The Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation (“LCI”) has announced it is extending the public comment period through December 31, 2025, for a proposed rulemaking to increase the application fee for projects (excluding exempt housing projects) applying for judicial streamlining benefits under CEQA from $39,000 to $100,000. Pursuant to LCI’s initial October 17, 2025 notice of the rulemaking, the public comment period would have closed on December 1, 2025. LCI will not hold a public hearing on the proposed rulemaking unless an interested person requests the same at least 15 days prior to the close of the public comment period.Continue Reading The Price of CEQA Judicial Streamlining Benefits Is Going Up: Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation Extends Public Comment Period On Proposal to Raise Application Fee for SB 7 (Leadership) and SB 149 (Infrastructure) Project Certifications to $100,000
Energy
CEQ Issues NEPA Implementation Guidance to Federal Agencies
By Arthur F. Coon on
On September 29, 2025, the Council on Environmental Quality (“CEQ”), a federal agency within the Office of the President, issued a 10-page memorandum directed to federal department and agency heads, providing guidance on implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act, (“NEPA”; 42. U.S.C. § 4321 et seq), the federal counterpart of CEQA. That guidance, which can be found here, includes an overview of NEPA and its recent amendments, stressing – in line with recent U.S. Supreme Court authority – its nature as a “purely procedural” statute, and “provid[ing] guidance for federal agencies to use when establishing or revising their agency-specific NEPA implementing procedures.” It was accompanied by a 23-page template to assist agencies in that endeavor.Continue Reading CEQ Issues NEPA Implementation Guidance to Federal Agencies
“Double Counting” or Redundant Mitigation? Second District Holds CEQA Guidelines’ Additionality Requirement Precludes Applying Upstream Energy or Fuel Providers’ Obligatory Cap-and-Trade Compliance To Offset Land Use Project’s Estimated GHG Emissions, Invalidates “Prejudicially Misleading” EIR For Massive LA County Centennial Project On That And Other Grounds
In a partially published 102-page opinion filed June 26, 2025, the Second District Court of Appeal (Div. 7) resolved cross-appeals by affirming the trial court’s judgment invalidating Los Angeles County’s 2019 EIR certification and project approvals for the Centennial Specific Plan, a 12,323-acre development on the historic Tejon Ranch in the County’s Antelope Valley Area south of Kern County. Center for Biological Diversity v. County of Los Angeles (Centennial Founders, LLC, et al., Real Parties in Interest) (2025) 112 Cal.App.5th 317. The Court of Appeal agreed with the trial court in all respects, holding the EIR’s GHG and off-site wildfire impacts analyses were deficient, while rejecting challenges to its analyses, discussion, and mitigation for wildlife movement corridors and native vegetation and to its alternatives analysis. (Per this blog’s standard practice, this post will discuss only the published portion of the opinion, which addressed only the GHG issues.)Continue Reading “Double Counting” or Redundant Mitigation? Second District Holds CEQA Guidelines’ Additionality Requirement Precludes Applying Upstream Energy or Fuel Providers’ Obligatory Cap-and-Trade Compliance To Offset Land Use Project’s Estimated GHG Emissions, Invalidates “Prejudicially Misleading” EIR For Massive LA County Centennial Project On That And Other Grounds
CEQA Identified By Assembly Select Committee Report As Among Obstacles To Permitting Reform Needed To Meet State’s Housing and Climate Goals
By Arthur F. Coon on
Posted in Affordable Housing, Climate Change/GHG, Energy, Land Use, Legislation, Reform, Uncategorized
The “California Assembly Select Committee on Permitting Reform Final Report – March 2025” (the “Report”), published earlier this month, sounds an alarm bell regarding the need to overhaul the state’s “failed approach to permitting” if it is to have any hope of addressing its interconnected housing and climate crises. Citing a housing shortage of 2.5 million units, 200,000 homeless persons, unaffordable rents, and increasing temperatures, droughts, flooding, and wildfires, the 35-page Report observes that “California will need to facilitate new construction [of housing, clean energy generation, storage and transmission infrastructure, and climate resiliency projects] at an unprecedented scale” – something achievable “only if governments consistently issue permits in a manner that is timely, transparent, consistent, and outcomes-oriented[.]”Continue Reading CEQA Identified By Assembly Select Committee Report As Among Obstacles To Permitting Reform Needed To Meet State’s Housing and Climate Goals
Second District Affirms Judgment Rejecting CEQA And Other Challenges To CARB’s “Technology-Forcing” Emissions-Control Regulation For At-Berth Tanker And Other Ships
By Arthur F. Coon on
Posted in Administrative Record, CEQA Guidelines, Certified Regulatory Program, Climate Change/GHG, Cumulative Effects, Energy, Environmental Justice, Exemptions, Land Use, Lead Agency, Legislation, Litigation, Mitigation, Piecemealing, Resources, Responses to Comments, Standard of Review, Uncategorized
On February 13, 2025, the Second District Court of Appeal (Div. 7) filed its 71-page published opinion affirming the trial court’s judgment rejecting CEQA safety hazard and cumulative impacts analysis challenges – as well as Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) and generic “arbitrary and capricious” writ challenges – to the California Air Resources Board’s (“CARB”) August 2020 decision adopting the “Control Measure For Ocean-Going Vessels At Berth” (the “Regulation,” codified at 17 Cal. Code Regs. § 93130 et seq). Western States Petroleum Association v. California Air Resources Board (2025) 108 Cal.App.5th 938.Continue Reading Second District Affirms Judgment Rejecting CEQA And Other Challenges To CARB’s “Technology-Forcing” Emissions-Control Regulation For At-Berth Tanker And Other Ships
Fifth District Affirms Judgment Rejecting CEQA/APA Challenges to CARB’s Approval of ZEV Truck Sales Mandate Regulation; Holds Alternatives and Mitigation Analyses Need Not Include Low-NOx Vehicle Credit Contrary to Project’s Underlying Fundamental Purpose
In an opinion filed August 27 and later ordered published on September 24, 2024, the Fifth District Court of Appeal affirmed a judgment denying a writ petition that challenged the State Air Resources Board’s (CARB) adoption of the Advanced Clean Trucks Regulation (Regulation) on CEQA and Administrative Procedures Act (APA; Gov. Code, § 11340 et seq) grounds. California Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition v. State Air Resources Board (2024) 105 Cal.App.5th 304. The Court held that CARB’s in-depth study of three alternatives (including the “no project” alternative) constituted a reasonable range for CEQA purposes; it further held that CARB’s alternative analysis wasn’t deficient for rejecting without in-depth study, as infeasible for policy reasons, an alternative proposed by opponents of the Regulation that would have applied a low-NOx vehicle credit to sales mandates applicable to zero-emission vehicles (ZEV). Based on the same reasoning, the Court held CARB also need not have considered the now-NOx vehicle credit as a mitigation measure for the acknowledged significant near-term air quality impacts of the Regulation. (The Court also rejected appellant Coalition’s APA arguments in a portion of its opinion that won’t be further discussed in this post.) Finally, the Court held on CARB’s affirmative appeal that any error with respect to the admission of a specific “white paper” document into the administrative record was nonprejudicial, and therefore harmless, as it did not impact either the trial court’s or its own analysis.Continue Reading Fifth District Affirms Judgment Rejecting CEQA/APA Challenges to CARB’s Approval of ZEV Truck Sales Mandate Regulation; Holds Alternatives and Mitigation Analyses Need Not Include Low-NOx Vehicle Credit Contrary to Project’s Underlying Fundamental Purpose
Fifth District Clarifies That Agricultural Conservation Easements (ACE’s) Qualify As Legally Permissible “Compensatory Mitigation” For Agricultural-Land Conversion Impacts Under CEQA Despite Not Ensuring No Net Loss
In a partially published (but mostly unpublished) opinion filed on March 7, 2024, the Fifth District Court of Appeal reversed the trial court’s judgment and writ-discharge order which had upheld Kern County’s most recently revised “streamlined permitting” ordinance for oil and gas wells and its associated CEQA review. V Lions Farming, LLC v. County of Kern, et al. (California Independent Petroleum Association, et al., Real Parties) (2024) 100 Cal.App.5th 412. The Court of Appeal instead directed entry of a judgment and writ setting aside the County’s revised ordinance and related certification of a revised supplemental recirculated EIR (SREIR) and addendum. It held (in unpublished portions of its opinion) that the SREIR’s discussion of cancer risk from the potential drilling of multiple wells near a sensitive receptor was informationally deficient, and that the County also erred in analyzing the significance of lowering groundwater levels in wells by misconstruing CEQA to prohibit consideration of the social and economic impacts on disadvantaged communities in making that significance determination. (These and other unpublished portions of the opinion will not be discussed in any further detail in this post.)Continue Reading Fifth District Clarifies That Agricultural Conservation Easements (ACE’s) Qualify As Legally Permissible “Compensatory Mitigation” For Agricultural-Land Conversion Impacts Under CEQA Despite Not Ensuring No Net Loss
Governor Signs Infrastructure/Budget Legislation Including Significant Revisions To CEQA (SB 149)
By Arthur F. Coon on
Posted in Administrative Record, Climate Change/GHG, Energy, Legislation, Reform, Resources, Uncategorized
On July 10, 2023, Governor Newsom signed into law a number of bills aimed at streamlining and accelerating the construction of critical infrastructure projects needed to achieve California’s ambitious climate and clean energy goals. Among the many bills was SB No. 149, CEQA legislation that amended Public Resources Code §§ 21167.6, 21181, 21183, 21189.1, and 21189.3; added Chapter 7 (commencing with § 21189.80); and became effective immediately as an urgency measure “[t]o promote environmental protection and safeguard economic development of California’s diverse public resources and people, and enhance the state’s ability to maximize federal funding to support those efforts[.]” The full text of SB 149 can be found here.Continue Reading Governor Signs Infrastructure/Budget Legislation Including Significant Revisions To CEQA (SB 149)
BAAQMD Adopts Ambitious Revised 2022 CEQA Guidelines
In late April the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (“BAAQMD”) promulgated its revised 2022 CEQA Guidelines (“2022 Guidelines”), available here. Previously BAAQMD had published guidelines in 2012, which were the subject of litigation culminating in the California Supreme Court’s decision in California Building Industry Assn. v. Bay Area Air Quality Management Dist. (2015) 62 Cal.4th 369, an important case delineating the scope of CEQA in which we represented several amici curiae and which we blogged about here.Continue Reading BAAQMD Adopts Ambitious Revised 2022 CEQA Guidelines
That Dam Case (Again): Third District Upholds Oroville Hydropower Facilities Relicensing EIR Against Numerous CEQA Challenges
On April 7, 2023, the Third District Court of Appeal filed a lengthy published opinion – the latest installment in one of the longer ongoing CEQA battles in recent memory – affirming a judgment finding an EIR for the Federal relicensing of Oroville Dam and related hydropower facilities legally adequate. County of Butte and County of Plumas, et al v. Dept. of Water Resources (2023) 90 Cal.App.5th 147.Continue Reading That Dam Case (Again): Third District Upholds Oroville Hydropower Facilities Relicensing EIR Against Numerous CEQA Challenges