Costco Gas Station Opponents Confront The Infill Exemption
- William Fulton
- Nov 1, 2021
- 4 min read
As CP&DR has reported in the past, local governments are using exemptions under the California Environmental Quality Act far more than they used to and now use exemptions more often than the use mitigated nergative declarations. Agencies now use exemptiosn more often partly because of new exemption opportunities, such as the Class 32 infill exemption, and partly because of more favorable rulings, such as the California Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in the Berkeley Hillside case.
Nevertheless, exemptions can still prove controversial, generating significant pushback even in situations that would seem relatively straightforward. One example is the current blow-up over use of an exemption to permit a new Costco gas station in Tustin. Neighbors have ferociously opposed the gas station, but so far they’ve been shut down by the courts – most recently by the Fourth District Court of Appeal.
The facts of the Tustin case are pretty straightforward, though there’s one definitional wrinkle – the geographical size of the project – that the neighbors keep bringing up.
The Tustin Costco is located on an old Kmart site near the interchange of Interstate 5 and State Route 261, which is part of the Eastern Transportation Corridor toll road. Unlike most Costcos in the United States, it doesn’t currently have a gas station. (Costco gas stations are extremely popular, often with long lines, because Costco negotiates low prices for gas.) There’s another Costco with gas pumps three miles away. Costco argued, among other things, that the new gas station would reduce lines at the other Costco gas station.