With their startling colors, jarring juxtaposition of architectural styles and emphasis on simple geometry, Michael Graves' colored-pencil drawings fixed his reputation as the highbrow jokester who built a bridge between academic architecture and pop culture. Bristling with energy and invention, those early drawings, from the 1970s and 1980s, were expertly tossed salads of different historical styles—bulgy pillars from Revolutionary France, round-headed castles from German Romanticism, the rigid axis of the 19th Century Beaux arts—all rendered in acid colors and pushed to comic extremes. The drawings were intentional, calculated slaps in the face: The message, that Modernism was wrong headed and played out, was the war cry of the period.  Graves passed away last week at age 80.  Most disconcerting about Graves's drawings was an underlying sense of archness and preppy superiority, as if the architect himself did not take his own enterprise so seriously. That was anathema to earnest young architectural students bent on saving the world through redesign. Like Erik Satie and Salvador Dali, two other figures who often hid their anxieties behind humor, the element of snark in Graves seems like protective cover. He needed irony as a shield in case someone accused him of unseriousness.  His much-quoted saying, "The dialogue of architecture has been centered too long around the idea of truth," was a cunning trap set for puritans and numbskulls.  Graves made a big public impact with his buildings, including the Humana Tower in Louisville, the Portland Building in Portland, and the Team Disney building in Burbank. (In California, other buildings by Graves included the public library in San Juan Capistrano, the Kavli Building for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara, the Clos Pegase winery in Napa Valley, and the Aventine complex, including the Hyatt Hotel, in La Jolla.) I disliked those buildings when they were new. They looked like cartoons or over-sized toys, cloying in their cuteness. Graves also built a number of fine projects; my favorite is the library in San Juan Capistrano (1983), organized around a pair of parallel hallways: one path leads through a Mission-inspired façade and arrives at a hacienda style interior courtyard; another pathway, less grand in scale, leads directly into reading rooms.   Graves was also uneven. At times, it seemed he had exhausted the vein of images he had mined from the architecture of late 18th century France, particularly Ledoux, and from German Romanticism. For the Metropolis project (1990), a group of three high-rise office buildings in downtown Los Angeles, Graves proposed a trio of towers covered in meaningless decorative doo-dads. Otherwise conventional, these office buildings looked like big Christmas cookies, encrusted with cake icing, sprinkles and dried fruit.  I was dismayed that he had given little consideration to the context of downtown LA. Fortunately, they were never built.  More satisfying was the big Hyatt Hotel (1990) in La Jolla. There, Graves used the cartoon technique to better advantage, using simplified, over-scaled details to maximize the visibility of the façade from the nearby freeway.  The Hyatt, in fact, is a more polite variant of the notorious Swan and Dolphin Resort at Disneyworld, Florida (1985).  The Disneyworld hotel boasts some features in common with the Hyatt; they include a curving roofline and the use of a stand-alone, castle-like building as an entrance pavilion. (The building type is a borrowing from the German Rundbogenstil.) Unique to the Disneyworld resort, Graves added 47-foot statues of swans and dolphins that were calculated the raise the hackles of humorless, puritanical Modernists. The statues seemed like Graves had gone too far and broken a taboo. The taboo was not that of "taste;" the entire project is a cannonball aimed at conventional good taste. Rather, the real offense here was the unapologetic use of representational imagery in architecture with a capitol "A." In puritanical Modernism, there is no place for the human figure, Le Corbusier's famous Modulor man notwithstanding, let alone animals and plants.  Like Robert Venturi and Robert A.M. Stern before him, Graves was working in an architecture of images rather than abstractions. The giant swan and dolphin may have been outrageous in scale but otherwise fit into the context comfortably.   The giant pyramid form on one of the elevations of the Disneyworld capitalizes on the power of simple geometry. Pyramids, of course, mean ancient Egypt, the mysteries of the Masons, Cleopatra movies starring Claudette Colbert and Elizabeth Taylor, the one-eyed pyramid on the dollar bill, and so on. Rather than allude to a symbol through abstraction, Graves imports the symbol itself. Whether we like the Disneyworld project or not – I admire its audacity  – we should recognize that much of its power comes from simple devices (i.e. "Platonic" geometry and figurative imagery) that were commonplace to architecture prior to 1940. One possible conclusion: Representational images are often, if not always, more evocative than abstract forms. Even the current popularity of so-called Mid-Century Modern architecture is based on the fact that these buildings, which were "abstract" when newly built and hence indecipherable to mass culture, have now been transformed by time into something familiar, that is identifiable images and symbols of American culture from another era. If I think Graves is uneven and only occasionally successful as an architect, he also showed a way that some (if not all) qualities of historic architecture could be transferred successfully to Modern architecture. Here's a few: The profile or overall contour of a building is more important than its shape, because the profile, unlike the bulges of a sculptural mass, can be clearly seen from a distance. Round contours are often more suggestive of mass than mass itself.     Simple geometry is the basis for architectural rhetoric. His famous tea kettle combines a triangle and a circle, while the over-cute bird figure on the spout lends an image, however coy or campy, to the whistling sound of boiling water.  Color is admissible in architecture. Given the monochromatic tendency of most new buildings, it may even be advisable. Architecture needs to find a way to include figurative imagery without embarrassment. A combination of abstraction and figuration is possible in a single work of architecture.    Popular culture dislikes pure abstraction. The incommunicative quality of many modern buildings makes it necessary to include figurative signage or logos to humanize otherwise uninviting structures.   So rest in peace, Michael Graves. Your legacy, however mixed, awaits re-appraisal. If you sometimes seemed sarcastic, you also raised genuine questions about the theory and practice of current architecture. In addition, you made some suggestions as to how to work around the dead ends of both a flamboyant avant garde that is hostile to its surroundings and the banal, cost-driven mainstream.  So maybe you were not entirely unserious, after all.

This week brought yet another critique from the right of the California Environmental Quality Act. Unlike most, this one isn't confined to concerns over land use, unnecessary regulation, and high housing cost. Rather, CEQA's ills have grown so vast that, apparently, it now deserves blame for California's low educational attainment, lousy job growth, extreme wealth inequality, and significant domestic out-migration.  Jennifer Hernandez and David Friedman are attorneys with the firm of Holland & Knight, which has been an astute observer of, and enthusiastic participant in, the evolution of CEQA caselaw. (See for example the firm's analysis of CEQA lawsuits over infill projects .) They are the authors of "California's Social Priorities," a new report published by Chapman University's Center for Demographics and Policy, whose director is that well-known free-market critic of regulation, Joel Kotkin. The report (and it is a report, not a study) offers some compelling—dare I say original—claims about California's decline and its misplaced "social priorities."  The body of the report — a full 11 pages, with plenty of pretty graphics – accurately chronicles California's recent problems. Job growth has dropped from 5.6 million from 1970 to 1990 to 2.6 million from 1991 to 2013. The number of Californians without a high school diploma has risen since 1970 (never mind international immigration). Income inequality ranks 45th nationally, down from 25th in 1970. Everyone is moving to Texas. Woe is us. And yet, somehow, among all the laws, regulations, micro-, macro-, and global economic trends that impact on and emanate from our state, the overriding cause of California's malaise is — wait for it — CEQA.  Hernandez and Friedman don't even mention CEQA in the body of the report. But it makes a grand entrance in the first paragraph of the report's conclusion. After carefully documenting the state's ills, the authors boldly say that "there is little doubt that California's high costs and weak economic performance is related to the state's regulatory requirements." They literally just say it. They don't explain it. They don't prove it with anything resembling facts, scholarship, or original research. The report's 20 footnotes include, as far as I can tell, not a single mainstream scholarly study leading them to this idea. For the rest of the conclusion, the only "regulatory requirement" they talk about is CEQA. And the only "evidence" they present between runaway jobs and the evils of CEQA is Tesla's recent decision to locate its new "gigafactory" in Reno, Nevada. While it is undeniable that "CEQA lawsuit risks and other regulatory burdens have emerged as well-publicized major roadblocks to completing even the most popular entertainment or sports projects, long overdue infrastructure improvements, and manufacturing plants," no one at Tesla says that CEQA was the only deal-killer – or even a deal-killer. Meanwhile, the authors don't cite the sweetheart deal that Tesla got from the State of Nevada .  Nevada coughed up the money partly because it was competing with several states other states that were also throwing economic development incentives at Tesla. Would CEQA reform have magically counteracted the $1.56 billion incentives package that Nevada offered?  If Californians end up moving to Reno in order to work for Tesla, they'll join legions of Californians who have already abandoned the state because of the tyranny of CEQA between 1990 and 2010. Indeed, the report implies that 3.8 million autonomous, freedom-loving Americans would have stayed in California were it not for the invisible scourge of CEQA – a fact which is bad for climate change and the environment, they argue, because when people move to other states their carbon footprint doubles.  Californians emit 11.4 metric tons of greenhouse gases per capita per year, or about half what the average American does. So, when people abandon a relatively efficient state, they do the biosphere that much more harm (assuming, of course, that they instantly change their lifestyles upon breaching California's borders). Never mind that, CEQA – along with California's other regulatory requirements, such as the state's tough air pollution laws – is one of the reasons why Californians live more efficiently in the first place.  What's most amazing is that — despite their seeming passion for reform — the authors offer no practical suggestions for how to actually reform California's laws. They offer no plan for funding education or taking on teachers unions (if that's your thing, which is probably is if you're a right-leaning scholar). They offer no prescriptions for tax reform or other business incentives. They don't begin to ask how to solve for inequality. They dare not mention Proposition 13. For that matter, they don't even make any suggestions on how to reform CEQA. Indeed, even Kotkin himself doesn't seem to quite buy the argument that CEQA is the cause of all evil. In his OC Register column plugging the report , he goes on at great length about California's economic and social ills – but even he doesn't mention CEQA. With that said, things are getting better even if CEQA is still a mess. Recent data indicate that the state added a half-million jobs in 2014. That's 30% more than Texas added. This growth really shouldn't surprise anyone, since California's employment patterns have had both downs and ups over the decades. Remember the 5.6 million jobs added from 1970 to 1990? Those were all added under CEQA – which, after all, was passed in 1970. And signed by Gov. Ronald Reagan. Why does all this alleged scholarship seem so tortured? To a great extent, the Kotkin crew's complaint reflects the changing nature of CEQA. No longer can conservatives rail proudly against CEQA for impeding development. That's because many liberals — particularly planners who support infill and the public officials who support SB 375 and SB 743 — are levying many of the same criticisms of CEQA (if for different reasons). Conservatives now have to hate on CEQA in much more vague ways. Nowadays, if an endangered butterfly flaps its wings in Lassen County, a scholar in Irvine has to work harder to find something to bloviate about.

The case began in 2009 when a storm drain in La Jolla failed, causing significant erosion along nearby steep slopes. At the time of the failure, the city had been in the engage in CEQA review of potential improvements to the storm drain. After the failure, the city undertook emergency repairs (the installation of a new storm pipe) under CEQA Guidelines 15269 , the statutory exemption for emergency projects.  Relying on previously prepared biological stuies, the emergency permit required the city's Public Works Department to use hand tools rather than mechanized equipment in order to minimize the disruption to sensitive resources. The emergency permit also required Public Works obtain a permanent permit from the city's Development Services Department within 150 days or else the temporary repairs would have to be repaired.    When Development Services issued the permanent permit in 2010, the city concluded that the additional work being undertaken – implementation of a revegetation plan – was exempt from CEQA under Guidelines 15061(b)(3) because the revegetation plan would improve the environment and did not hold the potential for significant impact. The Notice of Exemption defined the project as including the work done under the emergency permit that was covered by the previous exemption. The community group CREED-21 – the name stands for "Citizens for Responsible Equitable Environmental Development" – appealed the CEQA determination to the San Diego City Council, which denied it. Subsequently the city's hearing officer approved the permanent permit. CREED-21 appealed that decision to the San Diego Planning Commission, which upheld it.  CREED-21 then sued and won in the trial court. San Diego Superior Court Judge Ronald S. Prager bought CREED-21's argument that the baseline to be considered in the CEQA analysis should have been existing conditions prior to the emergency repairs, and he even enjoined the city from moving forward on the revegetation plan.  In his ruling, Prager wrote: : " f the City's logic is accepted, it would undermine the purpose of CEQA, as an applicant who is granted an emergency permit would be able to avoid more stringent scrutiny of its project during the regular permitting process due to the fact that it was previously able to obtain this type of permit." A three-judge panel of the Fourt District Court of Appeal overturned Prager on almost all points, however. In his opinion for the court, Justice Alex McDonald wrote: "Although the court correctly noted environmental review for the storm drain repair work and related revegetation plan began in 2007 when City filed its initial application, we conclude the court misapplied the CEQA statutes and regulations regarding exemptions. … [T[he storm drain repair work completed in 2010 pursuant to the emergency exemption was, in effect, an intervening and superseding event that changed the physical environment without any requirement for CEQA review of that work for a significant effect on the environment." McDonald added: "Because CEQA ‘applies only to ‘discretionary projects proposed to be carried out or approved by public agencies" ‘ ( San Lorenzo, supra , 139 Cal.App.4th at p. 1376) and the revegetation plan was the only ‘project' under CEQA proposed to be carried out at the site after completion of the 2010 emergency work, CEQA applies only to the revegetation plan and not to the work done as part of the 2010 emergency storm drain repair. Therefore, in conducting a preliminary review of the revegetation project under CEQA, City was charged with making a comparison between the existing physical conditions after the 2010 emergency work was completed without the revegetation project and the conditions expected to be produced by the revegetation project." The court also overturned Prager's ruling on CREED-21's standing, saying that the group did not have standing to challenge the city's determination that the emergency repair work was exempt from CEQA. CREED-21 had argued that it had standing even though it did not challenge the emergency permit's CEQA determination in a timely fashion because that exemption had, in essence, been rolled into the project description for the permanent permit. But McDonald rejected that argument: "To the extent City thereafter found its completed storm drain repair work was exempt from CEQA, it was merely confirming its prior emergency exemption determination." The appellate court did affirm the trial court's ruling that a $100 appeal fee was unauthorized, in part because it did not provide the trial court with the relevant ordinance in a timely fashion. The Case: CREED-21 v. City of San Diego , No. D064186, decided January 29, published February 18 The Lawyers: For CREED-21: Cory Briggs, 619-497-0021 For City of San Diego: Deputy City Attorneys Andrea M. Contreras (now with Sunroad Enterprises, acontreras@sunroadenterprises.com ) and Jana Mickova, jwill@sandiego.gov.

A report issued by the Legislative Analyst's Office shows that California's high housing costs are stifling the state's economy and making it difficult to create affordable housing. The report says that the state "probably would have to build as many as 100,000 additional units annually...to seriously mitigate its problems with housing affordability." But housing construction has fallen behind population and job growth, with builders only getting authorization to start 37,000 single-family homes and 49,000 multifamily units statewide last year. The inadequate increase in housing supply leads to rising costs and makes it more difficult for companies to hire and retain qualified employees, the study said. A main issue involves state funding for affordable housing, which has fallen about $1.5 billion per year since 2012 because of depletion of state bond funds and the dismantling of local redevelopment agencies. Couple that with an increase in available jobs in the state, and rent on housing units across the state has skyrocketed. Caltrans Details Options for Extending, Expanding 710 Freeway Los Angeles County Transportation officials are considering multi-billion dollar plans to close the notorious 710 freeway gap and increase capacity along the entire freeway. The freeway, a vital trade arterial connecting the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, abruptly ends in South Pasadena without connecting to the 210 Freeway, four miles to the north of the 710 terminus. This gap has been blamed for causing traffic throughout the Los Angeles freeway grid, especially because of traffic from trucks traveling between the port and the warehouses of the Inland Empire. A draft environmental impact report by Caltrans estimates that a tunnel under South Pasadena — which is preferred by residents, who vehemently oppose the taking of homes for a surface right of way — would cost between $3.1 and $5.6 billion. It would take five years to build. The EIR presents two plans for separating cars and trucks along the 18-mile stretch of freeway. The first plan is an $8-billion freight corridor that includes for elevated truck-only lanes to parallel the 710 along the Los Angeles River. The alternative is a far cheaper option estimated at around $3-4 billion, would add one travel lane in each direction and create a truck bypass around the 405 interchange. "There is no way we can accommodate the traffic without adding capacity. This region handles more than 40% of all port traffic in the United States,"  Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of the Southern California Association of Governments, told the Los Angeles Times .  Garcetti Sets Deadline for Earthquake Retrofitting In his ongoing campaign to ready Los Angeles for a major earthquake, Mayor Eric Garcetti recently announced an ambitious deadline for requiring mandatory retrofitting to buildings in Los Angeles for earthquake safety. He wants a law passed by the end of this year, in contrast to San Francisco, which took more than a decade to pass its own retrofitting laws. The plan will require wooden buildings to be retrofitted within five years and concrete buildings within 30 years. To help get the retrofits moving if the law is passed, the City Council could propose low-interest loans or tax breaks to owners, or it could expand a program that would pay back private loans through a temporary, voluntary increase in property taxes. Orange County Tollway Rejected by Water Board A $200 million tollway project in Orange County suffered a defeat at the hands of the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, which rejected a permit for an extension that it claims is actually a part of a larger expansion plan that environmentalists have condemned. The plan, called the Tesoro Extension, would have allowed the Transportation Corridor Agencies to add 5.5 miles to the Foothill tollway from Rancho Santa Margarita to east of San Juan Capistrano. Environmentalists and other tollway opponents believe that the Tesoro proposal is the first step in a plan to resurrect the Foothill project, a controversial plan proposed several years ago that would have built Foothill extensions through the popular San Onofre State Beach Park in San Diego county. TCA officials argue that the Tesoro Extension is a stand-alone project.  Los Angeles Supes to Vote on General Plan Update The  agenda  for the March 24 meeting of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors indicates that the supervisors may vote to adopt the long-planned County General Plan Update. The General Plan Framework was first presented to the board in February 2014 and has been discussed and revised since then. The last general plan was adopted in 1980. The draft update includes the following provisions: Land Use Element, Mobility Element, Air Quality Element, Conservation and Natural Resources Element, Parks and Recreation Element, Noise Element, Safety Element, Public Services and Facilities Element, Economic Development Element, implementation programs and figures and maps Rezoning of 4,386 parcels for consistency between the Land Use Policy Map and Zoning Map Amendments to the Industrial Zones in County Code, Title 22 to implement the industrial preservation policies of the General Plan Update; also includes the removal of the M-4 Zone and Arts and Crafts Zone for consistency purposes Amendments to the Mixed Use Zone and removal of the Transit Oriented Districts Ordinance in Title 22 to implement the Transit Oriented District strategy and the Land Use Legend of the General Plan and amendments to address applications that are submitted before the General Plan Update becomes effective Creation of new zones, and corresponding modifications for consistency in Title 22 to implement the Land Use Legend of the General Plan Update which are: Industrial Preservation Combining Zone (IP), High Density Multiple Residence Zone (R-5) and Major Commercial Zone (C-MJ) SLO Passes Anti-Odor Ordinance, Aimed at Pot A new ordinance in San Luis Obispo will regulate  offensive odors that waft across property lines. Following a vote of 3-2 by the City Council, staff next month will be able to issue fines of $100, $200, and $500 respectively for increasing numbers of violations within 12 months of a first offense. The new ordinance can be used against any type of odor deemed "offensive to individuals of normal sensitivity," but it originally came about because of complaints about the smell of marijuana being cultivated outdoors. The two council dissenters called the ordinance too vague and subjective, saying that complaints could come about through activities like barbecuing, nothing illegal in a residential neighborhood. San Bernardino Continues to Struggle Financially Reuters reports that, since declaring bankruptcy in 2012, the City of San Bernardino has defaulted on $10 million in pension payments and has not negotiated with its bondholders since September. The city declared last year that it intends to pay public pension fund Calpers in full to the tune of $300 billion. However, it has paid nothing to its bondholders for almost three years. In bankruptcies in cities like Stockton and Detroit, bondholders had to take big cuts to their debt while pensioners emerged relatively unscathed, showing that in bankruptcy cases retirees typically get better treatment than the bondholders do. However, a bankruptcy attorney said that the city's treatment of bondholders may come back to haunt it. "Down the road, the city may find that the capital market it unavailable to it or that it will be penalized at a very high rate when it seeks to borrow," said Michael Sweet of Fox Rothschild in San Francisco. Bill Seeks to Help Cities Collect TOT's from Short-Term Rentals The Sacramento Bee reports that State Senator Mike McGuire plans to introduce a bill that make it easier to collect transient occupancy taxes from homeowners who rent out rooms on online house-sharing services like Airbnb. The bill would force online home-sharing companies to make regular reports to cities about which homes in their area are renting rooms, the costs of the rentals, and the lengths of stay. While McGuire says that hosts on sites like Airbnb are supposed to pay transient occupancy taxes, many do not, creating "a severe under-registration of hosts and underpayment" of taxes, according to a fact sheet about the bill. Additionally, some tenants may unknowingly be subletting their apartments to people through the online services, thus transferring the liability to an unwitting landlord. The cities of San francisco, Auburn, and San Jose have already passed their own ordinances in the past year to regulate Airbnb. Counties Sue Federal Government for Access to National Forest A coalition of two counties and several individuals sued the federal government for blocking motorized travel to Plumas National Forest without an environmental review. Represented by the libertarian  Pacific Legal Foundation , the coalition says that the U.S. Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act by suddenly banning motorized vehicle use by issuing an Environmental Impact Statement that excluded thousands of trails that had always been open to the public. The coalition says that the closures should have gone through further environmental review under NEPA. S. Calif. Cities Fight for Redevelopment Funds The cities of Long Beach and Tustin are taking different approaches in trying to get money back from their now-defunct redevelopment agencies. Long Beach got the approval of the state to sell its properties belonging to its former Redevelopment Agency, thus kicking into gear sales of 27 pieces of land likely to be sold to adjacent property owners or for fair market value. Tustin , on the other hand, has sued California's Department of Finance in an attempt to get back $42 million that it says it lost when the state dissolved its redevelopment agency. The state claims that Tustin isn't entitled to the money as it didn't formally loan it to its RDA and instead covered expenses and signed agreements to pay them back. However, Tustin points to other cases that have rejected the state's position, including a decision in favor of Watsonville which the state is currently appealing. AEG Pulls Plug on Downtown L.A. Farmers Field  Farmers Field football stadium, proposed on the site of the Los Angeles Convention Center by sports and entertainment giant AEG, is officially defunct. The company will not seek an extension to its development deal with the city, and it is no longer in talks with the NFL. Proposed in 2010, Farmers Field had been the frontrunner among all L.A.-area stadium proposals. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti reportedly still supports the proposal, but AEG has indicated that it is turning its attention to other projects.  Banning Ranch Landowner, Coastal Commission Reach Agreement   Ending a long-running conflict between the main landowner of the Banning Ranch, a parcel of land near Newport Beach, and the California Coastal Commission reached a settlement wherein the ranch will end vegetation removal and oil-well operations condemned by the agency. The ranch had been removing native plants from its property without permission from the Coastal Commission, according to a report by the commission. It also drilled 17 oil wells without Coastal permission, which the commission disputed because of the 1976 Coastal Act that made permits a required step for coastal drilling. The ranch had contended that the South Coast Conservation Commission had allowed oil companies to drill a certain number of wells without a permit in 1973, thus exempting them from the 1976 act. The settlement ended the debate, though the ranch's owner did not admit fault.

A couple of weeks ago, CP&DR reported on two land use measures on local ballots in California related to oil drilling – one in Hermosa Beach that would have allowed it, which failed, and one in La Habra Heights that would have restricted it, which also failed. We dutifully recorded it  as a split decision, but I think the biggest news isn't how these ballot measures turned out. The biggest news is that oil drilling is back on the ballot in California at all. The Santa Barbara oil spill was the event that birthed the modern environmental movement. But it's been 30 years since we've seen much ballot activity related to oil.  Now that the fracking boom has hit California, local anti-oil activists are increasingly pushing to get fracking bans passed – and place broader oil-related measures on local ballots. And it's clear that the oil industry is willing to spend enormous sums of money to try to influence these local elections. The oil industry spent $400,000 on the La Habra Heights measure in an election that drew 1,800 voters. Last fall, the oil industry spent $7 million to successfully defeat a fracking ban in Santa Barbara County. (Bans in San Benito and Mendocino Counties passed .) In Hermosa Beach, pro-oil groups spent 10 times as much as anti-oil groups, even though the anti-oil side won.  It's sometimes easy to forget that much of California's early wealth was based on oil. The state was the No. 1 oil-producing state in the nation, off and on, between 1900 and 1930. The state pumped 30% of the nation's oil in the 1920, setting up a speculation boom documented entertainingly in The Great Los Angeles Oil Swindle , written by San Francisco State historian Julies Tygiel. Los Angeles in particular was dotted with oil wells throughout the entire first half of the 20th Century. California oil fortunes have served as the basis for any number of books and movies; the Doheny oil fortune was fictionalized, for example, in both Raymond Chandler's novel The Big Sleep (Chandler worked in the oil industry during the "oil swindle" days depicted by Tygiel) and Paul Thomas Anderson's movie There Will Be Blood .  Offshore oil production in the Santa Barbara Channel didn't begin until the 1950s, and only 15 years later the Santa Barbara oil spill triggered the modern environmental movement. No single event was more instrumental in the stimulating passage of CEQA.   And it wasn't long before CEQA began to affect oil production in California. One of the earliest and most important CEQA cases – cited in an appellate ruling I read today – was N o Oil Inc v. City of Los Angeles , 13 Cal.3d 68 , decided in 1974. In a California Supreme Court ruling written by legendary Justice Matthew Tobriner, the No Oil case established two important principles under CEQA: First, that a lead agency must make a determination under CEQA about a project's environmental impact before the agency can approve the project. No Oil 's ruling in this regard was invoked as recently as February, when the Third District Court of Appeal ruled that the City of Sacramento did not violate this rule in approving a new downtown basketball arena.  And second, it lowered the bar for when an environmental impact report should be prepared – specifically, it established that an EIR should be prepared when there is "some substantial evidence that the project may have a significant effect". The court rejected the trial court's conclusion that an EIR should be prepared only when "there is a reasonable possibility that the project will have a momentous or important effect of a permanent or long enduring nature". No Oil also helped launch the careers of a number of important environmental lawyers in California who worked on the case, including Mary Nichols (currently the chair of the Air Resources Board), Carlyle Hall, and Jan Chatten (now Jan Chatten-Brown). On the other side of the case, representing Occidential Petroleum, the team included Bela Lugosi Jr.  California oil protection peaked in 1983 and declined steadily until last year, when it was up for the first time in 30 years. Subsequently public support for oil drilling in the state waned and environmental laws made it more expensive. Drilling continued apace in Kern County and, while tough regulation made it more expensive to build new oil facilities, the oil companies nevertheless found it worthwhile to expand and update the rigs and support facilities in the Santa Barbara Channel. This increased interest in Channel drilling – and the increased shipment of oil into California from other locations -- led to the next set of land-use ballot measures dealing with oil. In the 1980s, several coastal jurisdictions passed initiatives that banned the construction of onshore oil facilities, including San Francisco and Morro Bay. These measures were widely reported as part of the boom in ballot-box zoning at the time – I'd provide a link to CP&DR 's coverage back then but none of it is online – and the courts blocked attempts by local jurisdictions to ban drilling in the neighboring waters. But the oil ballot measures died after about 1986 – until last year. The price of oil has dropped from $100 to $40 since last summer, so it's not clear whether California's latest oil boom will continue much longer. But given the fact that – because of fracking and other reasons – the United States is again the world's leading energy producer, it's likely that oil companies will continue to ramp up drilling in California. And given the fact that the state's policies are strongly anti-fossil fuel – witness both the push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase the use of alternative energy -- it's likely that localities around the state will continue to resist.

The Strategic Growth Council has  given the green light  to 54 potential projects to prepare full applications for funding under the newly created Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program. The 54 projects are seeking $301 million in funding -- about 2 1/2 times as much as the $120 million program has to dole out. Final applications must be completed by April 20 and SGC plans to select the winners by July. Only the 54 applicants on the finalists' list will be given access to the online application. Of the 54 applications going forward, 44 (worth $235 million) have affordable housing setasides and 37 (worth $229 million) are located in disadvantaged Census tracts -- the definition of which was the subject of considerable debate last year. The finalists represent a diverse array of communities in 22 counties. Geographically, the biggest winner in the finalists' round was the Bay Area, which got the green light to apply for about 40% of the statewide pie (21 of 54 projects and $138 million out of $301 million). By contrast, the SCAG (Southern California Association of Governments) region, with more than twice the population as the Bay Area, got the green light to apply for about 20% of the pie (12 projects and $52 million). On the face of it, the county-level winner was Los Angeles County, with 10 projects worth $38 million moving forward. (Outlying SCAG counties did poorly in comparison.) But maybe the biggest county-level winner was Alameda County. With 15% of L.A. County's population, Alameda got the green light for eight projects worth $42 million. The biggest winner among developers was Meta Housing  of Los Angeles, which got the green light to move forward with eight projects worth $22 million -- four in L.A., three in the Bay Area, and one in Yolo County. No other developer got the green light for more than two projects. BRIDGE Housing, SANDAG, and Chelsea each got the green light on two applications, with a total value of between $13 million and $15 million in each case. There is a $15 million limit on awards to individual developers. SGC  received 147 concept proposals by last month's deadline. Those proposals requested a total of $760 million in funding. Fifty-four of those projects have been selected to submit full proposals.  They are collectively requesting $301 million, meaning that rough 40 percent of projects stand to be funded once grants are awarded.  Many of these projects are competing for subsets of funds set aside for disadvantaged communities and for affordable housing. The AHSC application process was discussed at a series of workshops in February. See CP&DR coverage .

The Third District Court of Appeal has ruled that two "re-entry agreements" between Sonoma County and its former redevelopment agency are valid under the redevelopment wind-down law. The case marks the second time this year that the Third District has upheld re-entry agreements, suggesting that local governments are beginning to get the upper hand against the state Department of Finance in post-redevelopment litigation. The case involves the county's desire to retain $14 million in tax-increment funds for two projects: street and sidewalk upgrades on Highway 12 north of Sonoma, and a mixed-use project on the site of an abandoned shopping center in the Roseland neighborhood of Santa Rosa.  As with the other recent case from Emeryville , the case turned in part on whether AB 1484, a 2012 law which eliminated re-entry agreements, should somehow be used to invalidate reentry agreements made before the law took effect. In addition, DOF made a series of narrow legal arguments that the Third District did not buy. Acting as successor agency, Sonoma County received permission in March 2012 from its oversight board to move forward with the two projects via "re-entry" agreements. The county then included the two projects in the successor agency's Recognized Obligation Payment Schedule, or ROPS, for the periods of March-June 2012, July-December 2012, and January-June 2013. After DOF disallowed the two projects for the third time, Sonoma County sued. In disallowing the two projects from the January-June 2013 ROPS, DOF argued that, although oversights could approve a reentry agreement, a particular interpretation of the AB 1x 26 – referred to by the appellate court as the "Great Dissolution" law – did not permit reentry agreements between a successor agency and its equivalent former redevelopment agency.  On appeal, DOF argued that the express prohibition on reentry agreements contained in AB 1484 (which took effect in June 2012) suggested that such agreements were contrary to the legislative intent of AB 1x 26 (which took effect in February 2012) and therefore the agreements should be invalidated.  Writing for the Third District panel, Justice M. Kathleen Butz wrote: "This type of ‘legislative spirit' interpretation is not well taken." She added: "The 2011 version of (Health & Safety Code) sections 34178, subdivision (a) and 34180, subdivision (h) …  unambiguously authorized a successor agency to request approval of a reentry agreement, and an oversight board to grant the request. Under the well-established interpretive principle just cited, this express grant of authority cannot simply be negated through resort to the spirit of the Great Dissolution law."  The Third District also rejected a series of narrower issues, including: -- DOF's argument that the oversight board could not approve Sonoma County actions that were not authorized for oversight boards. -- The fact that Health & Safety Code Section 34171 as amended by AB 1x 26 did not include reentry agreements in the definition of enforceable obligations or that Sections 34178 and 34180 did not include language saying that they be used "notwithstanding" the language in 34171. One deals with oversight boards; the others with successor agencies. -- As in the Emeryville case, DOF's argument that AB 1484 should be applied retroactively. In concurring and dissenting opinion, Justice Louis Mauro made a technical distinction about the nature of the obligations upheld in both cases. He wrote: "To the extent the majority opinion in this case and the opinion in City of Emeryville suggest that reentered agreements must be continuing obligations rather than new obligations, I disagree. The reentered agreements in this case are new obligations because the original agreements between the redevelopment agency and the County of Sonoma were invalidated by law." The Case:  County of Sonoma v. Cohen , No. C075120 The Lawyers: For State of California (Michael Cohen, DOF Director), defendant-appellant: Deputy Attorneys General Mark Beckington  (Mark.Beckington@doj.ca.gov) and George Waters (Waters@doj.ca.gov) For County of Sonoma, plaintiff-respondent:  Juliet E. Cox, Goldfarb & Lipman (cox@goldfarblipman.com) and Steven S. Shupe, Deputy County Counsel (sshupe@sonoma-county.org)

The California Supreme Court has accepted Cleveland National Forest Association v. SANDAG , the controversial case that raises the question of whether a governor's executive order must be taken into consideration in CEQA analysis. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court let stand an appellate court ruling striking down San Diego County's climate action plan, meaning the county will now have to set strict greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for itself as it had promised to do in its General Plan. In taking the SANDAG case, the Supreme Court limited its review to that one narrow -- but extremely important and controversial -- issue: Whether the environmental impact report for SANDAG's regional transportation plan must include an analysis of consistency with Executive Order S-3-05, which calls for an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. In a split ruling in November  here=">here"> , the Fourth District Court of Appeal concluded that t he executive order must be taken into consideration in the EIR.  SANDAG has argued that it complied with state law because the RTP (which also serves as the sustainable communities strategy under SB 375) met the 2020 GHG emissions reduction target contained in AB 32, the state's climate change law, even though the RTP showed an increase in emissions after that. The environmentalist plaintiffs in the case argued that Schwarzenegger's executive order constitutes the state's climate change policy and therefore must be taken into consideration in the EIR. By a 2-1 vote, the Fourth District agreed with the environmentalists.  The Fourth District also covered a number of other issues , but the Supreme Court did not include them in its review. In a commentary, CP&DR  Publisher Bill Fulton has argued that the Fourth District's ruling gives the governor too much power by permitting him to create state policy unilaterally through executive orders.

The new Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation (SALC) program only has $5 million so far, but land preservation and farm groups greeted approval of its opening guidelines with enthusiasm � especially given the fact that the Williamson Act was defunded in 2009. The California Climate and Agriculture Network (CalCAN) gushed : "Applause erupted yesterday in response to the unanimous vote of the Strategic Growth Council..." Then it quoted Natural Resources Secretary and SGC member John Laird: "All speakers essentially said yes to the program, only sooner and bigger." Ag preservation optimists are looking past that opening $5 million at the strong possibility that SALC has permanent dibs on 1% of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which is expected to swell from new cap-and-trade auction proceeds. SALC is also one of the few fresh moves available to a state government that in recent years has run short of ways to either buy or mandate agricultural land preservation. Traditionally, the Williamson Act was the state's major ag preservation program. Created in 1965, the Williamson Act program fosters agreements in which landowners agree to continue agricultural uses for fixed periods in exchange for reduced property taxes. In turn, the state backfilled lost property taxes to the counties. But the program was already losing effectiveness when it lost state funding in 2009. As Napa County Planning Director David Morrison noted, rising land prices, and the advantage of low Prop 13 assessments for long-term owners, have outgrown the modest tax breaks the Williamson Act can offer.  From 1972 until 2009 , the state payments to counties averaged $23.3 million per year and for some rural counties became an important source of unrestricted funds. Without subvention payments, counties have to decide again each year whether to keep up the program while carrying the cost of carrying the whole tax expenditure themselves. The program is still popular in agricultural areas, so most counties have stayed with it, but it is doing little in the urban peripheries where conversion to urban use is most likely. Last year, Assemblymenber Susan Eggman, D-Stockton, got little traction for two bills that would have used regulatory mandates to slow agricultural land conversion. AB 823 would have required local lead agencies to require mitigation easements or in-lieu payments from developers proposing to convert ag land. It hit resistance from the building industry, business groups, water and utility districts, and the California State Association of Counties (CSAC). AB 1961 , which also failed, would have required the Governor's Office of Planning and Research (OPR) to add agricultural land preservation rules to its general plan guidelines. CSAC opposed AB 823 on local control grounds and opposed AB 1961 as an unreimbursed mandate. CSAC lobbyist Karen Keene said, "The policy we typically voice at hearings is supporting policies that preserve ag land but when the state is considering new policies affecting ag land preservation that they really should consider the individual plans of the counties." Where the money is To see the trouble with ag preservation, Ed Thompson said to look at the empty circles around the cities. Thompson, who is the American Farmland Trust's director for California, meant the detailed maps that the state Department of Conservation (DOC) prepares to show lands contracted under the Williamson Act. Contracted areas are thick in the Central Valley agribusiness heartland: prime agricultural lands under 9- to 10-year contracts marked in green, and "Farmland Security Zone" properties under 18-to-20-year contracts, marked in yellow. "Non-prime" protected rangelands appear in brown along the hot dry slopes of inland foothills.  But in much of California's core farming country, when there's a pink spot of "Urban and Built-Up Land," it's surrounded by a thinned-out welt of bare space. (Zoom in on this mid-density statewide map to see the effect.) Contracts are likewise patchy in coastal farming areas near urban development. The Salinas Valley is an urgently cited example.  John Lowrie, the DOC Assistant Director who heads the Division of Land Use Protection administering the Williamson Act program, knew that Thompson tells people to look at the circles: "Ed likes to do that. I have no reason to disagree with his analysis." The closer you get to metro areas in the Central Valley, "the less prevalent you will find Williamson Act contracted land on the periphery." The reason is opportunity cost where development potential raises land prices. Further, Morrison said a lot of land on urban peripheries is optioned or owned by developers thinking 30 to 50 years ahead. Meanwhile, California continues to lose agricultural land every year. Thompson put the figure at 38,000 acres a year. Some estimates pick 30,000. Either way, a lot.  Counties trudging on This is what Natural Resources Secretary John Laird has meant by saying, repeatedly, that the Williamson Act is "hanging by a thread." While it may not be about to drop all at once, it's fraying.  Lowrie said counties and landowners have not dropped out of the program as quickly as some feared at first. Only Imperial County has withdrawn from the program fully. Several counties stopped entering new contracts but former Sonoma County Planning Director Pete Parkinson wrote that some of those "have started up again" and "home-grown support will likely sustain the program." (Both Parkinson and Morrison commented at the suggestion of CSAC's Keene.) The Department of Conservation's 2012 status report on Williamson Act said local governments claimed $71.71 million in unpaid subvention payments during 2010 and 2011. (A March 3, 2010 legislative hearing documented the state of the program then.) Because some counties have not reported to DOC, it's unclear how much contracted acreage is gone. Between 2008 and 2011, counties that continued to report lost 24,479 acres.  The Legislature has made a few adjustments to keep landowners interested.  In 2011 counties got the option to set contract durations at nine and 18 years instead of 10 years for standard contracts and 20 for Farmland Security Zones. Last year SB 1353 extended this option past 2016. By then 11 counties had taken the 9/18 choice. Last year the Legislature also passed Eggman's AB 2241 , which allows owners of lower-quality agricultural land to convert Williamson Act contracts to solar-use easements for photovoltaic panels. AB 551 , by Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, added "urban agriculture incentive zones" to the Act's possibilities. 'Hanging by a thread' and what comes next Secretary Laird's most recent "hanging by a thread" speeches about the Williamson Act were comments at the SGC meetings in the context of the new SALC program's design. He came back to the phrase on June 3 and July 10 and again on October 6 . (He said it bef ore that elsewhere too.)  He hinted at looking for ways to connect the old program to the new one. In July he said: "The Williamson Act that we have, as I keep saying, is hanging by a thread, and we have to figure out what is coming next in terms of it morphing, it continuing, a new thing being put in its place." He said it served the cap-and-trade goal of GHG emissions reduction to prevent conversion of prime agricultural land to urban use, "And because counties are making their decisions about continuing to participate, time is really important."  It was also last July he said, "I also don't want to sit at any budget hearings next spring without having done something significant on this."  SALC prospects The focus for now is on SALC, and the $5 million in its 2014-15 budget. Of that, $1 million goes to grants for local public-private planning, and the rest to buy easements on "strategically located, highly productive, and critically threatened agricultural land." Morrison said good farmland in Yolo County a year ago cost $15,000 an acre, while a high-quality Napa vineyard acre could cost $400,000. "So, four million dollars may get you 200 acres? It's an eyedrop." Except, that eyedrop could become a significant funding stream.  SALC's funding flows from last summer's SB 862 budget bill allocating cap-and-trade auction proceeds to the SGC-administered Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) program. AHSC received $130 million for 2014-15 but  SB 862 promised it 20% of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund in each subsequent year. The 2015-16 state budget proposa l presumes AHSC's 20% in the coming year will be $202 million. Lowrie said the $5 million was an artifact of early discussions in which the total AHSC budget was to have been $100 million, of which SALC would receive 5%. For the coming year, he said $10 million was being discussed as SALC's share -- again about 5% of AHSC's total. That works out to dibs on 1% of the growing cap-and-trade fund.  SALC builds on the Department of Conservation's existing California Farmland Conservancy Program (DOC-CFCP). That program already uses Proposition 84 bond money to help nonprofits buy agricultural easements and is working to mitigate ag land effects of the High-Speed Rail line. Lowrie said frequent references to DOC-CFCP in an early draft of the SALC guideline s were dropped to avoid "confusion" but so much has in fact been borrowed from existing practices that "sometimes it's confusing for us too."  To Lowrie the major differences between the two programs are SALC's primary statutory goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and its effort to choose the most urgent needs. He said SALC emphasized local control but he named some areas of focus: "There's a great deal of effort and thought" going into balancing farming and urban needs in the Salinas, Santa Maria and Pajaro Valleys, he said. Likewise, he said, the San Joaquin Valley, Sonoma and Mendocino. Other directions Without major state spending, and with state mandates limited, other ag land preservation approaches involve mitigation requirements, economic agreements among local players or outright land use restrictions. Lowrie said the Department of Conservation had become "really curious" about data on local ag land conservation measures such as mitigation requirements and growth ordinances. He said: "We're starting to see some real progress in thoughtfully defining growth boundaries for cities," including in Tulare County and the San Joaquin Valley. He said the efforts were to "start to shape those growth boundaries accurately" where some boundaries "were larger than they needed to be to accommodate the anticipated growth" over the next 40-50 years. Thompson said local agency formation commissions (LAFCOs) contributed to sprawl if they approved unnecessarily large spheres of influence � though Parkinson suggested that "these bloated spheres were approved because they were consistent with� sprawl-based general plans," a situation which might not recur. While Thompson focused on the value of land that mitigation easements could protect, Morrison said with one acre's mitigation for one acre of development, "you by definition lose 50% of your farmland."  Discussing relatively prosperous Napa, Sonoma and Yolo Counties, Morrison said outright voter-controlled growth restrictions and sharp growth boundaries work where they are supported by local political wil. In Yolo County, where his work included the county Climate Action Plan , he described a mixed approach: development boundaries under the general plan, strategic purchases of conservation easements to guide growth, and urban limit lines fixed by popular vote. He said Solano County uses urban growth buffers and "very aggressive city-county agreements" limiting development to cities but sharing tax revenue with counties. Other recent recommendations on ag land preservation include a project involving Thompson, the "Greenprint: State of the Valley" report by the San Joaquin Valley Greenprint Steering Committee, and a "call to action" issued in July 2014 by the California Roundtable on Agriculture and the Environment.

Local voters in California gave oil a split decision on Tuesday. Voters in La Habra Heights shot down an anti-fracking ballot measure, while voters in Hermosa Beach rejected a ballot measure that would have permitted E&B Natural Resources to construct 34 onshore wells in the city. Meanwhile, Redondo Beach voters rejected a development plan that would have included razing the power plant that has long occupied a critical spot near the beach. In La Habra Heights, voters rejected Measure A , the anti-fracking initiative by 60%-40%. The initiative would have prohibited new oil drilling, halted reactivation of old wells, and specifically prohibited fracking. It was placed on the ballot in large part to block Matrix Oil's plan to drill on an 18-acre site owned by the Southern California Gas Co. Californians for Energy Independence, a pro-oil PAC, spent $400,000 to defeat the measure in the city of 5,300 residents Meanwhile, in Hermosa Beach, E&B had proposed amending the general plan and approving a development agreement to approve the drilling of 34 wells. But the measure went down 79%-21% . Almost 5,000 voters turned out -- a large number for a spring election run by the city, not the county elections office, in a city of 19,000 people. Meanwhile, the defeat of AES's development plan in Redondo Beach is the latest in a long series of battles over new development and the future of the power plant in Redondo Beach. As an incentive to voters to support the development, AES promised to tear down the power plant . The project would have include 800 units of residential, a hotel, and a park. However, residents voted the development down by 52%-48%. Less than two years ago, voters went the other way , rejecting a plan to phase out the AES plant.

By a 5-2 vote, the California Supreme Court has issued a complex ruling that tends to support CEQA exemption for a large house in  Berkeley Hillside Preservation v. City of Berkeley (Logan) .  Monday's opinion is largely favorable to computer industry pioneer Mitch Kapor, founder of the  Lotus software company, and Freada Kapor-Klein, who have been trying since 2009 to build a large house in the Berkeley hills. Their proposed single-family house and garage together would measure nearly 10,000 square feet, on a lot that is itself much larger, but that is situated on a steep slope reached by a small road. Berkeley applied two categorical exemptions from CEQA to the project: single-family and infill. Project opponents argued that the house was so big that it presented "unusual circumstances" and should be denied the safe harbor of a categorical exemption. Among other things, the issuance of the ruling will permit another CEQA "unusual circumstances" Supreme Court case to move forward. Writing for the majority, Justice Ming Chin endorsed a "two-step" approach to the "unusual circumstances" question. Chin wrote that when a lead agency decides a project is eligible for a categorical exemption from CEQA review, it must review the record for "unusual circumstances." It held that when the agency decides if such circumstances exist, it acts as "finder of fact", so any court reviewing that determination must let it stand if there is "substantial evidence" for its validity.  However, the majority held that once the lead agency takes the first step of finding "unusual circumstances", it must take a second step calling for an analysis more receptive to environmental and neighborhood challengers. For projects that have already been found to present "unusual circumstances", the court found the categorical exemption can be defeated by a "fair argument" that supports a reasonable possibility that significant environmental effects will result from the "unusual circumstances." It held the agency decision "is reviewed to determine whether the agency, in applying the fair argument standard, 'proceeded in manner required by law'."  Justice Goodwin Liu filed a lengthy concurrence, joined by Justice Kathryn Werdegar. Liu disputed the majority's procedural view of "unusual circumstances" and complained of "the court's novel and unnecessarily complicated approach to the standard of review." Liu's 18-page concurrence, taking positions sympathetic to appellants, debated the majority opinion point by point on what qualifies as "unusual" and why it matters.  The majority opinion remanded the case back to the First District Court of Appeal for further consideration. In doing so it cautioned the appellate court to show appropriate deference to the city's discretion, so that it should "order preparation of an EIR only if, under the circumstances, the City would lack discretion to apply another exemption or to issue a negative declaration, mitigated or otherwise." The court wrote: "to establish the unusual circumstances exception, it is not enough for a challenger merely to provide substantial evidence that the project may have a significant effect on the environment, because that is the inquiry CEQA requires absent an exemption... Such a showing is inadequate to overcome the Secretary's determination that the typical effects of a project within an exempt class are not significant for CEQA purposes. On the other hand, evidence that the project will have a significant effect does tend to prove that some circumstance of the project is unusual."  The project, planned for Rose Street in Berkeley, would place a 6,478-square-foot house on a 3,394-square-foot ten-car garage, on a steeply sloped 29,714-square-foot lot. The Berkeley Zoning Adjustment Board approved the project based on the infill and single-family categorical exemptions. On appeal by objecting neighbors, the City Council approved the project in April 2010 -- over arguments that an exception existed to the categorical exemption, including analyses by an expert critic, geotechnical engineer Lawrence Karp. The trial court sided with the City Council, supporting the project. An appeal followed. In 2011 the First District Court of Appeal refused requests that it block the demolition of an existing cottage and the start of construction.  The First District Court of Appeal gave appellants their first victory in February 2012  (the opinion has since been modified ). The opinion followed one of the earliest CEQA court rulings, Wildlife Alive v. Chickering (1976) 18 Cal.3d 190, to find that "where there is substantial evidence that proposed activity may have an effect on the environment, an agency is precluded from applying a categorical exemption" (emphasis in original). It found that the rule without the need for an independent finding that an "unusual circumstance" existed because "the fact that proposed activity may have an effect on the environment is itself an unusual circumstance." The appellate court then said challengers, must only show "substantial evidence of a fair argument of a significant environmental impact". In contrast to the appellate court ruling, Justice Chin's opinion refused to rely on Wildlife Alive , saying that case was decided before the "unusual circumstances" rule was written, the discussion cited by appellants was "hypothetical" and "summary", and its holdings were constrained by a 1993 statute, Sec. 21083.1, instructing courts not to interpret CEQA laws or guidelines to require new requirements beyond those "explicitly stated". After a detailed history of the "fair argument" standard, the court majority wrote that its use for the second step of the analysis was supported by No Oil, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles (1974) 13 Cal.3d 68, which requires an EIR when a project "may have a significant effect on the environment."  Both the majority and concurrence agreed in doubting the part of appellants' case based on predictions by an expert critic, geotechnical engineer Lawrence Karp. The majority rejected Karp's vivid insistence on "the probability of seismic lurching of the oversteepened side-hill fills." This was in part because the court viewed the record as showing no "side-hill fill" would be involved in the project as approved. But more fundamentally the court rejected Karp's opinion because he was predicting a consequence too many moves ahead of the current proposal. In a phrase that Liu also quoted and accepted in his concurrence, the majority wrote: "a finding of environmental impacts must be based on the proposed project as actually approved and may not be based on unapproved activities that opponents assert will be necessary because the project, as approved, cannot be built." The majority reasoned that if further earthworks turn out to be needed, they will require further approvals whose affects can be addressed as of the new application. Attorney Susan Brandt-Hawley, who argued the case for the plaintiffs and appellants, wrote in response to queries on this week's opinion: "On remand under the direction of the opinion we are optimistic that we will prevail on our record. In light of the concurring opinion we plan to seek rehearing since the case will set statewide precedent. Yes, we are glad the Court rejected the City's request to abandon the fair argument standard." She wrote: "the rehearing petition will focus on the categorical exemption exception in Guideline section 15300.2(c)," referring to the core unusual-circumstances regulation: "A categorical exemption shall not be used for an activity where there is a reasonable possibility that the activity will have a significant effect on the environment due to unusual circumstances." The court majority included two justices who are no longer on the California Supreme Court: Justice Marvin Baxter, who was authorized by a special order to remain on the case past his January retirement, and Presiding Justice Roger W. Boren of the Second District Court of Appeal, who sat as assigned justice pro tempore. Justices Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar and Leondra Kruger had not yet taken office as of the oral argument and their names do not appear on the opinions. The high court had deferred briefing on a second "unusual circumstances" case until after its own Berkeley Hillside decision. With that ruling completed, briefing can commence on  Citizens for Environmental Responsibility v. State of California ex rel. 14th District Agricultural Association . That case concerns an environmental review petition brought by opponents of resuming rodeo events at the Santa Cruz County fairgrounds. The petitioners appear to oppose rodeos in part on moral and animal-welfare grounds, but their challenge highlights an alleged risk of manure contamination to nearby Salsipuedes Creek, and to what the Third District state appellate court summarized as "proximity to residential and agricultural land, or a public safety risk of bull riding." The Third District's opinion, issued last March , upheld a Class 23 categorical exemption for "normal operations of existing facilities for public gatherings." The opinion adopted the "two-step" approach of considering first whether unusual circumstances exist, and only then whether they result in environmental effects. It reasoned that although a rodeo had not been held at that fairgrounds for many years, other equestrian and livestock events were held there regularly, with similar likely environmental effects. It rejected a contention that the rodeo proponents' adoption of a Manure Management Plan as "in effect acknowledging potential environmental effects" sufficiently to justify full environmental review.  Matt Dixon assisted with this report.

I don't like the idea of building an NFL stadium, presumably for the relocated St. Louis Rams, in Inglewood. You know who really doesn't like he idea? Anschutz Entertainment Group. But do you know who does like it? ISIS. Or al-Qaeda. Or the Taliban. I'm not really sure, but, apparently, one of those groups hates the stadium so much that they're going to want to blow it up. We can imagine why an extremist terrorist group wouldn't like an NFL stadium. Western decadence and all. AEG's position is more complicated. AEG doesn't want the stadium built because it cares. You see, AEG is worried for the stadium. Worried that one of those groups will make it a target. They don't want to see Rams owner Stan Kroenke spend a billion or so of his hard-earned dollars only for his pride and joy to suffer a terrorist attack.AEG's concerns came out in a report published last week on the security of the potential Inglewood stadium. Co-authored by Tom Ridge, the former DIrector of Homeland Security, the report warns that the Inglewood stadium would indeed be a ripe target for terrorism. It sits almost directly under the flight path of LAX and therefore is only a tip of the yoke away from tragedy. Alternatively, terrorists with incredible weaponry and impeccable timing might try to shoot down an otherwise innocent plane so that the debris crashes into the stands. Ridge told the Los Angeles Times that the stadium has "a significant risk profile with the potential to produce consequences that will not only the impact the airport and region, but global interests." Interestingly, this report wasn't commissioned by Kroenke or by a government agency. (The FAA has signed off on the plan.) It wasn't, as far as I know, commissioned by Al Qaeda either. It was commissioned by � and this is odd! � AEG.  For everyone who lives outside of Los Angeles, and for everyone in Los Angeles who lives under a rock, AEG is the biggest player in the city's live entertainment industry. It owns Staples Center, the Kings hockey team, and the Nokia Theater. It also holds a ton of real estate and is credited with driving the revival of downtown Los Angeles.  AEG has one other little project on the drawing board. What might that be, you ask? Could it be�.a football stadium? No, it's not a stadium. OK, you got me. It's a stadium!  AEG's plans for the already christened but utterly nonexistent Farmers Field was once the frontrunner among proposed venues that are vying for an NFL team. Now it has serious competition, from both Inglewood and  a possible Chargers-Raiders partnership in Carson. To be honest, I'm sick of writing about, and even sicker of thinking about, the six-stadium circus that is the NFL's non-plan to return to L.A. But, it's the story that will not die.  Now that AEG's desperation is in full swing, what sort of altruism will we see from them next? Maybe they'll draw up plays for the Anaheim Ducks. Maybe they'll hire an interior decorator for the Forum. Maybe they'll give Sacramento advice on its stadium. Maybe they'll put up billboards with disturbingly banal inspirational sayings, for all the word to see. (Actually, they already do that last one .) But let's stick to the matter at hand. It's just so convenient that someone proposes a competing stadium and that someone's biggest, and increasingly most desperate competitor, just happens to produce a report linking that project with Americans' single greatest fear. What terrifies me is that AEG thinks Angelenos are stupid enough to fall for this craven gambit. It's a target because its under the flight path? I'm sorry, but it's not as if the World Trade Center was under the flight path. The whole point of planes is that they can fly. Subways, however, cannot fly. But they too lead to terrorism, at least when you ask their opponents.  If L.A.'s Purple Line is built under Beverly Hills High School, terrorists will, of course, stop the train and blow up the school . (Have you ever tried to blast through a subway tunnel? It's not easy.) Must every major debate be reduced to terrorism? And how much damage are we going to inflict on the public realm in the process? We've seen, and I've written about, this paranoia play so many times before. By all means, cities must take reasonable security measures . But crying wolf over terrorism does grave damage, both to public discourse and to the public realm. In the wake of the LAX shooting, I wrote that the shooting had little to do with the fact that LAX is an airport. Danger is a natural part of living in public. And, fortunately, the dangers of terrorism, even at airports, are unspeakably rare. But when we talk about terrorism so much � as AEG is doing with this latest kerfuffle � the politics of fear casts a pall over our places. What AEG wants is not for public officials to rationally expect a stadium attack. What they want is for every Rams fan to walk through the turnstile thinking, "What if�?" If that happens, it doesn't mean the terrorists have one. It means AEG has won.  Really, though, we all lose. if the Inglewood stadium would be a target, then surely Staples Center, Dodger Stadium, and every other public and semi-public place not only in America but also in Los Angeles are already targets. The great thing is, though, they're still standing. Life goes on. We only need to enjoy it.  Of course, American cities do face real dangers. Terrorism is one of them. But they also face the danger of pollution. They face the danger of automobile collisions and pedestrian deaths. They face the danger of obesity in places that discourage walking. They face the danger of anomie and ennui in places without civic life. Fortunately, they decreasingly face the danger of crime. But poverty, poor schools, and police misconduct persist.  While things are turning around in many cities, public life in the United States remains too stunted as it is. We don't have the plazas or great shopping streets of Europe. We don't have neighborhood pubs like the UK does. We don't have the street markets of Asia. We sit in our cars and, though we used to go to malls, now we sit at home and stroll the aisles of Amazon. As I said, I don't care where or whether a football stadium is built in L.A. And I don't care what ISIS, the Taliban, or Al Qaeda thinks about it (let us hope that all are gone long before the NFL kicks off in L.A.). And I increasingly don't care what AEG thinks about anything. For all the ways that good planning and good development can get disrupted in California, frivolous cries of terrorism should be out of bounds. I care about real, present dangers that face our cities, and so should every planner and developer in California.