The City of Modesto and Downey Brand client Berberian Holdings, L.P. (“Berberian”), have prevailed in a legal challenge to a commercial development project proposed by Berberian. On June 7, the Fifth District Court of Appeal issued a 45-page unpublished opinion in the action (Naraghi Lakes Neighborhood Preservation Association v. City of Modesto), affirming
Court of Appeal Rejects Use of Categorical Exemption, Muddies the Waters on Standard of Review for Exceptions
The Fourth District has waded into the world of CEQA exemptions, holding that the City of Palm Springs improperly relied upon the Class 5 categorical exemption for “minor alterations in land use limitations.” However, in a confusing discussion of whether an exception to that exemption might apply, the Court seemed to ignore the Supreme Court’s guidance in Berkeley Hillside Preservation v. City of Berkeley. This marks at least the second instance in which, despite a clear ruling in Berkeley Hillside, a court of appeal has so grossly misread the Supreme Court’s ruling, which portends a confusing road ahead for categorical exemptions. (See also Paulek v. Western Riverside County Regional Conservation Authority (2015) 238 Cal.App.4th 583, now unpublished, which applied the wrong standard of review to the unusual circumstances exception).
In 2013, the City approved a General Plan amendment removing reference to minimum density requirements for each land use designation. The General Plan had stated that, while the maximum densities were limits, the lower thresholds represented “a minimum amount of development anticipated” in that land use designation – in other words, they were predictions, not lower bounds. The City found that the action was exempt under CEQA’s Class 5 categorical exemption for “minor alterations in land use limitations in areas with an average slope of less than 20%, which do not result in any changes in land use or density . . .”, because it was simply revising the General Plan to conform with the City’s ongoing permitting practices.
Downey Brand’s Spring 2016 CEQA and Land Use Litigation Update
I recently had the privilege of presenting the annual CEQA and Land Use Litigation Update at this year’s League of California Cities City Attorneys’ Spring Conference in Newport Beach. The annual conference is attended by more than 450 city attorneys and other legal professionals from across California, and addresses a host of cutting-edge legal issues
Appeals Court Affirms Cadiz Valley Groundwater Project
In a series of sweeping opinions, the Fourth Appellate District on Tuesday, May 10, upheld the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project against six separate challenges brought by a host of environmental organizations and a salt mining operation. The Cadiz Project, initiated by the Santa Margarita Water District (SMWD) and Cadiz, Inc. in a public/private partnership, involves plans to pump native groundwater from the Fenner Valley Aquifer System in the Mojave Desert and deliver the water for municipal and industrial uses in Southern California. A later phase of the Project would include importing water for storage in the basin. With this ruling, the Cadiz Project has survived an onslaught of organized opposition. Six legal challenges were directed at overturning approvals granted by SMWD, as the CEQA lead agency, and the County, as the agency responsible for regulating the Project under the County’s own Desert Groundwater Management Ordinance.
Thomas Law Group Associates Present “CEQA Streamlining” to Association of Environmental Professionals at May 2016 Program
Thomas Law Group Associates Chris Butcher and Ashle Crocker will host a special presentation on CEQA Streamlining at the Superior California Chapter of the Association of Environmental Professionals May 2016 Program on May 17, 2015 from 11:30 to 1:00 pm.
The program will be at Blue Prynt Restaurant, 815 11th Street, Sacramento, CA 95814 and
Court of Appeal Hands Medical Marijuana Advocates a Two-Fold Victory, Under Both State Election Law and CEQA
Medical marijuana advocates in Kern County recently obtained victories in the Fifth Appellate District Court of Appeal on two fronts, invalidating one ordinance that would ban dispensaries and another that would significantly restrict their operations.
Social and Psychological Impacts Related to “Community Character” Not Covered by CEQA
Is the “character” of a community part of the “environment” and therefore subject to analysis under CEQA, or is it instead a subjective state of mind of the people who live there? An appellate court has now weighed in.
In its decision in Preserve Poway v. City of Poway (March 9, 2016), the Fourth District Court of Appeal has upheld the use of a mitigated negative declaration (MND) for a project to subdivide a property currently occupied by an equestrian boarding and training facility. In doing so, the Court held that evidence of the project’s social and psychological impacts to the community does not require preparation of an environmental impact report (EIR), as CEQA does not address such impacts.
The property, located in the City of Poway (which calls itself the “City in the Country”), is currently being used as a boarding facility for approximately 100 horses, and it is located across the street from a 12-acre rodeo and polo grounds operated by the Poway Valley Riders Association (PVRA). The project involves the subdivision of the property into twelve residential lots, grading of the property, extension of an existing sewer line, undergrounding of existing utilities, installation of new curb, gutters, and fire hydrants, and flood channel improvements. No home construction is included in the project – any such construction would be subject to further environmental review and City approval.
NINTH CIRCUIT REJECTS NEPA CHALLENGE TO SAN DIEGO NAVY BROADWAY COMPLEX PROJECT
In a published opinion, San Diego Navy Broadway Complex Coalition v. United States Department of Defense, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 5813, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court and rejected a National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) challenge to the redevelopment of the San Diego Navy Broadway Complex (Complex), a fifteen-acre waterfront site adjacent to downtown
Appellate Court Upholds Local Restrictions on Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Against CEQA Challenge
Local regulation of the medical marijuana industry has become a hot-button area of controversy. New ordinances are routinely being proposed and adopted – and then challenged in court. In a March 25 opinion filed in Union of Medical Marijuana Patients, Inc. v. City of Upland, the Fourth Appellate District weighed in on one such local dispute, holding that a city ordinance prohibiting mobile marijuana dispensaries is not a “project” subject to CEQA review, but is merely a restatement of existing law that will not cause a physical change in the environment.
In 2007, the City of Upland adopted a municipal ordinance stating that “[n]o medical marijuana dispensary . . . shall be permitted in any zone within the city,” and defining a dispensary as including any “fixed or mobile” facility or location. The City prepared and adopted a negative declaration for this ordinance, which was not challenged. In 2013, the City adopted another ordinance, which added a new chapter to the municipal code expressly stating that mobile dispensaries “are prohibited” in the City. The 2013 ordinance contained recitals asserting that such facilities were associated with criminal activity and highly likely to “flourish in the City without the adoption of this Ordinance.”
The End (of LOS) is Nigh: OPR’s Revised Proposal on Analysis of Transportation Impacts
In late January, the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) released its revised proposal to update the CEQA Guidelines with respect to the analysis of transportation impacts. OPR has not backed off from the main thrust of its original proposal: abandonment of “level of service” (LOS) in favor of “vehicle miles travelled” (VMT) as the primary metric of significance. However, the revised proposal recognizes that implementation of this sea-change in one of the most complex (and heavily litigated) areas of impact analysis cannot happen overnight, and lead agencies and consultants will benefit from some technical assistance up front.
Currently, the most common metric used in evaluating a project’s transportation impacts is LOS, which measures the delay that vehicles experience at intersections and on roadway segments. However, as OPR noted in its original proposal, focusing on a project’s impact on LOS often has unintended consequences, including the imposition of mitigation measures – such as increased roadway capacity – that can exacerbate poor traffic conditions over the long term. It can also discourage infill development, because adding traffic to urban areas increases the likelihood of a finding of significance that would trigger the need for an environmental impact report (EIR).