Another CEQA Loss For UC Berkeley

In the latest legal wrangling over enrollment expansion at UC Berkeley, an Alameda County Superior Court judge has ordered the university to set aside its 2019 approval or a new housing project for students at the Goldman School of Public Policy. According to the local publication Berkeleyside, the city and the university may soon reach an out-of-court agreement on how to handle the impact of expanded enrollment – although a Berkeley residents group may challenge that agreement as well. UC Berkeley’s enrollment has more than predicted in recent years, to almost 40,000 students, leading to a variety of disputes under the California Environmental Quality Act among the university, the City of Berkeley, and Berkeley residents. Last year, for example, the First District Court of Appeal ruled that the University must do a CEQA analysis not just on additions to the university’s buildings such as additional housing but also to the mere act of increasing enrollment. Meanwhile, in 2019, the City of Berkeley and a group called Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods sued the University over its CEQA analysis of the Goldman School’s so-called Upper Hearst project, which would provide the Goldman School with additional space of various kinds, including faculty and student housing. The building would be constructed on the site of the Upper Hearst Parking Structure on the corner of Hearst and La Loma just north of the campus. The University did a supplemental environmental impact report tiered off the EIR for its 2020 Long-Range Development Plan, the university’s equivalent of a general plan.

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