08 | 22 | 2007
Legal e-Update
On August 21, 2007, the California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. announced that a settlement agreement had been reached with respect to the state's global warming lawsuit against San Bernardino County. This settlement concludes a widely watched CEQA challenge filed by the Attorney General in April that contested the adequacy of San Bernardino's General Plan. The lawsuit contended that the General Plan failed to adequately analyze the impacts of development on global warming and did not identify feasible mitigation measures.
The Greenhouse Gas Emissions Plan arising from this settlement mandates the following:
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An inventory of all known, or reasonably discoverable, sources of greenhouse gases in the County.
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An inventory of the greenhouse gas emissions level in 1990, currently, and that projected for the year 2020.
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A target for the reduction of emissions attributable to the county's discretionary land use decisions and its own internal government operations.
In the wake of the legislature's passage of AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act, the Attorney General's office has submitted comments on environmental documents under CEQA to a number of California communities, including San Bernardino, San Diego, Sacramento, Orange County, Merced, Kern, Fresno, San Joaquin, Contra Costa, Yuba, Richmond, and San Jose. It is expected that the Attorney General will continue to press local governments on this global warming issue, which will have widespread impacts on the development community.
This is not some small "out there in the future" issue. The adoption of greenhouse gas emissions plans or their equivalents can be expected throughout the state. While perhaps manageable, they will undoubtedly spell delay for projects and increase opportunities for more CEQA litigation.