The City of Hayward v. Board of Trustees of the California State University, 2012 Cal. App. LEXIS 761, publication status was recently changed from unpublished to published on June 28, 2012. The Board of Trustees of the California State University (Trustees) approved a master plan to guide the expansion of the Hayward campus. The City of Hayward (City) sued claiming the Trustees’ environmental impact report (EIR) violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) by failing to analyze the impacts of the master plan on fire protection and public safety, traffic and parking, air quality, and parklands. The California First Appellate District Court found that Trustees’ EIR was adequate under CEQA in all respects except with regard to the analysis of impacts on surrounding parklands.
Trustees’ master plan requires an increase of fire services, either with the expansion or construction of a firehouse. The court held that the EIR adequately analyzed the impacts of the construction. Due to the small area required for a new firehouse along with its urban location, the court also held that the EIR appropriately concluded that the environmental impacts of expanded fire services would be less than significant. Therefore, the court explained, no mitigation measures were required. The court further concluded that it found no deficiency in the EIR’s analysis of cumulative impacts on public services.
The court next addressed the issues of traffic and parking. With the expansion of the college campus comes the need for more faculty. The Trustees’ master plan acknowledged the high cost of housing in California, and therefore explored potential locations to build affordable faculty housing. The EIR conducted an analysis and concluded that construction of faculty housing will not have a significant environmental impact as a result of increased traffic or parking. The court held this conclusion and analysis as sufficient under CEQA, explaining that since the Trustees prepared a program EIR as opposed to a project EIR, they properly evaluated cumulative impacts but deferred site-specific analysis of possible impacts on traffic until a later time. The court next examined the Trustees’ mitigation measures. With the main goal of shifting commuters out of single-occupant cars and into cleaner modes of transportation, the court found “no deficiency” in the way the EIR considered impacts of the master plan on parking and traffic, incorporated mitigation measures, and reached the conclusion that some environmental impacts are unavoidable. Lastly, the City claimed that the Trustees’ EIR failed to include a “mitigation measure … providing for the University to pay its fair share of traffic improvements.” City of Hayward, 2012 Cal. App. LEXIS 761 at 61. Since the City did not raise this issue in its opening brief, the court declined to address it because the argument had been waived.
Pertaining to impacts on air quality, the court supported the Trustees’ EIR. While the EIR concluded that the master plan would produce long-term emissions of pollutants, it presented transportation mitigation measures that would reduce some, though not all, emissions to a less than significant level. Since neither the trial court nor the City suggested other mitigation measures, the court held this portion of the Trustees’ EIR to be sufficient.
Analysis of the impacts on parklands was the one area the court found the EIR to be inadequate. Due to the proximity of two parks to the campus, the court explained that the EIR must do more than simply reference insignificant impacts on the East Bay Regional Park System. The Trustees’ EIR should rather analyze impacts on the two parks specifically. The court also held that the Trustees’ reliance on “long-standing use patterns” was done in error. Since the EIR made no attempt to determine the extent to which the current student body uses the parks or to extrapolate from that data as to what park usage might be in the future, there was no evidence to support Trustees’ assumption that the student use of the parks would remain nominal even after campus expansion.
Key Point:
The court found that the Trustees’ EIR inadequately analyzed the master plan’s impacts on parklands because, due to the proximity of the two parks, an analysis of impacts on the regional park system in general was too broad. The court also made clear that to support findings and analyses in an EIR, there needs to be concrete evidence; the Trustees should have attempted to ascertain the overall usage and capacity of the two nearby parks.
Written By: Tina Thomas, Chris Butcher and Holly McMannes (law clerk)
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