In a partially published opinion filed on February 2, 2026, the First District Court of Appeal (Div. 3) addressed a “weighty issue . . . affecting the CEQA responsibilities of local governments throughout the state” in reversing the trial court’s judgment granting a writ petition challenging the adequacy of the Town of Tiburon’s (“Town”) program EIR for its general plan/housing element update. The Committee for Tiburon LLC v. Town of Tiburon (Sierra Pines Group, LLC, Real Party in Interest) (2026) ___ Cal.App.5th ___. Applying CEQA tiering principles in the context of the Town’s update of its general plan and housing element site inventory to comply with state housing law, the Court held “that a program EIR for a local agency’s general plan need not include a site-specific environmental analysis of a site identified in its housing element where . . . no housing project has been proposed for the site.” It reasoned that “[w]hen a housing project has not even been proposed, the lack of project-specific details precludes an informed review of environmental impacts and mitigation measures, and deferral of such a review to a site-specific, project-level EIR analysis is appropriate.”
Background
Under the Housing Element Law’s “regional housing needs assessment procedure, each local government is assigned a share of the existing and projected regional housing needs, i.e., its regional housing needs assessment (“RHNA”).” The housing element of a local government’s general plan “must include “‘[a]n assessment of housing needs and an inventory of resources and constraints relevant to the meeting of those needs,’ including an inventory of land suitable for residential development.” (Citing San Franciscans for Livable Neighborhoods v. City and County of San Francisco (2018) 26 Cal.App.5th 596, 609-610; Gov. Code, § 65583.) Sites listed in the inventory must have a realistic and demonstrated potential for development into housing within the planning period, and the required analysis must include each property’s size, general plan designation, zoning, mapped location, and a general description of environmental constraints and a description of availability of utilities. (Citing Gov. Code § 65583.2(b)(2), (4), (5).) The description of environmental constraints need not be site-specific. (§ 65583.2(b)(4).) The local government must prepare programs and policies to meet its RHNA obligations, including rezoning where necessary (§ 65583(c)), and must update its housing element and inventory of specific sites at least every eight years, all subject to oversight, review and certification by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (“HCD”). (§ 65585.)
To meet its RHNA goal of 639 units for the 2023-2031 housing element cycle, the Town’s inventory identified 17 vacant or underutilized sites for rezoning and its 2040 general plan included implementation programs to do so. One of these sites, the 9-plus acre “Site H,” contained two residential units and was proposed to be upzoned from low density zoning allowing a maximum of seven units on the site to “very high density residential” zoning with a minimum of 10 units per acre that would allow “a realistic development capacity of 93 units” on the site.
The General Plan 2040 program EIR analyzed the broad direct, indirect, and cumulative environmental impacts of the updated plan’s implementation and buildout, including the addition of 916 residential units throughout the Town, which included development of the 17 sites in the Housing Element’s inventory at their maximum permitted densities. Site H was assumed to have a capacity of 118 net units plus an HCD-mandated “buffer.” However, the DEIR also explained it was a “program-level general plan EIR” that did not evaluate the site-specific environmental impacts of potential individual projects that may or may not be built on particular sites designated to accommodate the Town’s RHNA allocation. Future site-specific discretionary development project proposals would be reviewed to determine if their impacts fall within the scope of the EIR’s analysis and if additional review will be required for new potentially significant impacts. The EIR’s alternatives analysis examined three alternatives: a “no project” alternative, a “village centers” alternative, and a “downtown density” alternative. Regarding Site H, the latter two alternatives would drastically reduce its potentially allowed maximum density to 49 and 7 units, respectively.
Many of the public comments on the DEIR raised concerns over increased residential density on Site H, citing access, traffic, safety, sewage, and other concerns, including loss of trees and privacy. The responses to comments reiterated that due to the DEIR’s programmatic nature, while the site’s carrying capacity was generally analyzed, no site-specific analysis was conducted for Site H or any of the other sites identified in the General Plan 2040 for increased density, and that such analysis “would be premature and overly speculative” absent a development application.
After the Town certified the EIR (with CEQA findings and a statement of overriding considerations and MMRP) and adopted the general plan update and housing element, the Town further revised the housing element in response to HCD’s requested changes to include development standards to accommodate Site H’s designated housing capacity despite known site-specific constraints of development, and documenting Site H’s existing conditions; the Town thereafter adopted housing element amendments also in reliance on the general plan program EIR, finding there were no new significant impacts or other factors requiring subsequent CEQA review. Still later, HCD approved the Town’s Housing Element as in substantial compliance with the law, and the Town adopted zoning text and map amendments consistent with its designated housing densities, including a new Site H zoning district, all in reliance on the General Plan 2040 program FEIR.
The Committee sued under CEQA, challenging the Town’s general plan/housing element update to the extent it designated Site H for high density residential development, and challenging the site’s rezoning, alleging that the FEIR failed to analyze significant aesthetic, biological resources, hydrology/water quality, land use and transportation impacts resulting from the redesignation. The trial court granted the writ petition, finding the FEIR failed to analyze reasonably foreseeable site-specific impacts of developing housing on Site H.
The Court of Appeal’s Opinion
After briefly reviewing the CEQA standard of review applicable in an action challenging an EIR, the Court of Appeal applied independent review to the question of law presented to it, which it framed as follows:
Here, a program EIR was prepared for a comprehensive update to an existing general plan, in which the requisite housing element included an inventory of housing sites that would allow the local government to meet its RHNA obligations consistent with the Housing Element Law. We are asked to consider whether CEQA requires that a program EIR for a general plan include site-specific environmental analyses of the housing sites listed in the inventory.”
In considering the issue, the Court spent several pages discussing the authorities describing the character and functions of, and differences between, “program” and “project” EIRs. A “program” EIR “‘may be prepared on a series of actions that can be characterized as one large project’ and are related in specified ways[,]” which allows for the agency’s early consideration of broad policy alternatives and program-wide mitigation measures when there is “greater flexibility to deal with basic problems or cumulative impacts.” (Citing In re Bay-Delta, etc. (2008) 43 Cal.4th 1143, 1169; CEQA Guidelines, § 15168(a), (b)(4).) By contrast, a project EIR “is prepared for a specific project and must examine in detail site-specific considerations.” (Ibid.; § 15161.) Program EIRs are used in conjunction with “tiering” which uses broader EIRs (e.g., general plan EIRs) to cover general matters and subsequent-stage narrower EIRs for development projects of more limited geographic scale, thus allowing public agencies to focus on issues ripe for decision at each level of environmental review and avoid duplicative analyses. (Citing Pub. Resources Code, § 21093(a); CEQA Guidelines, §§ 15385(b), 15152(c).) Tiering can properly allow deferral of analysis of environmental impacts and mitigation measures to later phases when the impacts and measures aren’t determined by the first-tier decision but are specific to later phases. (Citing Bay-Delta, at 1169-1170.)
Nonetheless, substance prevails over semantics and simply labeling an EIR as a program EIR does not decrease the level of analysis required; the level of specificity required is governed by the nature of the project and the “rule of reason,” and all EIRs must contain a degree of analysis sufficient to provide decision makers with information enabling a decision that “intelligently takes account of environmental consequences.” An exhaustive analysis is not required, and courts review an EIR’s sufficiency in light of what is reasonably feasible. The courts look “not for perfection but for adequacy, completeness, and a good faith effort at full disclosure.” (Quoting CEQA Guidelines, § 15151.) The “degree of specificity required in an EIR will correspond to the degree of specificity involved in the underlying activity” such that a local general plan or comprehensive zoning project’s EIR need not be as detailed as the EIR on ensuing site-specific construction projects. Drafting the EIR will involve some reasonable forecasting, but as a “core principle” it “is not required to engage in speculative analysis” or to foresee the unforeseeable. Premature CEQA review absent identifiable impacts would obviously be a wasteful use of limited government resources and would not produce a meaningful analysis.
Applying these principles, the Court observed that “CEQA law clearly anticipates a public agency’s use of a program EIR when considering large projects such as [the] general plan update [involved here]” and further reasoned:
[T]he issue ripe for decision at this level of environmental review was approval of the general plan with its updated housing element and anticipated zoning changes. Accordingly, the EIR correctly focused on the overall addition of 916 units throughout the Town, using the anticipated number of additional people and residences to forecast the secondary impacts that can be expected to follow from such a general increase in population and housing within the EIR topic areas. In doing so, the EIR properly analyzed the environmental impacts in a broad manner, reviewing the overall increase in housing needs anticipated through the general plan’s housing element, without considering any site-specific environmental effects of housing projects that have not yet been proposed.”
But the Court added to this a caveat that “as the EIR also recognized, if and when a specific housing project is proposed—whether on Site H or any of the other 16 sites listed in the inventory—then the development of detailed, site-specific information will in fact be feasible.” (Citing CEQA Guidelines, § 15152(c).)
The Court rejected the Committee’s argument that a site-specific environmental analysis of Site H was required by Vineyard Area Citizens for Responsible Growth, Inc. v. City of Rancho Cordova (2007) 40 Cal.App.4th 412, which involved the adequacy of an EIR’s long-term water supply impacts analysis for future phases of a large development project. Unlike in Vineyard, the Town’s EIR evaluated “a large-scale planning document, not a concrete development project.” It did not need to assume all phases would eventually be built “because the identified housing sites are not phases of one large development, but components of a planning document being used to satisfy the Town’s legal obligation under the Housing Element Law.” That law “requires only that local governments identify sufficient sites with a realistic development potential and make such sites available to accommodate their RHNA. [Citation] The law does not require the Town to build housing, and there is no guarantee that every site identified in the 2023-2031 Housing Element will be developed.” Since a specific housing project has not been proposed, and the lack of project-specific details precluded detailed impact analysis at the program level, the Court held that “a site-specific EIR analysis is properly deferred to the project level.” (Citing Western States Petroleum Assn. v. State Air Resources Bd. (2025) 108 Cal.App.5th 938, 979.)
Per the Court, the case was more akin to City of Hayward v. Trustees of California State University (2015) 242 Cal.App.4th 833, which upheld a program EIR on a university’s master plan based on a tiering approach that analyzed population-driven cumulative traffic impacts on a primary intersection, but deferred analysis of site-specific impacts on smaller residential streets pending the approval of site-specific development projects that would allow a meaningful analysis. As in Hayward, the Town’s program-level analysis was appropriate as it had not at the time of that analysis committed to a housing project at any of the 17 sites in the inventory. Absent such specific projects, for Site H or otherwise, meaningful analyses of impacts, alternatives and mitigation measures could not occur. Per the Court: “Without a proposed project that identifies critical factors such as the amount and configuration of the proposed housing, the planned means of access to the site, and the availability of alternatives, the Town can only speculate as to the severity of any particular environmental impacts or the effectiveness of potential mitigation measures that would minimize those impacts at the site.”
On the record before it, the Court thus rejected the Committee’s arguments that lack of site-specific analysis rendered the program EIR inadequate, and it further rejected—as being apparently “contrary to the weight of legal authority and the dictates of CEQA”—the Committee’s “speculation” that, if not done in the program EIR, a site-specific analysis might never be done on Site H. The Town would be required to examine subsequent site-specific activities in the light of the program EIR to determine whether an additional CEQA document is required, and a site-specific document would be required if new impacts not addressed in the program EIR were discovered. (Citing IBC Business Owners for Sensible Development v. City of Irvine (2023) 88 Cal.App.5th 100, 118-119.) Analysis of any such unexamined significant effects could tier from the program EIR. (Citing id. at 120; CEQA Guidelines, § 15168(c)(1).) Per the Court, in light of the relevant legal authorities and the record, “it appears likely that a project EIR will be required for any housing projects proposed for Site H.” (Citing id., § 15168(c)(2).)
(In the unpublished portions of its Opinion, the Court of Appeal remanded to the trial court to determine whether the Town’s rezoning of Site H was CEQA-exempt under Public Resources Code § 21080.085—which, with certain exceptions, exempts rezonings implementing an approved housing element’s schedule of actions—and, if not exempt, whether substantial evidence supported the Town’s findings that the General Plan 2040 program EIR adequately analyzed the rezone’s effects without a supplemental or subsequent EIR. It further directed the trial court to analyze and address the Committee’s unaddressed non-CEQA argument that the Town’s general plan is internally inconsistent.)
Conclusion and Implications
The intersection of CEQA and the Housing Element Law has a lot of moving parts. This case exposes a tension between CEQA’s traditional focus on producing a detailed and complete analysis of a project’s ultimate physical impacts on the environment and the aim of recent CEQA reform efforts and the housing law to streamline processes to eliminate redundant reviews and deliver productive and reasonable outcomes without lengthy delays.
The key issue here seems to me to be how much environmental analysis of individual sites in the local agency’s RHNA inventory list is needed to determine whether their development for the designated housing is actually “realistic.” The upshot of the Court’s decision here is that while a public agency’s inventory of housing sites created to satisfy its RHNA obligations must have “realistic and demonstrated potential” for development at the designated densities during the planning period, CEQA does not require speculative site-specific analyses of developing those sites in a general plan/housing element program EIR in the absence of site-specific development proposals. The Court’s holding seems by design to be a pragmatic one, employing CEQA’s tiering principles to reach a result that facilitates public agencies’ timely compliance with their often challenging housing law obligations, while not imposing additional onerous CEQA review obligations that could hinder such compliance while perhaps producing only expensive and speculative environmental analyses of limited practical value. Counterbalancing what might be perceived as a “one-size-fits-all” holding granting undue weight to an EIR’s “program” label, the Court’s opinion included pointed dicta that an EIR will likely be required when Site H is ultimately proposed for actual development, which sends an “old-school” CEQA message that analysis deferred should not mean analysis evaded. Practitioners and stakeholders should definitely “stay tuned” for what will undoubtedly be further CEQA developments in this rapidly changing area.
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