Can Eliminating Ag Mitigation Create New Impacts?
- William Fulton
- Aug 14, 2022
- 3 min read
When is a policy change substantial enough that it requires a whole new environmental impact report?
Apparently when the city council abandons one policy, even if the rest of the policy regime remains in place. At least that’s the implication from a new Superior Court ruling from Tulare County.
The dispute revolves around what type of environmental review was required after the Visalia City Council adopted – and then abandoned – an agricultural mitigation program as part of its general plan. When the ag mitigation program was abandoned, the city circulated an addendum to the general plan environmental impact report, arguing that neither the land uses nor the significant impacts were changed as a result.
Local community activists and environmentalists sued, saying the city should have undertaken a subsequent or supplemental EIR instead. Superior Court Judge David Mathias agreed, saying that even though other agricultural mitigation measures were retained, the environmental review should have examined the impact that the elimination of the ag mitigation program would have on “changed mitigation outcomes.”
“The fact that other mitigation measures would remain, and that farmland loss would remain significant, does not establish whether the loss of the AMP (ag mitigation program) requirement mitigation measure would, itself, have a significant impact on farmland loss.”
Visalia adopted its 2030 general plan in 2014. The plan called for a tiered system of growth, permitting development of land further from the center of the city only when certain triggers had been met.