This case Is useful from a EIR consultant’s perspective because it rearticulates standards associated with the adequacy of water supply analysis and because it addresses the relationship between project objectives and alternatives.
In this case the City “certified an environmental impact report (EIR) for a project to amend the City’s sphere of influence (SOI) to include an undeveloped portion of the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) campus known as “North Campus” so as to permit the City to provide extraterritorial water and sewer services to proposed new development in North Campus.”
Habitat asserted that:
(1) The EIR did not adequately discuss and analyze the impacts of the project on water supply, watershed resources, biological resources, and indirect growth. The Court analyzed the adequacy of the analysis based on Santiago and Vineyard and found the analysis to be adequate:
In this case the court found that the analysis did not suffer from the infirmities identified by the Court of Appeal in Santiago because:
- it carefully described the impact that supplying water to North Campus would have on the City’s ability to meet the demands of its existing users;
- explained that the impact would be just a small part of the overall impact on the City’s existing users of the City’s inadequate water supply; and
- acknowledged that supplying water to North Campus will contribute to the shortfall and provided estimates of the size of both North Campus’s water needs and the shortfall that the City faced so that the merits of the project could be evaluated from a water supply standpoint.
In this case the court found that the analysis complied with the principals articulated in Vineyard. The California Supreme Court identified four “principles for analytical adequacy under CEQA.” (Vineyard, at p. 430.):
- an EIR is inadequate if it “simply ignores or assumes a solution to the problem of supplying water to a proposed land use project”;
- if the EIR defers analysis or fails to address the water needs of all phases of the project it is inadequate;
- the EIR’s discussion must include a reasoned analysis of the circumstances affecting the likelihood of the water’s availability (Vineyard, at p. 432.); and
- “If the uncertainties inherent in long-term land use and water planning make it impossible to confidently identify the future water sources, an EIR may satisfy CEQA if it acknowledges the degree of uncertainty involved, discusses the reasonably foreseeable alternatives–including alternative water sources and the option of curtailing the development if sufficient water is not available for later phases–and discloses the significant foreseeable environmental effects of each alternative, as well as mitigation measures to minimize each adverse impact.” (Vineyard, at p. 434.)
In this case the court held that the EIR was adequate because: it:
“discussed the impact of the project on the City’s water supply, acknowledged the City’s inadequate supplies, and noted that the construction of a desalination facility, the City’s only feasible source of additional water supply, was uncertain. Throughout the draft EIR, the City acknowledged that the impact of the project’s water demand would increase the ongoing imbalance between the City’s supplies and the demands of its users. Nevertheless, the City projected that this imbalance could be dealt with through conservation and curtailment, and, hopefully, could be remedied if the City’s plans for a desalination facility came to fruition. Obviously, curtailment is a harsh response to an inadequate water supply. If conservation proves inadequate, the City will be forced to calibrate demand to supply by depriving users of water, essentially forcing them to conserve. Nevertheless, as the nature of this harsh reality was discussed and disclosed in the draft EIR, the draft EIR was not inadequate in this respect.”
(2) The EIR misdescribed the project’s objectives, thereby skewing the discussion of alternatives and mitigations:
The court agreed, concluding that “City’s EIR misdescribed the project’s objectives, that this misdescription skewed its consideration of alternatives, and that the EIR was inadequate because it failed to consider any potentially feasible alternatives that would avoid or limit the significant environmental impact of the project on the City’s water supply.”
(3) That the EIR failed to consider and analyze a reasonable range of alternatives:
Habitat argued “that the draft EIR and final EIR alternatives discussions were inadequate because they failed to consider any alternatives that would avoid some of the significant environmental impacts of the project. What was missing, Habitat maintains, was analysis of a “reduced-development” or “limited-water” alternative.”
The City and the Regents argued “that any discussion of such alternatives was properly omitted because (1) they would not “meet the basic Project objective,” (2) a limited-water alternative would not avoid the significant impact on water supply because the Regents could develop areas already within the City’s water service area, and (3) “the City has no jurisdiction to limit UCSC’s on-campus development.””
The appellate court concluded that the City and the Regents did “not specify which “basic Project objective” would be unmet by a reduced-development or limited-water alternative” and that “a clear statement of the project’s objectives would have clarified that the underlying purposes of the project were to permit the Regents to develop North Campus and to obligate the Regents to honor the housing commitment it made in the CSA. Both a reduced-development alternative and a limited-water alternative would partially meet the first objective by allowing some development of North Campus, and neither alternative would fail to secure the City’s ability to hold the Regents to their housing commitment in the CSA if one of these alternatives were to be selected by LAFCO as a condition of its approval of the project. Consequently, these proposed alternatives could not be eliminated from consideration solely because they would impede to some extent the attainment of the project’s true objectives.”
The court stated:
“CEQA does not permit a lead agency to omit any discussion, analysis, or even mention of any alternatives that feasibly might reduce the environmental impact of a project on the unanalyzed theory that such alternatives might not prove to be environmentally superior to the project. The purpose of an EIR is to provide the facts and analysis that would support such a conclusion so that the decision maker can evaluate whether it is correct. By failing to mention, discuss, or analyze any feasible alternatives, the draft EIR and the final EIR failed to satisfy the informational purpose of CEQA, which included providing LAFCO with relevant information.”
(4) That the EIR failed to provide adequate mitigation measures for the project’s impact on the water supply :
Here the court disagreed and found the EIR included numerous mitigation measures from the LRDP EIR and that the mitigation measures were “specific” and “certain”, that the measures will reduce the impact of this project on the City’s water supply, and that “it was not the purpose of the draft EIR or the final EIR to resolve the City’s longstanding water supply deficit.”
(5) That the City failed to make sufficient findings regarding the Project’s significant and direct and indirect impacts on the City’s water supply and failed to provide an adequate statement of overriding considerations:
Regarding the findings, the court concluded:
“The City’s findings of fact determined that “[n]one of the [significant environmental] effects [of the project] can be avoided by the adoption of feasible mitigation measures or alternatives although some can be substantially lessened.” The findings then incorporated both a table that summarized the draft EIR and the final EIR discussions of the impacts of the project and those discussions themselves. The findings also identified the impact on the City’s water supply, summarized the relevant mitigation measures, and concluded that the impact was unavoidable. The City’s findings also repeated much of the alternatives analysis included in the draft EIR and the final EIR and found that the alternatives were infeasible.”
“Habitat’s complaints about the City’s findings of fact are essentially a repeat of their challenges to the adequacy of the draft EIR and the final EIR themselves. The findings are potentially inadequate as to the alternatives because the draft EIR and the final EIR failed to consider potentially feasible alternatives, but this is a flaw in the draft EIR and the final EIR, rather than just a flaw in the findings. This contention has no independent merit.”
Regarding the Statement of Overriding Considerations – the City’s statement of overriding considerations provided six reasons, which the City asserted were each individually sufficient to justify approval of the project despite the significant environmental impact’s of the project. The appellate court found that three of the six reasons provided by the City were supported by the record, and the City found that each of the reasons was individually sufficient to outweigh the significant impact on the City’s water supply.
The court thus found the Statement of Overriding Considerations was supported, stating:
“Regardless of whether we would disagree with the City’s weighing of these reasons against the environmental impact of the project, our abuse of discretion standard of review requires us to defer to the City’s balancing unless it may be deemed arbitrary, which is a much tougher standard than questionable or unreasonable. Under the abuse of discretion standard, the City’s decision to favor the identified benefits over the significant environmental impacts of the project must be upheld.”