Impact of Campus Expansion on Fire, Safety Not Considered Under CEQA
- William W. Abbott
- Oct 7, 2012
- 2 min read
California State University East Bay undertook a dual-purpose environmental impact report for its campus master plan and two construction projects, meant to enable the campus to grow from roughly 12,000 to 18,000 students in the next 30 years. The construction projects consisted of a housing complex and a parking structure. The EIR included alternatives at both the master plan and construction project level. The City of Hayward and public interest groups filed suit challenging the sufficiency of the EIR, apparently out of concern for costs that it might bear, such as those for fire and safety, when the university expands. The trial court found the EIR to be deficient and issued an order granting the petition for writ. The university subsequently appealed. With the exception of one issue, the appellate court reversed the trial court in City of Hayward v. Trustees of the California State University, generally upholding the sufficiency of the EIR. The appellate decision provides helpful guidance in the use of a programmatic EIR (for the master plan) and recognizes that despite the somewhat predictable claim of the project opponents that more detail should have been included in the programmatic document, that those details were properly left for the next CEQA tier. The appellate court found that substantial evidence supported the conclusion that the construction of an additional fire station would have less than significant impacts as the anticipated construction of a station in an urban setting was not anticipated to cause impact. Notably, the appellate court concluded that the lead agency was not required to mitigate for the socio-economic impacts such as station staffing. The court wrote, "The need for additional fire protection services is not an environmental impact that CEQA requires a project proponent to mitigate ." With respect to traffic impacts, the master plan EIR was a programmatic EIR, and was not required to analyze neighborhood street impacts as those impacts would be analyzed in conjunction with the next CEQA review and consideration of specific projects, which would be the basis for more detailed evaluation. A mitigation requirement for a transportation demand management program did not result in deferred mitigation, as the mitigation measure included a required performance standard. However, there was a lack of substantial evidence to support the EIR's conclusion that the impacts to area parks would be less than significant and on that basis the matter was remanded back for additional analysis as part of a revised EIR. The Case:City of Hayward v. Trustees of the California State University (.pdf) (June 28, 2012, A131412) ___Cal.App.4th ___; 2012 Cal.App. LEXIS 761