Opinion ID: 2631711
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Do Overriding Circumstances Justify Approving the Campus Master Plan?

Text: When a public agency has found that a project's significant environmental effects cannot feasibly be mitigated, the agency may nevertheless proceed with the project if it also finds that specific overriding economic, legal, social, technological, or other benefits of the project outweigh the significant effects on the environment. (Pub. Resources Code, § 21081, subd. (b).) The Trustees, as noted, have made such a finding with respect to each of the remaining, unmitigated environmental impacts on drainage, water supply, wastewater management, traffic and fire protection. If we agreed with the Trustees that mitigation were infeasible for the reasons given in the findings, i.e., that the Trustees may not legally contribute to FORA and that the Trustees cannot ensure that FORA will actually construct infrastructure improvementswe would give much deference to the Trustees' weighing of the project's benefits against the remaining environmental effects. Generally speaking, a court's proper role in reviewing a challenged EIR is not to determine whether the EIR's ultimate conclusions are correct but only whether they are supported by substantial evidence and whether the EIR is sufficient as an informational document. ( Laurel Heights Improvement Assn. v. Regents of University of California, supra, 47 Cal.3d 376, 407, 253 Cal. Rptr. 426, 764 P.2d 278.) Moreover, an agency's decision that the specific benefits a project offers outweigh any environmental effects that cannot feasibly be mitigated, while subject to review for abuse of discretion (Pub. Resources Code, § 21168.5), lies at the core of the lead agency's discretionary responsibility under CEQA and is, for that reason, not lightly to be overturned. (Cf. Laurel Heights Improvement Assn. v. Regents of University of California, supra, 47 Cal.3d 376, 392, 253 Cal.Rptr. 426, 764 P.2d 278 [court reviews the EIR's sufficiency as an informative document and not the correctness of its environmental conclusions].) In this case, however, the Trustee's statement of overriding considerations is invalid for a reason that does not require us to reweigh benefits and detriments, or to inquire into the statement's factual basis. A statement of overriding considerations is required, and offers a proper basis for approving a project despite the existence of unmitigated environmental effects, only when the measures necessary to mitigate or avoid those effects have properly been found to be infeasible. (Pub. Resources Code, § 21081, subd. (b).) Given our conclusion the Trustees have abused their discretion in determining that CSUMB's remaining effects cannot feasibly be mitigated, that the Trustees' statement of overriding circumstances is invalid necessarily follows. CEQA does not authorize an agency to proceed with a project that will have significant, unmitigated effects on the environment, based simply on a weighing of those effects against the project's benefits, unless the measures necessary to mitigate those effects are truly infeasible. Such a rule, even were it not wholly inconsistent with the relevant statute ( id., § 21081, subd. (b)), would tend to displace the fundamental obligation of [e]ach public agency [to] mitigate or avoid the significant effects on the environment of projects that it carries out or approves whenever it is feasible to do so ( id., § 21002.1, subd. (b)). This conclusion does not, however, preclude the Trustees from including in a revised EIR a statement of overriding considerations regarding environmental effects as to which they have properly found mitigation to be infeasible for reasons other than those we have rejected.