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In an unpublished opinion, Malibu Community Alliance v. City of Malibu, 2016 Cal. App. Unpub. LEXIS 3116, Division Seven of the Second Appellate District adjudicated a challenge to development permits granted by the City of Malibu (City) to the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (District) for the installation of athletic field lights at Malibu High School. Petitioners sought a writ of mandate ordering the City to revoke the permits. The trial court denied the petition and the appellate court affirmed.

The District had previously used temporary lights for evening athletic events. Permanent field lighting was planned as part of a larger construction project on the Malibu high school and middle school campuses. After issuing the initial study, the school district learned that permanent lighting would be in violation of a condition of its coastal development permit obtained from the California Coastal Commission unless the District obtained an amendment to its campus’s coastal development permit and Malibu’s local coastal program. The District then decided to separate the field lighting project from the larger campus project and conduct an independent environmental review of each project. The District proceeded to draft an environmental impact report (EIR) for the larger construction project and a mitigated negative declaration (MND) for the field lighting project.

During the environmental review process for the EIR and the MND, multiple comments suggested that this division of the projects constituted illegal piecemealing under CEQA and that the cumulative impacts of both projects were not analyzed. In the Final EIR, the District responded to these comments and analyzed the cumulative impacts of the construction project and lighting project. The District certified the EIR, approved the construction project, and issued its notice of determination in February 2012; it adopted the MND, approved the lighting project, and issued its notice of determination in April 2012. These actions were not legally challenged.

Two months later, in June 2012, the City relied on the MND when it granted the conditional use permit to the District for the installation of the lights. It was this permitting process that Petitioners challenged, claiming that the City should have prepared a supplemental environmental review because there had been a “substantial change in circumstances” regarding the project. Specifically, Petitioners pointed to the fact that the applications for the lighting project and larger construction project were pending before the City at the same time. According to Petitioners, this caused the two separate projects to “bec[ome] one project.”

The court disagreed, holding that the timing of the applications did not constitute a substantial change that would trigger supplemental environmental review. Further, the court found that Petitioners were required to bring any claim of piecemealing within 30 days of the District filing its notice of determination and were thus precluded from collaterally attacking the environmental review under the guise of a challenge to the City’s later permitting process.

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