Yolo Land & Water Defense v. County of Yolo

A California Superior Court found that San Bernardino County violated CEQA in its environmental review of the rezoning of residential areas for industrial and business park uses and higher-density residential use. Regarding greenhouse gas emissions, the court rejected the petitioners’ contentions that the EIR’s traffic impact assessment understated greenhouse gas emissions due to undercounting trucks but agreed with the petitioners that the County “improperly compressed impact and mitigation measure analysis into a single issue.” The court found that the EIR was “inherently inconsistent” because it found that greenhouse gas emissions impacts were less than significant due to the proposed actions’ inclusion of features that resulted in greenhouse gas reductions without showing that the features were binding and enforceable while at the same time treating the features as mitigation measures. The court also found that the this “inherently contradictory” discussion made the discussion inadequate as a CEQA disclosure document. Other CEQA violations included a failure to sufficiently address renewable energy resources in considering whether there would be “wasteful, inefficient, or unnecessary consumption of energy resources,” including energy for transportation. The court further found that the cumulative energy impacts analysis was deficient.