People’s Collective for Environmental Justice v. County of San Bernardino

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.

A lawsuit filed in California Superior Court challenged San Bernardino County’s approval of a plan for a major warehouse and distribution center in the Bloomington community. The petition asserted violations of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), including failure to adequately disclose, analyze, and mitigate the project’s greenhouse gas emissions. The petition alleged that the environmental review used improper values and assumptions in its analysis of greenhouse gas emissions, or failed to disclose values and assumptions such as emissions factors for methane and nitrous oxide emissions. In addition, the petition alleged reliance on improper assumptions regarding traffic as well as reliance on ineffective mitigation measures. The petition also asserted that the County violated its duty to affirmatively further fair housing, the Fair Employment and Housing Act, and the Housing Crisis Act of 2019.