Association of Irritated Residents v. Kern County Board of Supervisors

Three environmental groups commenced a lawsuit in California Superior Court challenging the approval by the Kern County Board of Supervisors of an environmental impact report (EIR) for a project that the groups alleged would result in a “five-fold increase” in the Alon Bakersfield Refinery’s capacity to import crude oil and allow the “shuttered” facility to reopen and operate at full capacity. The groups alleged a number of substantive California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) violations, including improper use of a 2007 baseline for the assessment of impacts that measured impacts from a point when the refinery was still operating when the baseline should have been current non-operational conditions. With respect to the project’s greenhouse gas emissions, petitioners alleged that the EIR failed to disclose the higher greenhouse emissions that result from refining tar sands; that the EIR had improperly failed to analyze greenhouse gas emissions associated with rail transportation on the grounds that federal law preempted CEQA; that the EIR had improperly assumed that the refinery’s required participation in the California cap-and-trade program would reduce its emissions to zero; and that the EIR ignored emissions from combustion of end products.