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California Land Use & Development Law Report

California Land Use & Development Law Report offers insights into legal issues relating to development and use of land and federal, state and local permitting and approval processes.

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April 2, 2013

Plan Bay Area: ABAG and MTC Publish Draft EIR

The Association of Bay Area Governments and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission today released the Draft Environmental Impact Report on their "Plan Bay Area," a long-range regional planning document proposed to better align future land use planning with the Bay Area's transportation infrastructure. Plan Bay Area implements SB 375, which was enacted in 2008 and requires each of California's

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April 1, 2013

County Biosolids Ban Halted

In 2006, the voters of Kern County adopted "Measure E," an initiative which sought to prohibit the use of agricultural fertilizer made from recycled municipal sewage sludge.

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March 28, 2013

New Significance Standard for Greenhouse Gas Emissions Is Not New Information Triggering Supplemental CEQA Review

The court of appeal opinion issued today in Concerned Dublin Citizens clearly answers three CEQA questions which haven't been directly addressed in other published opinions: the proper interpretation of the statutory exemption for housing projects that are consistent with a specific plan; how the CEQA guideline on further review following a program EIR should be applied; and whether new a

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March 22, 2013

NPDES Permit Not Required for Stormwater Discharges from Logging Roads, Supreme Court Rules

Do the Clean Water Act and its implementing regulations require permits before stormwater runoff from logging roads can be discharged into the navigable waters of the United States?

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March 21, 2013

Supreme Court Agrees To Review Ninth Circuit NEPA Decision

On March 18, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear the case of United States Forest Service v.

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March 14, 2013

Use it or Lose it? Not in the Case of an Easement Acquired by Deed.

A trial court did not have authority to extinguish portions of a road and utility easement notwithstanding its determination that the easement holder did not need the entire easement and that a smaller easement would constitute the least burden on the property subject to the easement.

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March 13, 2013

Federal Agency May Adopt Project that Combines Elements from Several Alternatives Studied in an Environmental Impact Statement

In approving a project to repair a flood-damaged road in a national forest in Nevada, the U.S.

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March 12, 2013

Definition of “Agency Action” under the Endangered Species Act to be Reheard by Ninth Circuit

In July 2012, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in Natural Resources Defense Council v. Salazar, 686 F.3d 1092 (9th Cir. 2012), that the decision by the U.S.

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March 6, 2013

California Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Case Under California Endangered Species Act

The California Endangered Species Act allows interested parties to file a petition with the California Fish & Game Commission to list or delist a species as threatened or endangered. If the Commission accepts the petition, it then decides whether to take the action requested in the petition, based on a scientific report by the California Department of Fish & Game.

In 199

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March 6, 2013

CEQ Issues Handbooks on Coordinating NEPA Review with Review Under CEQA and Review Under the Historic Preservation Act

On March 5, 2013, the Council on Environmental Quality released a handbook intended to help agencies and practitioners coordinate environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act with overlapping review requirements under the California Environmental Quality Act. It also released a separate handbook on coordination of review under NEPA and the&nbs

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March 6, 2013

New Opinion, Same Result - Project Objectives Are Upheld Under CEQA, But Alternatives Analysis Is Invalid

In 2008, the City of Santa Cruz and the University of California settled litigation challenging the University's long-term development plan for expanding the UC Santa Cruz campus. A key provision of the settlement agreement required the city to seek approvals from the Local Agency Formation Commission for providing water and sewer service to the part of the planned campus expans

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February 24, 2013

New CEQA Bill - Cure or Band-Aid?

In response to a business community campaign calling for broad CEQA reform, California State Senator Senate President pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg released his highly anticipated CEQA "modernization" bill, SB 731. So far, the bill is more remarkabl

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February 19, 2013

Use of Project-Specific Significance Thresholds Does Not Violate CEQA

The first published California Environmental Quality Act case of 2013, Save Cuyama Valley v. County of Santa Barbara, strongly endorsed a lead agency's authority to use its own, project-specific significance thresholds in an environmental impact report.

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February 15, 2013

Supreme Court to Decide Whether City Council's Adoption of Voter-Sponsored Initiative is Exempt from CEQA

The California Supreme Court announced on February 13 it has accepted review of Tuolumne Jobs & Small Business Alliance v.

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February 8, 2013

Flow of Polluted Water from Lined to Unlined Section of River Doesn't Constitute "Discharge of a Pollutant"

The U.S. Supreme Court has reversed a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion that the flow of polluted water from a concrete channel to an unlined section of the same river constituted a "discharge of pollutants." Los Angeles County Flood Control Dist. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.