The Sixth Appellate District, in Willow Glen Trestle Conservancy v. San Jose (2020) 49 Cal.App.5th 127, held that seeking a new Streambed Alteration Agreement (“SAA”) from the California Department of Fish & Wildlife (“CDFW”) for a previously approved project does not constitute a “further discretionary approval” within the meaning of CEQA Guidelines section 15162 and
In March 2017, the Sixth Appellate District issued its decision in Aptos Council v. County of Santa Cruz, which rejected a two-pronged challenge to the County of Santa Cruz’s adoption of three zoning ordinances revising existing sections of the County zoning code, including an ordinance altering height, density, and parking requirements for hotels. In affirming denial of the petition for writ of mandate, the appellate court held that (1) the County did not engage in improper “piecemeal” review of the three ordinances under CEQA, and (2) the negative declaration for the hotel ordinance did not need to consider environmental impacts that could result from future hotel development, where those impacts were not reasonably foreseeable.
In its August 12 decision in Friends of the Willow Glen Trestle v. City of San Jose, the Sixth Appellate District rejected a claim that the fair argument standard should apply to a lead agency’s determination regarding whether a resource is a historical resource for purposes of CEQA. In doing so, it became the second appellate court (after the Fifth Appellate District) to adopt this rule.
In 2013, the City of San Jose proposed to demolish the Willow Glen Railroad Trestle – a wooden railroad bridge built in 1922 to service industry – and replace it with a pedestrian bridge that would be part of the City’s trail system. The City issued an initial study and mitigated negative declaration for the project that found no impact on historical resources. This finding relied on two documents obtained by the City in 2004, when it proposed a trail project that did not include demolition of the Trestle: (1) a one-page letter from a State Historic Preservation Officer stating that the proposed project would not affect any “historic properties”; and (2) a one-page evaluation by a consulting architectural historian who opined that the Trestle’s design was based on standard plans for wood trestle bridges, the trestles and superstructure were likely replaced during the previous 30 to 40 years, and the Trestle was “a typical example of a common type and has no known association with important events or persons in local history.”