In an unpublished opinion, California Clean Energy Committee v. City of Woodland, 2014 Cal. App. Unpub. LEXIS 1481, the Third District Court of Appeal reversed the trial court’s denial of a petition for writ of mandate to vacate the City of Woodland’s certification of an EIR for a regional shopping center.

In 2007, a developer applied to annex 154 acres of agricultural land to the City and rezone it to general commercial use in order to build a regional commercial center known as “Gateway II.” After preparing an EIR, the city council approved the project, but reduced its size to 61.3 acres. The California Clean Energy Committee, a nonprofit organization, filed a petition for writ of mandate challenging project approval and certification of the EIR.

The Committee first argued that the City’s actions in approving Gateway II violated the State Planning and Zoning Law because the project was inconsistent with the City’s General Plan policy of revitalizing its downtown.  According to the Committee, Gateway II had the potential to cause urban decay by attracting retail development to the City’s periphery. The court held the Committee had failed to preserve this argument because its complaint had focused on the CEQA implications of urban decay, and had not apprised the City of an alleged violation of the Planning and Zoning Law.

The court next considered the sufficiency of the City’s mitigation measures for urban decay under CEQA. The court upheld a measure requiring primarily “regional retail” uses at Gateway II, upholding the City’s conclusion that the measures would help lessen, although not avoid completely, the potential urban decay impacts. The court, however, agreed with the Committee that a measure requiring the developer to submit a market study and urban decay analysis for future specific projects within Gateway II improperly delegated to the applicant responsibility for studying impacts in violation of CEQA. Further, the court agreed with the Committee’s contention that the market study measure provided no performance standards for evaluating whether additional mitigation should be required, in violation of CEQA.

Additional measures the court deemed inadequate required the developer to contribute fifty percent toward the cost of a retail strategic plan and an implementation strategy for the City’s Downtown Specific Plan. The court noted that these measures committed the developer to pay fees, but the fees were not tied to any planned action that would obligate the City to undertake actual mitigation of urban decay.

The court then addressed whether the City had given sufficient consideration to a mixed use alternative to the project.  The draft EIR concluded that the alternative was infeasible due to economic considerations; however, the city council findings rejected the alternative as environmentally inferior to the project.  The court explained that there was no support for the council’s determination, since the EIR concluded that environmental impacts of the alternative would be similar to the project impacts.

Finally, the court considered the City’s treatment of energy impacts. The court noted that the EIR discussion of energy comprised less than one page; included no assessment of or mitigation for transportation energy impacts; concluded that compliance with the Building Code and CALGreen alone would adequately mitigate construction and operational energy impacts; failed to address the energy impacts of the non-retail uses proposed for the site (including office and hotel); and gave no consideration to renewable energy options. Based on these facts, the court concluded that the analysis was deficient.

KEY POINTS:

Under the court’s ruling, mitigation requiring a developer to undertake future studies of urban decay is inadequate mitigation. Instead, the agency itself must undertake the study, and some performance standard must be included to assess whether additional mitigation is needed at the time site-specific projects are considered.

In addition, an agency should not adopt a rationale different from that included in the EIR for rejecting project alternatives unless the agency’s finding is supported by substantial evidence elsewhere in the record.

Lastly, even in a programmatic EIR, this court found that CEQA’s requirement for consideration of energy impacts requires a comprehensive analysis that addresses all aspects of a project’s potential energy usage and whether renewable energy technologies can play a role in mitigating impacts.