All in CEQA
When using CEQA to challenge a land use decision it is imperative to exhaust your administrative remedies by raising CEQA concerns to the public agency and appealing to the highest decision maker. Failure to do so may preclude your chance to bring a claim later. When litigating a CEQA claim, beware for subsequent action when a City or County has vacated an EIR, recirculated, and certified the EIR.
When acquiring property in one of California’s Opportunity Zones special attention must be paid to zoning, land use, vested rights, and whether environmental review will be required pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act.
When buying, selling, or leasing property to or from a public agency like a city, county, school district, or public utility the transaction may be subject to CEQA. Parties should consider entering into an option
agreement to protect their interests while environmental review pursuant to
CEQA is being conducted.
CEQA now requires that human health effects be disclosed and that the public is informed of the human health effects associated with a project’s impacts to air quality and emissions. In addition, a California court has allowed for a city to include a substitution clause in the EIR's mitigation measures. In short, public agencies, under certain conditions, may be able to alter mitigation measures down the road without further public review or disclosure.
Tiering off a programmatic EIR (PEIR) can be an effective way to avoid duplicative environmental review for a later project. But, the PEIR must have a sufficient level of detail to allow for tiering. This makes it important to comment during the PEIR stage to ensure your project can be covered down the road.
The Class 3, New Construction Categorical Exemption was correctly applied to exempt a land use project from CEQA even though the three new single family homes to be constructed were located in a mapped earthquake zone and on steeply sloped terrain.
