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Litigation
Cleveland National Forest Foundation v. San Diego Association of Governments
Date
2011
Geography
About this case
Documents
Filing Date
Type
Action Taken
Document
Summary
11/16/2017
Decision
Opinion issued on remand from California Supreme Court.
The California Court of Appeal ruled that substantial evidence did not support the determination of the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) that an environmental impact report (EIR) prepared for a regional long-term transportation plan in 2011 adequately addressed mitigation for the plan’s impacts on greenhouse gas emissions. The Court of Appeal issued this decision on remand from the California Supreme Court, which in July 2017 upheld SANDAG’s approach to disclosures of the plan’s greenhouse gas emissions and potential inconsistency with statewide emissions reduction goals. As a threshold matter on remand, the Court of Appeal rejected SANDAG’s argument that the challenges to the 2011 transportation plan and its EIR were moot because SANDAG had subsequently adopted versions of the transportation plan and EIR that superseded the versions under review. On the merits of the appeal, the court considered whether the 2011 EIR had adequately addressed mitigation of the significant greenhouse gas emissions impacts it disclosed and concluded that it had not. The Court of Appeal stated: “Missing from the EIR is what [the California Environmental Quality Act] requires: a discussion of mitigation alternatives that could both substantially lessen the transportation plan’s significant greenhouse gas emissions impacts and feasibly be implemented.” Instead, the EIR had “considered and deemed feasible three measures requiring little to no effort to implement and assuring little to no concrete steps toward emissions reduction” and had “considered and deemed infeasible three particularly onerous measures” that “would be difficult, if not impossible, to enforce and [that required] implementation resources not readily available.”
11/24/2014
Decision
Opinion issued.
The California Court of Appeal agreed with the trial court that the approval of the regional transportation plan violated CEQA. The appellate court rejected the contention of the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) that CEQA did not require it to analyze the transportation plan’s consistency with greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets through 2050 that were set forth in Executive Order S-3-05, which was signed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005 and which the appellate court said “underpins all of the state’s current efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” The court said the decision not to conduct such an analysis “did not reflect a reasonable, good faith effort at full disclosure and is not supported by substantial evidence because [it] ignored the Executive Order’s role in shaping state climate policy.” The court said that omission of the analysis gave the false impression that the regional transportation plan furthered climate policy goals when “the trajectory of the transportation plan’s post-2020 emissions directly contravenes it.” The appellate court also said that because the environmental impact report (EIR) had not considered feasible mitigation alternatives that would substantially lessen the plan’s greenhouse gas emissions, substantial evidence did not support SANDAG’s determination that it had adequately considered mitigation for greenhouse gas impacts. In addition, the court found the EIR’s assessment of alternatives, air quality impacts, and agricultural impacts to be insufficient. One justice issued a dissenting opinion in which she said the majority’s opinion elevated the Executive Order to a “threshold of significance” and in doing so stepped overstepped the court’s authority. SANDAG filed a petition for review in the California Supreme Court on January 29, 2015.
Summary
Challenge to regional transportation plan on grounds that it failed to address climate change.