Paulek v. City of Moreno Valley

After the City of Moreno (City) completed a revised environmental impact report (EIR) for a proposed “logistics campus,” the California Court of Appeal dismissed as moot an appeal that concerned whether the City properly relied on California’s cap-and-trade program when it considered the project’s impacts on greenhouse gas emissions under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The trial court concluded that the City’s reasoning that greenhouse gas emissions subject to cap-and-trade requirements did not count against the significance threshold did not violate CEQA. Prior to the City’s issuance of the revised EIR, the Court of Appeal issued a tentative decision finding that the original EIR’s analysis of greenhouse gas emissions did violate CEQA. The revised EIR did not consider the cap-and-trade program and instead required that the project’s greenhouse gas emissions be mitigated to “net zero.” The Court of Appeal found that the petitioners failed to point to evidence that the revised EIR continued to rely on the cap-and-trade program. The Court of Appeal also found that neither the “continuing public interest” nor the “recurrence of the controversy” exceptions to mootness applied.