Local nonprofit claims violation of California Environmental Quality Act
In a recent case, a party argued that an environmental impact report’s estimates were unacceptable because the employee who provided them was biased in the employer’s favor. The California Court of Appeal for the Third District rejected this argument.
In We Advocate Through Environmental Review et al. v. County of Siskiyou et al., a water bottling company acquired a property in Siskiyou County, where it constructed a bottling facility, a groundwater production well, and a domestic groundwater well. The bottling plant eventually closed. A few years later, Crystal Geyser Water Company bought the property and wanted to revive the plant.
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Pursuant to an environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act, the county released a draft environmental impact report. The proposed project involved renovations to the plant for the production of sparkling water, flavored water, juice beverages, and teas. The draft report addressed the permits that Crystal Geyser needed to get and evaluated the potential environmental impacts associated with these governmental approvals.
After the draft report was circulated, the county issued a final environmental impact report with responses to the comments of various parties. The county’s board of supervisors found that, while the project would have significant environmental effects, the benefits would outweigh these impacts. The board certified the final report and approved the project.
The plaintiffs filed a lawsuit claiming that the county and its board violated the California Environmental Quality Act and the county’s and the City of Mount Shasta’s general plans when they approved the project. They argued that the county inaccurately described the project, narrowly defined the project’s objectives, and improperly evaluated several environmental impacts.
The trial court rejected all these claims. The plaintiffs appealed.
The California Court of Appeal for the Third District agreed with some of the plaintiffs’ arguments and reversed the lower court’s judgment. First, the county indeed defined the project’s objectives in an impermissibly narrow manner, the appellate court found.
Second, the county engaged in a flawed evaluation process for the project’s climate change impacts, the appellate court said. After the period for public comments was over, the county disclosed that the project would result in greenhouse gas emissions that were nearly double what it initially estimated. Considering this late disclosure, the county should have given the public another opportunity to provide feedback, the appellate court said.
A Crystal Geyser employee’s testimony formed the basis for the environmental impact report’s estimates on groundwater use. The plaintiffs argued that the county should not accept these estimates because the employee was biased in favor of his employer.
The appellate court disagreed. In the past, courts have rejected these kinds of objections, including in the following cases:
- In San Franciscans Upholding the Downtown Plan v. City & County of San Francisco (2002), the court disagreed with the argument that an expert’s report could not constitute substantial evidence because the expert, as a hired and paid consultant, made a study that was biased, self-serving, not objective, and aimed at a predetermined result.
- In Foundation for San Francisco’s Architectural Heritage v. City and County of San Francisco (1980), the court held that the direct participation of the developer and his experts in environmental and other studies did not fatally undermine the environmental impact report.
The plaintiffs accepted that the Crystal Geyser employee had decades of experience in the bottling industry and gave estimates of production levels that could be anticipated using certain equipment. However, they contended that the estimates on the amount of groundwater that Crystal Geyser would extract were improperly offered and speculative because the environmental impact report did not impose any limit on the amount that Crystal Geyser could extract.
The appellate court rejected the plaintiffs’ argument upon finding that substantial – and not merely speculative – evidence supported the report’s extraction estimates.
