Vol. 18 No. 01 Jan 2003

Planning practitioners who are perplexed about how to handle certain projects in light of a recent court decision regarding the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Guidelines should not feel alone.

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A city’s erroneous denial of a lot line adjustment application did not qualify as a temporary taking, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled.
The court ruled that the City of Lafayette had legitimate reasons for handling the application the way it did and that the delay in approval of the application — which eventually was ordered by a trial court — was not unreasonable.

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A potential Southern California water crisis reached new heights in December when the Imperial Irrigation District (IID) Board of Directors rejected a plan to sell roughly 6% of its Colorado River water allotment to the San Diego County Water Agency.

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I have a cranky thesis about housing: Working-class people should not be forced to live in projects that advertise the poverty of the residents. "Welcome to Casa Pobreza! We Have Pride in Ourselves — Even if Nobody Else Does!"

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California does not build many freeways. So as Caltrans has opened segments of the Interstate 210 freeway in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, the road has received an unusual amount of attention — especially regarding how the state actually built the freeway and what impact it will have on traffic congestion.

But the most interesting, and easiest to overlook, aspect of the 210 Freeway’s construction is the fact that it has altered the role of a major arterial street through a series of suburbs.

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WASHINGTON _ A deadlocked U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a $500,000 fine against a California developer for "deep ripping" about two acres of wetlands on a Central Valley ranch while converting pasture to vineyards and orchards.

The justices divided 4-4 in an appeal by Angelo Tsakopoulos seeking to set aside penalties levied by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for violating provisions of the Clean Water Act that require a permit before filling or dredging waterways.

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The San Diego Redevelopment Agency can use a state law to require the owner of property the agency took by eminent domain to pay for cleanup of soil contamination, a state court has ruled.

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Following a meager five-point victory against a bumbling opponent and facing an 18-month budget deficit estimated at $35 billion, Gray Davis will be sworn in this month for his second term as governor. He will govern a state whose voters are perfectly happy with a suburban lifestyle, at least according to the polls.

So it would not seem likely that Davis is in a position to do anything innovative or trailblazing in the area of land use planning and growth policy during his second term. Yet there is proba

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A divided panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has allowed two water districts and two farmers to sue the federal government for damages caused by changes in the management of the Central Valley Water Project, even though the districts and farmers have not yet experienced an injury.

The decision appears to set an important precedent regarding when a party has the legal "standing" to seek compensation for damages.

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As 2002 was drawing to a close, forecasters with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that warming of the western Pacific heralded the arrival of an El Niño weather pattern. The influence of this periodically recurring phenomenon usually means heavier-than-usual winter rains for California.

But even if California gets more than its average precipitation this winter, water scarcity — or at least the possibility of it — will dominate the state’s environmental agenda during the next

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