2011 proved to be a year of shifting priorities, and CEQA was no exception. As California struggled with balancing its budget and stimulating job growth, project proponents heightened their pleas for CEQA reform to remove obstacles to infill development, renewable energy and economic stimulus projects. While the resulting legislative change was minimal, the judiciary appears to have responded to these growing concerns.
The last year brought a pendulum swing in which courts retreated from the recent trend of layering ever greater requirements onto CEQA documents. Instead, they applied a "common sense" approach, refraining from requiring agencies to examine indirect "life-cycle" effects, respond to laundry lists of proposed mitigation measures, and evaluate how a project might be affected by the environment. Courts upheld agency approvals of negative declarations, in sharp contrast to decisions published in prior years requiring full blown environmental impact reports. And in two cases, courts dismissed CEQA lawsuits as moot.
The courts also published several decisions providing much-needed guidance regarding climate change analyses. The decisions recognize the deference owed to agency decision-makers in determining significance thresholds, confirm that agencies need not explain the grounds for rejecting all potential greenhouse-gas reducing measures, announce that the effects of sea level rise on a proposed project are outside the scope of CEQA review, and rule that information on climate change effects is not new information triggering supplemental environmental review.
Finally, in a surprising turn of events, the same court that issued last year's controversial Sunnyvale West decision, reversed course and issued a new decision upholding an agency's use of a baseline scenario that included future anticipated growth.
Taken together, the published cases in 2011 strike a balance between CEQA's requirements for public participation and thorough environmental review, and the need to reduce the growing burdens on public agencies in exercising their land use decision-making powers.
For summaries of each of the key CEQA decisions and legislative enactments of 2011, please review the full CEQA Year in Review.
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