Always Examine Air Quality Impacts Near A Highway
- William Fulton
- Mar 5, 2023
- 2 min read
If you’re going to build housing close to a highway, you'd better analyze the air pollution impact on the residents.
That’s the lesson from a situation in Grass Valley, where an environmental impact report on a mixed-used project 170 feet from State Route 20/49 didn’t pay much attention to the air pollution impact of the project.
The other lesson – one that has come up in innumerable cases under the California Environmental Quality Act – is to bring up every issue you can think of during the administrative process. The plaintiffs’ wildfire arguments fell flat because they were only brought up on appeal.
The situation involved the Dorsey Marketplace project, a mixed-use project in Grass Valley located on the 27-acre site of a former mine. In 2015, developer Russel Jeter proposed a project with 179,000 square feet of commercial use and 90 multifamily residential units. Subsequently, the project was changed to reduce the commercial space to 104,000 square feet, increase the multifamily residential to 172 units, and add 8,500 square feet of office space. The city approved the project with a mitigations and a statement of overriding consideration in 2020.
Subsequently, a group called Community Environmental Advocates sued, claiming a wide range of deficiencies in the environmental impact report. But only the air quality question stuck. The group lost in Superior Court and appealed to the Third District Court of Appeal.