents’ outdoor recreation activities (i.e., pottery-making, gardening, and basketball) would be significant and required preparation of an EIR.
Applying the foregoing principles to the case before it, the Court of Appeal first determined as a matter of law that certain numeric “base” ambient noise levels set forth in the City’s Code for certain zoning designations and times of day, expressed in terms of Sound Level A (decibels), were not “thresholds of significance” or “maximum allowable noise levels for the times of day indicated.” Rather, they were “normally acceptable noise levels for the zones and times indicated” which were “intended to be used for comparative purposes.” While City’s Noise Ordinance did prescribe maximum decibel (dB or dBA) levels for certain noise-generating sources, such as mechanical equipment, it did not do so for the types of noise-generating sources at issue for the Dream Center, i.e., parking lot noise and residents’ recreational activities. As explained by SAY’s noise expert, Svinth, the project’s pottery area and basketball court were thus governed only by the General Plan’s provision for 60 dBA Ldn (average A-weighted day/night level) in residential neighborhoods, which Svinth opined also allowed a further increase of about 5 decibels from that level before a significant effect would occur.
The Court held, de novo and as a matter of law, that City Code § 17-16.040 governed the Dream Center’s noise sources raised on appeal; that section contained a qualitative proscription of “any loud, unnecessary, or unusual noise which disturbs the peace or quiet of any neighborhood or which causes discomfort or annoyance to any reasonable person of normal sensitiveness residing in the area,” followed by a dozen “standards” to be “considered in determining . . . a violation[,]” e.g., level, intensity, nature, origin, time and duration of the noise, level and intensity of background noise, proximity to sleeping facilities, zoning nature and density, etc.
Svinth, a member of an engineering firm specializing in acoustics, performed a Noise Study which concluded the Dream Center would cause no significant noise impacts, and that study was incorporated into the CEQA Initial Study and relied on by the City in issuing the negative declaration. Svinth’s study calculated and consistently used “day/night average noise level” (Ldn) to measure base ambient noise levels and assess project noise impacts, explaining that greater increases (up to 5 dBA Ldn) are tolerated in quieter areas like the project neighborhood, whereas in noisier areas a lesser (3 dBA Ldn) increase would trip the significance threshold. He identified relevant project-specific “significance criteria,” including whether General Plan or Noise Ordinance Standards would be exceeded, and whether project-generated noise would increase noise levels 5 dBA Ldn or greater above existing conditions. He concluded project activities and traffic noise would increase existing levels at the south border and southwest “tip” of the project (areas abutting sensitive residential receptors) by a maximum of 1 dBA Ldn and would thus not exceed the significance thresholds. He limited his traffic noise analysis to surrounding streets based on the assumption, supported by a COA attached to the CUP, that the project’s parking lot abutting its southern border would only be used during regular hours and only by SAY employees.
Appellants launched a technical argument attacking Svinth’s methodology, contending he should have used Leq calculations to make daytime, evening and nighttime noise comparisons, rather than Ldn calculations with day/night averages – an argument which appears to run afoul of the discretion an agency enjoys under CEQA to choose its own methodology for studying an impact so long as it is supported by substantial evidence. (E.g., North Coast Rivers Alliance v. Marin Municipal Water District Board of Directors (2013) 216 Cal.App.4th 614, 642 [“[I]ssue is not whether other methods might have been used, but whether the agency relied on evidence that a ‘reasonable mind might accept as sufficient to support the conclusion reached’ in the EIR.”].) Appellants also argued a lower threshold of significance should have been employed “because the vicinity of the Dream Center was an exceptionally quiet neighborhood” – an argument which is not without some facial appeal under CEQA Guidelines § 15064(b)’s principle that “the significance of activity may vary with the setting,” but which also runs counter to an agency’s substantial discretion to develop its own thresholds of significance, even in the negative declaration context. (CEQA Guidelines, § 15064.7; see Rominger v. County of Colusa (2014) 229 Cal.App.4th 690, 716, citing Save Cuyama Valley v. County of Santa Barbara (2013) 213 Cal.App.4th 1059, 1068.) Using the methodology Svinth employed in the Tower Market Study for a 24-hour convenience store/gas station project located in a different, denser part of the City, appellants also purported to have demonstrated that properly recalculated ambient noise levels would show a significant project impact.
Per the Court: “The two projects [Tower Market and Dream Center] are not similar and we do not feel confident importing data from a wholly different noise study into the Dream Center study, at least in the manner appellants ask us to use that data.” The Court rejected appellants’ arguments about predicted noise impacts as (1) non-expert evidence, (2) speculative given project parking restrictions, (3) reliant on a reading of the Noise Ordinance inconsistent with the Court’s, and (4) premised on misreadings of the Tower Market Study, and thus not supported by substantial evidence – such as facts, fact-based expert opinion, or reasonable inferences from facts – upon which a fair argument could be based.
While, in light of the “low threshold” and normally easily satisfied “fair argument” standard, this case might be viewed as atypical, or cynically in terms of “white hat wins, black hat loses,” such a reading would fail to do justice to the valuable legal lessons to be gleaned from it. While lay percipient witness testimony may be sufficient to create a fair argument as to noise impacts in that presumably rare case where the proposed project’s noise impacts have already occurred and have been experienced by neighboring sensitive receptors (see, e.g., Keep Our Mountains Quiet v. County of Santa Clara (2015) 236 Cal.App.4th 714, my post on which can be found here), in the more common scenario where noise impacts must be predicted from technical or scientific information, data and analysis, special expertise will generally be required to provide an opinion that constitutes the requisite substantial evidence. (See, e.g., Joshua Tree Downtown Business Alliance v. County of San Bernardino (2016) 1 Cal.App.5th 677, 690-691, my post on which can be found here.) In other words, lawyers shouldn’t try to be noise or acoustics experts, and their arguments should not be expected to adequately substitute for expert opinion on technical issues in CEQA cases. If you are challenging a negative declaration and trying to establish a fair argument based on predicted impacts implicating scientific or technical data and analyses, you should hire a qualified expert with relevant expertise to provide the significant impact opinion evidence, and make sure to place that expert’s favorable opinion into the record of proceedings before the lead agency closes its public hearing on the project.

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