New laws that bring back redevelopment in a limited way. The Office of Planning & Research's effort to do away with the traffic "level of service" standard. And whether you can live in California without a car. These are just a few of the most-read stories from California Planning & Development Report in 2014. And now you can check them out again. Here's CP&DR's Top 20 List, in order: Enhanced Infrastructure Financing Districts legislation passes in SB 628 Oakland Eyes New Stadiums to Keep Pro Teams Brown Signs Post-Redevelopment Bill OPR's new traffic draft rethinks congestion Are Millenials Truly Different -- Or Just Poor? LOS to VMT: the arguments have begun Brown Dips Toe Into Redevelopment Revival -- But With Conditions Insight: Having no car and plenty of cars OPR Takes On Level of Service California land use ballot measures: selected results June 3, 2014 election: results on land-use ballot measures Can planners find common ground with Tea Party and property rights activists on means even if they don't agree on ends? Post-Redevelopment Legislation Seeks Direction Hydraulics of homelessness: stormwater challenges are linked to encampments in San Jose Insight: Everyone wants to keep leverage under CEQA Courts and OPR may revise CEQA sooner than the Legislature Insight: What comes next after LOS? Most California locals are tackling climate change -- and using parking reductions to do it CEQA Makes Us Lazy SGC meeting begins to shape the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program

The Second District Court of Appeal has affirmed a lower court ruling in favor of Ventura residents who sued Ventura County over a hospital project, contesting an addendum to the environmental impact report issued 11 years after the original EIR. The court held the Ventura Foothill Neighbors' petition was not time-barred under state law and that a supplemental EIR should have been prepared instead of an addendum to the EIR. The project in question has been completed in the meantime. The county certified an EIR in 1993 to support construction of a five-story ambulatory care center on the grounds of the Ventura County Medical Center, adjacent to a hilly residential neighborhood in Ventura. The EIR said the project would be 72 feet in height; detailed drawings released the following year showed the building would be 88.5 feet in height counting parapets. But the county did nothing more for 11 years – until 2005, when the county proposed moving the project 200 feet north and 160 feet west of the original location. The new project would be 90 feet high including parapets, but the height increase was not mentioned in the addendum's notice of declaration. Although final plans were approved in 2007, residents claim they did not know of the 90-foot height of the revamped project until one of the residents saw a 90-foot construction auger rig on the site in 2008. The residents sued, claiming that the relocated building would be placed on a much higher grade than the original building and that they had not received adequate notice in the addendum of possible additional impacts. Judge Glen M. Reiser, Ventura County's CEQA judge, declined to issue a preliminary injunction halting construction of the project. However, he rejected the county's claim that the lawsuit was time-barred and eventually granted a peremptory writ of mandate in favor of the neighbors. The project continued in the meantime. The Second District panel in Ventura (Division Six) affirmed Reiser's ruling. "At oral argument appellants' counsel said that even if County had doubled the height of the Clinic, once the 30-day period elapsed any challenge to its action would still be time-barred," wrote Justice Kenneth Yegan for the unanimous panel. "This is nonsense. We agree with the trial court that the 30-day statute of limitations is inapplicable because County did not provide notice to the public of the increase in the Clinic's height." The case is Ventura Foothill Neighbors v. County of Ventura . The author served on the Ventura City Council from 2003 to 2011.

California's mandates pressing large urban regions to reduce vehicle travel are tough. They possibly just got tougher with a recent San Diego appellate court ruling. But spare a thought for the planners of the upper San Joaquin Valley. They're struggling to apply smart-growth principles in places not known for lavish public budgeting or love of urban density. They must all meet the same greenhouse gas emissions reduction standard – easier for some than for others. And now they're facing a suit, Sierra Club v. Merced County Association of Governments (MCAG ) (Merced County Superior Court Case No. CVM 019664) that has lawyers and allegations in common with the much-noted San Diego case, Cleveland National Forest Foundation v. SANDAG . The San Diego region's 2011 transportation plan – the one that was slapped hard in a recent Fourth District appellate ruling – actually met its state-imposed goals for reducing per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cars and light trucks as of 2020 and 2035. The ruling called for the environmental impact review (EIR) to look beyond those numbers, toward more possibilities for environmental improvement. If upheld by the State Supreme Court (SANDAG's board has voted to seek review of the ruling), it could limit lead agency discretion in preparing EIRs and impose more pressure to work toward deeper GHG reductions in planning years after 2035. Merced and Madera Counties should be so lucky. Out of California's 18 Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), all but the Shasta and San Luis Obispo regions have adopted Regional Transportation Plans/Sustainable Communities Strategies (RTP/SCSs) as required under SB 375 . And of the 16 adopted plans, only Merced's and Madera's do not fully meet the per capita GHG reduction targets that the state Air Resources Board (ARB) set for them in 2010. Merced's plan meets its 2020 target but not its 2035 target. Madera's meets neither. Meanwhile some of the other San Joaquin Valley MPOs, notably Stanislaus and San Joaquin Counties, have managed to adopt RTP/SCS plans that go far beyond the assigned Valley-wide targets: a 5% reduction in 2020 and a 10% reduction in 2035. Missing a target carries no direct penalty, but when an MPO misses a target it must prepare an Alternative Planning Strategy (APS) explaining hypothetically what actions could help meet the target. The CEQA writ petition filed against MCAG in October was brought by attorneys from the environmentalist team that won the SANDAG ruling, including Rachel Hooper and Erin Chalmers of Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP and Kevin Bundy of the Center for Biological Diversity. In echoes of their SANDAG contentions, they alleged the MCAG plan did not call for enough changes in transportation policy, that the EIR failed to analyze and mitigate "the human health risks caused by expanding highway capacity" and that it "fails to analyze the Project's greenhouse gas emissions in light of scientifically relevant long-term climate stabilization targets contained in Executive Order S-3-05 and the AB 32 Scoping Plan." The petitioners also contend the MCAG board erred by adopting a "Scenario B" model that called for moderate density increases, when a Scenario C, calling for greater density, was identified as "the environmentally superior alternative" in the EIR and "MCAG did not adopt this alternative or make any findings as to why it was infeasible." (The RTP/SCS as prepared for the September 25 meeting is here .) The complaint further alleges the analysis improperly used a supplemental rather than a full EIR, relying in part on environmental review work prepared before SB 375 became law. Terry Roberts, manager of the ARB's Sustainable Communities Policy and Planning Section, said at least for 2014 RTPs adopted by the Valley MPOs, with the excecption of Merced, EO S-3-05 wouldn't necessarily be an issue. She did say the Valley MPOs would have to consider the executive order the next time around in their four-year RTP/SCS preparation cycle if the court ruling stands. Roberts said when the ARB has taken up the issue of SB 375 publicly, board members have often expressed a desire for regional RTP/SCS plans to show how GHGs can continue to be reduced beyond 2035. So she said the SANDAG ruling reinforced a previously expressed need to look at continuing emissions reductions beyond 2035. MCAG officials have declined to comment directly on either the SANDAG litigation or their own, but public reports and comments suggest their answering argument would be that they're not bad, they're just drawn that way. In an interview soon after the MCAG plan's adoption in September, Matt Fell, transportation planning manager with MCAG, said when the targets were set in 2010, "the valley didn't have some of the modeling capabilities that we have now." He said some San Joaquin Valley MPOs were able to supply data to the ARB about travel patterns, but MCAG was unable to do so in the same way, so targets were "set somewhat arbitrarily." (The eight San Joaquin MPOs have since upgraded their modeling of travel and land use patterns with grants from the Strategic Growth Council's Model Incentives Grant Program.) During the 2010 target-setting process under SB 375, there was early talk of assigning the San Joaquin Valley MPOs " placeholder targets " of 1% to 7%. The final determination that year assigned each Valley MPO individually to plan for the same per capita GHG reduction targets:  5% below 2005 levels in 2020 and 10% below 2005 levels in 2035. In comments during the ARB's October 2014 meeting on SB 375 target-setting , Roberts referred to the 5%/10% goals as "placeholder targets" as well, saying they "were intended to be revised once transportation modeling improvements were completed and alternative scenario analyses could be provided." At that time she said ARB staff would recommend new Valley targets in 2016 for Board adoption by 2018 – though some Valley administrators at the meeting were asking that target updates be made in the third round of SCS development. Fell said interregional travel issues, especially involving long-distance commutes leading out of the region, tended to create variations in travel as measured from one county to the next. For example, he said 30% of travel in Merced County remained within the county, another 30% began or ended there, and 40% passed through and kept on going. He said if the jobs/housing imbalance persisted or worsened, that could mean more long commuter car trips, hence fewer GHG reductions. With limited revenue for "smart growth" incentives, he suggested MCAG was running out of levers it could pull. Meanwhile Bill Higgins, executive director of CALCOG, advocated for more funding to make changes, and more flexibility: "While a tech worker in Silicon Valley may seek an infill unit within biking distance to her office, employees at Tulare County's dairy farms are likely to opt for a van pool rather than proximity." Executive Director Andy Chesley, of the San Joaquin County MPO, has brought up the possibility of a three-county North Valley model (Merced, Stanislaus and San Joaquin) – an approach that might take more inter-county journeys into account as "local". (See MCAG's September 25 agenda packet) . The report notes that the nine Bay Area counties are held to a single standard as members of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) region, without asking each county to meet the same standard separately, as in the Valley.

For now, the environmentalists have won their lawsuit challenging the San Diego Association of Governments' sustainable communities plan (which is part of SANDAG's regional transportation plan). SANDAG has appealed the ruling to the California Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court takes the case, it will provide the justices with an opportunity to clarify the most important – and, to me, most disturbing – part of the environmentalists' case: The idea that a governor's executive order – in this case, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Executive Order S-3-05 from 2005 – can be viewed as "state policy" and therefore must be considered in a lead agency's analysis under the California Environmental Quality Act. This may seem kind of silly, but given the circumstances it's probably worth reviewing the difference between a statute and an executive order and then walking through how the Court of Appeal came to this conclusion. A statute is a state law, binding on everyone in the state, which has been approved by both houses of the legislature and signed by the governor. The process for adopting a law is laid out in the California Constitution. An executive order is statement issued by the governor directing state agencies in their operations – most often directing them on the question of how to implement statutes. The president also issues executive orders (the most famous one was the Emancipation Proclamation), and the current food fight in Washington over President Obama's independent action on immigration is essentially a fight over whether Obama has the power to issue an executive order telling federal agencies how to implement federal immigration law. Even when executive orders are not explicitly designed to implement law but rather simply provide direction for government operations, obviously they have to abide by the laws on the books. Schwarzenegger's Executive Order S-3-05, however, is breathtaking in its scope – a fact that the environmentalists have taken advantage of in this case. It is written as if it were a law. Citing no state statutes whatsoever, S-3-05 simply states that climate change is a major threat to the future of California and establishes greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets statewide for 2010, 2020, and 2050. (The executive order does allude to other actions taken by the California Air Resources Board to reduce GHGs under the special regulatory power California has under the federal Clean Air Act, which was challenged by the Bush Administration at the time.) The year after EO S-3-05 appeared, AB 32 was adopted and enshrined many of the aspects of the executive order in state law, including the 2020 GHG emissions reduction target. But it did not set a target for 2050 – nor, indeed, for any year beyond 2020. Subsequently, SB 375 directed CARB to establish emissions reduction targets for 2020 and 2035. But SB 375 does not deal with all  emissions – only transportation emissions that can be controlled through the Regional Transportation Plan. CARB subsequently adopted per-capita emissions targets for transportation for each region – not an overall emissions reduction target. So how did an executive order – which under law is a directive guiding state agencies – become the state's climate policy, according to environmental lawyers and the Fourth District Court of Appeal? Through the wording of the legislative intent in SB 32. According to Presiding Justice Judith McConnell, who wrote the majority opinion , that wording states the following: The legislature intends for the emissions limits to continue past 2020 to maintain and further reduce emissions. The legislature intends for the emissions limits to work in concert with other environmental laws rather than trump any of them. The legislature intends that the state Climate Action Team created by EO S-3-05 continue in its role as coordinator of state climate policy. (This is the only explicit mention of EO S-3-05 in SB 32.) Justice McConnell bought the environmentalists' argument that these statements of legislative intent "effectively endorsed the Executive Order and its overarching goal of ongoing greenhouse gas emissions reduction as state climate policy." She also noted that SB 375 called upon CARB to adopt 2035 targets for the transportation sector and revisit the targets every few years through 2050. McConnell didn't say that SANDAG actually had to meet the 2050 target, but she did say that because EO S-3-05 is state policy, the environmental impact report must analyze why SANDAG is not meeting the target. I think this is a pretty big leap. If I were a state legislator charged with voting on statutes, I'd feel cut out. If I were still a local elected official charged with implementing state policies, I'd wonder why I had to follow the directives of the governor rather than making him get laws passed by the legislature first. In her dissent in the SANDAG case, Justice Patricia Benke wrote bluntly: " he fact that the Legislature has enacted environmental legislation in recognition of the Executive Order's goals does not bestow on the Executive Order any more power than it had before the Legislature acted." She called McConnell's ruling "judicial fiat". I usually reserve this space for analysis rather than to express a strong opinion, but in this case I'm going to depart from my customary practice. I agree with Justice Benke and disagree with Justice McConnell. You can see the danger embedded in the McConnell ruling: A governor of either party with a sweeping frame of mind could issue an executive order on almost any topic and it would have to be considered – not just in the CEQA context but possibly more broadly as well – as state policy. It's also worth noting that Justice McConnell's majority opinion is – in my opinion, at least – tortured in its reasoning, whereas Justice Benke's is straightforward and strongly argued. This is often the case when a majority opinion is straining to make the reasoning fit the desired outcome. Benke's dissent also addresses the CEQA implications much more directly, making a convincing argument that the majority opinion essentially tells lead agencies to use the executive order as a significance threshold. This is a conclusion that the majority opinion takes care to avoid stating directly, but, as Benke points out, it would be almost impossible not to use EO S-3-05 as a significance threshold given McConnell's opinion. Part of the reason I have strong personal feelings about this is because of the experience I had in crafting the still-pending climate action plan when I was the planning director for the City of San Diego. Even before the appellate ruling – when all they had was Superior Court Judge Timothy Taylor's ruling in the same direction – environmentalists routinely threw around EO S-3-05 as the rationale for their insistence that the CAP contain hard post-2020 targets that would be locked in under CEQA. We tried to push back by arguing that, as a city, we didn't have to follow an executive order because, simply put, it wasn't a law. You'd be surprised at how hard it was to get people to see the argument. But that's the danger of Justice McConnell's ruling, if it stands: If you want all the regional and local governments in the state to do something – or at least explain why they are not doing that something – then you don't need to pass a law. All you need is a governor with a pen.

I noticed the da Vinci apartment complex for the first time only a few months ago. How could I not notice it? It looked like a plywood ocean liner beached against the northbound side of the 110 freeway. Rising 4-5 stories at the time, it hovered over the freeway, uncomfortably close to the roadway. I remember hoping that it would have serious soundproofing. And air filtering. The Da Vinci cut an impressive profile on the L.A. skyline, even before it went up in flames. And did it ever go up in flames.  When I woke up Monday morning to read the headlines and see the photos in the online Los Angeles Times, I knew that the structure in question was the Da Vinci. No other pile of kindling in downtown Los Angeles could have created flames the height of skyscrapers. Now the roughly one-million-square-foot complex has been largely reduced to ash. Nearby buildings suffered damage from radiant heat, and a freeway sign nearly melted. It's not quite the Great Fire of Rome, but it's pretty bad. Now the question in L.A. is whether something good will come of it.  Suspicions of arson and speculation about an "architectural hate crime " have arisen. Feelings of schadenfraude and poetic justice are rampant. I imagine that, for some urbanists in Los Angeles' smart growth crowd (of which I consider myself a member), the only thing better than the destruction of one faux-Italian megablock apartment complex would be the destruction of four faux-Italian megablock apartment complexes. It's hard to say which L.A. real estate developer is more reviled: Don Stirling or Geoffrey Palmer? Stirling ran one of the world's worst basketball teams (the Clippers), owns dozens of mediocre midcentury apartment complexes, and has roundly been decried as a racist. Palmer doesn't have a losing record or a history of bigotry, but he does have terrible taste and terrible timing. Though Palmer claims credit for participating in the revival of downtown Los Angeles, his is a funny version of revival. His four major projects are each an affront to urban living. They are self-contained fortresses, with residential units sitting atop enormous plinths full of parking. If his residents ever walked on the perimeter sidewalks (unlikely), they'd be dwarfed by the walls that keep the city at bay. Some of his developments have pedestrian bridges, ensuring that residents never have to set foot in the actual city or encounter undesirables. Designed in a style that is kindly described as "Italianate" (I guess Italian-ish was taken), each has an anachronistic name and design flourishes, like balustrades and tile roofs, meant to invoke...  I don't know. Siena? They're hideous. Trust me. True to its name, the da Vinci was set to follow this pattern. I'm sure its replacement will do the same.  (See a photo of Da Vinci's sister ship the Visconti  here .) The one and only thing about Palmer's properties that can be considered remotely "smart" or even urban is the density. Da Vinci was to have 526 units. Palmer packs a lot of people into relatively small footprints. So do prisons.  Palmer probably didn't fiddle while the Da Vinci burned. His company has hundreds of millions of dollars riding on it. But he otherwise has been the Nero of downtown Los Angeles. As we consider the ash heap of the Da Vinci, commentators have already started to wonder whether the fire represents a turning point in Los Angeles urbanism. Is this our Pruitt-Igoe?  I tend to think not, and not just because Palmer will surely build an identical replacement. The regulations, tastes, financing mechanisms, stakeholder passions, and general civic attitudes that created the Da Vinci are almost as old as the Pantheon. They will not be erased in a day. They're the same forces that have created soulless suburbs and all the other lousy apartment buildings in Los Angeles. The Da Vinci is unique for its size, but not for the way that it retreats from the cityscape or for the way that it segregates Angelenos from each other. And then there's the market: Palmer wouldn't be building the Da Vinci if he didn't think that at least 526 people would want to live there.  The Da Vinci was a disaster long before it burned down. Progressive planners and urban critics knew it was a disaster. Developers behind downtown's real success stories, the adaptive reuse of scores of old commercial buildings, probably concurred. But, like public attitudes towards climate change and natural selection, the convictions of the progressive elite -- such as they are -- don't matter much, especially in a field that measures change by the decade. It's easy to say that this fire never should have happened. We've been developing better ideas about cities for a long time. They're being enacted elsewhere downtown and in other pockets throughout L.A., but they haven't reached the mainstream yet.  Of course, we can gladly consider the Da Vinci a turning point. But to call it a "point" belies the glacial pace of change. The process of making a better city is usually a long, wide arc. It's amazing, of course, how quickly lousy cities can grow (Las Vegas, Dubai), but how long good cities take. You have to bake them slowly and gently, and wait patiently for them to rise. So, we're in a turning era, if anything. We need to stay the course, keep the faith, and know that a true renaissance is coming.  *** If there's a truly heartbreaking story in this disaster, it's the destruction of holiday gifts that had been donated for needy senior citizens and stored across the street from the Da Vinci. LA CARES, the sponsoring organization, is now scrambling for donations and a space to store a new trove of gifts. I've made my donation . I can think of another potential donor, with a $3 billion real estate portfolio, who should be wiling to write a much, much larger check.

Two San Diego agencies that lost recent appellate cases on climate planning have decided to seek review by the state Supreme Court. On December 2 the San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted to petition for review in Sierra Club v. County of San Diego . Decided October 29 by the Fourth District Court of Appeal, that ruling rejected San Diego County's climate action plan, finding it failed to follow mitigation measures prescribed by the county's general plan. It was ordered published as of November 24 . In the similar but separate case of Cleveland National Forest Foundation v. San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) , SANDAG's board voted on December 5 to seek review. The SANDAG ruling, issued November 24, narrowly rejected the environmental impact report for the agency's Regional Transportation Plan/Sustainable Communities Strategy. It held SANDAG should have analyzed whether the plan would comply with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Executive Order S-3-05, which calls for dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The Voice of San Diego reported the SANDAG board's vote went 20 to 1 in favor of review, opposed only by Oceanside City Council member Chuck Lowery. The SANDAG agency, which has been sparing with public comments outside of the court papers themselves, issued a detailed press release explaining the choice. Its second paragraph stated: "'The Board decided that it is our responsibility to press forward with this case,' said SANDAG Board of Directors Chair Jack Dale. 'We've done our absolute best to follow the law in everything we've done. At this point, the law needs to be clarified – not just for our region, but for every planning agency and city in California.'" Plaintiffs' attorneys Kevin Bundy and Rachel Hooper issued a strongly worded response: "SANDAG's decision to prolong this litigation is disappointing, to say the least. The Court of Appeal simply told SANDAG to tell the truth about how poorly its plan matches up with sound science and state policy requiring reductions in climate pollution. At this point, SANDAG has spent far more time and taxpayer money trying to avoid telling the truth than they ever would have spent in just complying with the law. SANDAG should do now what it should have done when it lost this case the first time around nearly two years ago: do its job, follow the law, and get on with planning a transition to a more sustainable and climate-friendly future in the San Diego region." In answer, SANDAG spokesman David Hicks referred to the comments from Dale quoted above. The SANDAG statement said the agency had tried to follow state-level direction that was sometimes ambiguous, and "In an important element of the appellate court ruling, the majority concluded that SANDAG should have based its greenhouse gas analysis on the reduction of overall driving in the region, and disregarded the issue of reducing traffic congestion. SANDAG's long-standing position has been that it is taking a multipronged approach to greenhouse gas emissions reductions." Elsewhere, the San Diego Union-Tribune 's editorial board issued a critique of the court's decision captioned, " War on cars equals a war on sanity, reality ." The Cleveland National Forest Foundation, which was among the petitioners in the SANDAG matter, started a letter-writing campaign to board members urging against the review request. The Voice of San Diego quoted Kristine Alessio, of the SANDAG board and the La Mesa City Council, as seeing a bad precedent in the decision's deference to the executive order: "a governor could say we don't need (environmental review) at all." She also reportedly wrote to advocates that just two people had written urging against the appeal -- while "My constituents want me to close some of our trolley stations. They want freeway offramps completed, that's what they want from SANDAG and ." If accepted for review by the state Supreme Court, an issue to watch may be how the cases are handled with respect to Sierra Club v. County of Fresno , (2014) 226 Cal.App.4th 704. That case, accepted for review in October , overturned the EIR for a large senior-oriented housing development, the "Friant Ranch", holding that projections regarding increased air pollution from the project were stated only in raw numbers, not interpreted in a way that would explain their significance to the non-expert public. A similar dispute exists in the SANDAG case over analysis of health impacts from freeway widening.

With California in one of its worst droughts in recorded history, cuts have fallen swiftly on users of surface water, but the effects on groundwater will percolate more slowly. Unlike surface water sources, including deltas, rivers, lakes, and basins, groundwater has remained largely unregulated in the state, even though it accounts for about a third of California's total water supply. That will begin to change soon under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act , signed into law this past September by Gov. Jerry Brown. It will take effect mainly through the action of new groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs), according to water attorney Eric L. Garner, managing partner of Best Best & Krieger, LLP. Garner was the keynote speaker Dec. 4 at the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) fall conference in San Diego. The conference gathered experts and practitioners to discuss California water policy as affected by this year's drought pressures. Garner said the new GSAs will be able to do what courts do now, by imposing fees and monitoring subsidence of land. Importantly, he said they will also be able to monitor the amount of water that owners extract from the ground. Though owners have certain rights to the water underneath the land they own – known as overlying rights – the agencies could tell owners to stop pumping water out of the ground if the supply is depleted faster than it is replenished. He said that's a big change from the way groundwater monitoring happens now: "You pump until a judge tells you not to, and that is the law of California groundwater ." Nevertheless, Garner said the legislation allows districts ample time to form these agencies. "There's a timeline, and I think a pretty generous timeline…to sort of get our collective acts together and do something." While the law takes effect on January 1, 2015, it gives districts until 2017 to form the GSAs. Then, depending on how "critically overdrafted" a basin is, each GSA has until 2020 or 2022 to implement a Groundwater Sustainability Plan (GSP), which reports the amount of groundwater being used, levels of subsidence, and identifies areas to replenish the groundwater supply. Districts then will have 20 more years to get their groundwater use to "sustainable yields," meaning the point where the supply taken out nearly equals the amount brought back in, and does not have adverse consequences for the environment. Among other things, Garner said the biggest risks to the groundwater supply in the coming years will be California's rapidly growing population and seawater intrusion, which can ruin existing supplies of groundwater in coastal areas. Some districts have already begun implementing changes that will be mandated by the SGMA. At a separate panel during the conference, Mark Larsen, the general manager of the Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District, said his "severely" overdrafted basin in Sequoia National Park has begun placing recharging basins to replenish the groundwater supply throughout the district. To date, the Kaweah district has installed 11 basins to recharge the supply of groundwater in the district. SWRCB counsel faces ag water lawyers' ire Responding to unprecedented drought conditions during the past four years, state officials had to change the rules of the game in enforcing mandates to curb water usage throughout the state. In California's complicated, history-rich water rights world, no big change happens without a fight. Michael Lauffer, the chief counsel of the State Water Resources Control Board, faced that head-on at an ACWA panel full of indignant water lawyers. The lawyers lambasted the state's response to the drought as "draconian," and as harmful to due process rights. The lawyers' anger focused on the water board's May 2014 emergency water measures, which allow the board to impose fines of up to $1,000 per day for violations of curtailment orders. They noted state law formerly required there be two straight dry years for the board to adopt emergency regulations, and despite the year 2013 being the driest in recorded history for California, 2012 got enough rainfall that it didn't fit the category. So the orders were authorized by the Governor's April 25 executive order allowing the board to adopt emergency regulations. The lawyers complained that the emergency measures limit due process rights as well as water flows: they allow the board to fine violators of curtailment orders directly, without a hearing, whereas under ordinary curtailment orders, the board would have to issue cease-and-desist notices, and then conduct an evidentiary hearing to assess guilt. Lauffer said the usual hearing process would be too time-consuming, and that the board lacked resources to carry that out on an individual, case-by-case basis. Instead of issuing individual curtailment orders for each owner of water rights, the state compiles data for the watersheds and issues curtailment notices based on the amount of demand in a particular stream. Through this process, Lauffer said the state is able to broadly enforce the requirements in a "particularly dire situation." He admitted that some due process was foregone, but argued the measures were necessary as California heads into its fourth year of drought. On the contrary, Jeanne Zolezzi, a lawyer with the firm of Herum, Crabtree & Brown who represents senior water rights holders, said the cuts should have been individualized, not applied across the board. "Water rights have very specific rules," she said. "They're property rights; they're protected. And we need to follow those rules, they've worked for over 150 years in California, and we don't need to reinvent the wheel." Zolezzi said many junior water users were being forced to cut water use under the new procedures even when that use didn't affect holders of more senior rights. She said, "The only difference provided by the emergency regulations was that the state board has an easier job of enforcement…It's more efficient and effective, because inconvenient things like evidentiary hearings and due process are dispensed with." Tom Birmingham, general manager of the Westlands Water District, which does not hold senior rights, agreed, saying "some type of opportunity to be heard before you are punished is critically important." Zolezzi lamented that her clients have found themselves in opposition to rights holders in areas like Birmingham's. She said, "I think you know that if any other industry in California were brought to its knees the way that agriculture has been in the past two years, laid off the number of people that they have laid off in California, the state would step in and do something about it. They wouldn't allow that industry to go under.  We have been...forced to fight one another for this water. No other industry would ever be required to do that." Matt Hose is a reporting intern with the Voice of San Diego.

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The State Supreme Court heard oral arguments December 2 in the major Berkeley Hillside CEQA exemptions case, focusing on the legal significance of the term "unusual circumstances". While the genesis of the case is a single residence, the ruling may have statewide impact on the application of exceptions to categorical exemptions from CEQA. Thus, the case has attracted interest from environmental advocates, public agencies, preservation activists, and the development community across the state. The case arises from a proposed single-family home in the Berkeley Hills, consisting of a 6,478-square-foot house and an integral 3,395-square-foot parking garage. The City of Berkeley approved the project without environmental review, finding it categorically exempt from CEQA under both Class 3 (single-family residence) and Class 32 (infill development). The house would be one of the largest in town but would comply with local zoning. Because the lot is sloped, the parties have disputed how much earthworks and shoring work would need to be done. In 2012, the Court of Appeal ruled against the City .  At issue in the case are two questions of statewide importance. First is how to interpret the Legislature's intent in Section 21084 of the Public Resources Code, which directs the Natural Resources Agency to list classes of projects categorically exempt from CEQA. This includes CEQA Guidelines Section 15300.2(c), which states that "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 so-called "significant effects exception." Specifically, can a project that otherwise fits a CEQA exemption have a reasonably possible significant environmental impact and yet not be "unusual"? Second is what standard of review should apply to lead agencies' decisions regarding exceptions to categorical exemptions. Should parties challenging the agency's finding of a categorical exemption be required to demonstrate substantial evidence that there should be a significant effects exception, or is it enough to show substantial evidence that a fair argument exists for such an exception? Arguing for the respondents and real parties in interest, Amrit S Kulkarni, with the firm of Meyers Nave Riback Silver and Wilson, contended that the language of Section 15300.2(c) requires a two-step process to determine if the significant effects exception applies: first, the presence of unusual conditions must be established; and second, the potential for significant environmental effects due to those conditions must be established. Justice Goodwin Liu quickly cut to the chase, asking Kulkarni if it was his understanding that the Legislature had authorized designation of "categories that, as a rough cut, should not concern us because there are no significant impacts and… within the class there may be outliers that have significant environmental impacts, but nonetheless the categorical exclusion applies unless project characteristics, separate from the effects, make it unusual?" Kulkarni confirmed this was the respondents' interpretation, and reiterated their position that to conclude otherwise is to render the phrase, "due to unusual circumstances" meaningless. In response to questioning from Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and Justice Marvin Baxter, Kulkarni argued there should be substantial deference to the city's discretion, and that the Court of Appeals went wrong in applying the fair argument standard instead of the substantial evidence standard. He contended the fair argument standard applies in determining if CEQA review is required for projects that are not categorically exempt. The justices then pursued the meaning of "unusual circumstances", asking what would make a project unusual, with Justice Liu noting that the project would be an "unusual size for Berkeley". Kulkarni replied that such a subjective standard as "too big" would defeat the purpose of categorical exemptions -- to which Liu asked, "Isn't your definition subjective?" Kulkarni responded that it was not, because the project was appropriate for the site per the city zoning code. Justice Carol Corrigan asked if an unusual project would be one that was non-compliant with zoning, and Kulkarni responded yes. Later, during rebuttal, Justice Liu asked it was possible for a significant effects exemption to apply even for a project that complied with zoning. Kulkarni replied that a lack of adequate sewer service at the site would constitute unusual circumstances for a zoning-compliant project. Arguing for the plaintiffs and appellants, Susan Brandt-Hawley contended that the legislative record and rulemaking file showed Section 15300.2(c) was based on Section 21084 and the holding in Wildlife Alive v. Chickering , 18 Cal. 3d 190, a 1976 Supreme Court ruling that a categorical exemption did not apply to Fish and Game Commission actions that might have significant environmental effects. She said neither of these founding sources refers to "unusual circumstances". In response to a question from Justice Corrigan asking if the appellants agreed with the two-step process for Section 15300.2(c), Brandt-Hawley argued that only one step is required: determination of the reasonable possibility of significant environmental impact, with unusual circumstances being inherent in such projects. Justice Liu asked what the point of categorical exemptions would be in that light, as opposed to evaluating all projects on a case by case basis. He said "fair argument doesn't seem very onerous for potential significant effects exceptions… if the trigger is so light, then we're sent into the quagmire so quickly," to which Brandt-Hawley replied, "That's the sky-is-falling argument" that opponents of the appellants' position had made repeatedly. She said a fair argument must still be based on facts, fact-based assumptions, or expert opinions. She also argued that the appellants' perspective would not interfere with the main time-tested function of categorical exemptions: to save local agencies the trouble of investigating each ordinary project's impact individually. Justice Liu pursued the meaning of "due to unusual circumstances", asking what "due to" meant, and if it implied a causative link between unusual conditions and impacts. Justice Liu asked if it could be understood that it was the "legislative intent to… balance, accepting some significant environmental impacts" from some projects that fell within categorical exemptions. Brandt-Hawley repeated that Section 21084 and Wildlife Alive made no reference to unusual circumstances, and that there was no presumption in favor of allowing some significant environmental impacts. Brandt-Hawley argued that in general, unusual circumstances are "not run-of-the-mill, not typical." But Justices Corrigan and Werdegar pressed her for a clearer definition. In response, Brandt-Hawley stated that unusual circumstances for the project resulted from the combination of the size of the house, which she described as planned for "a constrained space" on a small street although the lot itself is large, together with the slope of the hill, seismic hazards, and a nearby roadway bridge. The justices also asked about the potential significant effects of the project, including those based on the expert opinion of Dr. Lawrence Karp, provided by the plaintiffs/appellants to the city prior to city approval, on the extent of earthworks and retaining walls required to stabilize the house and slope. Justice Werdegar asked if the city implicitly rejected Karp's opinion and if so, if it had done so in error. Brandt-Hawley argued the city had done so in error, because Karp's opinion presented a fair argument for a significant environmental impact. Responding to Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye later, Brandt-Hawley argued that appellants provided an expert opinion on potential significant effects, and that the city must study them. The court's ruling must be filed within 90 days. Due to the complex nature of the case, there are several possible outcomes. The court must decide if it will apply a one-step or a two-step process and what standard of review should apply. Then, it must apply the process and standard it has chosen to whether the appellants have sufficiently shown a reasonable possibility of significant effects, and/or whether the significant effects are due to unusual circumstances. In the meantime, the CEQA community will be anxiously awaiting the ruling. The case is Berkeley Hillside Preservation v. City of Berkeley , Case No. S201116. Matt Dixon is a transportation engineer in the Los Angeles area

Some important institutions got an awkward surprise last August when U.S. District Judge James Otero ruled that the Veterans Administration's sumptuous 387-acre West Los Angeles Campus was reserved for the provision of health care to U.S. military veterans, to the exclusion of several third-party lease agreements. His order sided with a group of chronically homeless veterans living with mental disabilities and/or brain injuries who argued that veterans like themselves had a priority right to receive care on the campus, including through supportive housing. Veterans are reportedly often seen sleeping outdoors near the campus gates. Otero's rulings in the case of Valentini v. Shinseki included an August 29, 2013 order invalidating a list of "Enhanced Sharing Agreements" (ESAs) that, for many years, allowed third parties to use parts of the West L.A. Campus for purposes that may have been more welcomed by the neighboring communities of Brentwood, Westwood and Bel Air. The uses included gardens, UCLA's Jackie Robinson Stadium, athletic facilities for the Brentwood School, an industrial laundry, and a "butler building" for storing film sets. Some of those third-party users are not going quietly. But the homeless plaintiffs' attorneys -- drawn from LA's major poverty law nonprofits plus a deep bench of pro bono counsel -- are intent on seeing them off. Most recently, they filed a weightily documented injunctive relief petition in the Ninth Circuit November 24. The third-party users who held ESAs on the West L.A. Campus were on the sidelines during the initial two years of litigation leading to the August 2013 order. But when Otero rejected the VA's arguments and ended the ESAs, UCLA and the Brentwood School moved to intervene, then appealed to the Ninth Circuit alongside the original parties. In a much-quoted statement, UCLA's counsel wrote that the baseball team could be made "homeless". Mediation attempts in mid-2014 fizzled and the parties are scheduled to file briefs in early 2015. Another third party that used land under an ESA agreement was the Veterans Parks Conservancy (VPC), which reportedly leases 16 acres on the West L.A. Campus for purposes including the Historic Women Veterans Rose Garden. VPC has dug in more literally: as of late November the plaintiffs alleged it was continuing work building an amphitheater on VA land. According to the plaintiffs' court exhibits, VPC signed a new agreement with the VA that says it may continue work for 90 days, from mid-November until mid-February, on the "Hollywood Canteen Amphitheater". As noted in the L.A. Times , VPC's Web site implicitly justifies it as a veterans' health use by saying it "will be used exclusively for veterans and their families" and will be "a tranquil space for various alternative wellness therapies." But the plaintiffs argue that Otero's order made an agreement for any such construction improper. In late November the plaintiffs asked Otero for a temporary restraining order against the amphitheater construction; he kicked it up to the Ninth Circuit, saying the appellate court had jurisdiction. The plaintiffs therefore took their request to the Ninth Circuit November 24, requesting emergency action within 21 days. The dispute directly with the third parties is a recent development. For most of the litigation's history, the dispute was between the plaintiffs and the VA alone. Plaintiffs argued that housing for veterans with disabilities was a specific purpose of the 1888 land gift that founded the West L.A. Campus as a veterans' service site, and they added disability rights claims to claims that the VA had failed to comply with governing statutes, especially regarding the meaning of a "health-care resource" under 38 U.S.C. Secs. 8151 to 8153 . The VA defended in part by arguing that general principles of deference to agency discretion applied, and that the ESA decisions were within administrators' discretion under Secs. 8151 to 8153. The VA also argued the administrative record was "replete with examples" of administrative determinations that  "veterans will receive priority for services" and that ESAs would help services and the community. In some cases it said agreements had been reached with "Compensated Work Therapy" jobs in mind for veterans, and in the case of the sports facilities, "recreational opportunities for Veterans." The L.A. Times reported arguments for preserving the baseball stadium included that veterans received free admission to games and could use the stadium in the off-season. Both UCLA and the Brentwood School reportedly argue they have spent millions of dollars to create and maintain sports facilities on the land they have leased from the VA. But the Los Angeles Times recently editorialized in favor of a settlement that would provide veterans with supportive housing, and in the meantime for stopping the Hollywood Canteen Amphitheater. The editorial said it might be all right to let baseball games continue at the existing stadium pending the appeal, but new construction was another matter. Use of the West L.A. campus to house veterans would not be a break with the past. The plaintiffs' papers said the campus housed a "Soldier's Home" for disabled war veterans "for some 80 years". The L.A. Times reported last year that the site was used as veterans' housing into the 1980s. Nor would it break with typical uses of VA hospital campuses. The VA has made available an "Enhanced Use Lease" mechanism nationwide for the specific purpose of enabling long-term ground leases to nonprofits to build subsidized veterans' housing on VA hospital campuses. A recent report on the mechanism by the National Housing Conference and Center for Housing Policy features a number of "best practices" examples, and one of them is in Los Angeles: the New Directions Sepulveda I and II project in North Hills. Attorneys for the plaintiffs include Mark Rosenbaum of the Los Angeles ACLU and Gary Blasi, an elder statesman of LA-area poverty law who is a UCLA law professor emeritus. Among the pro bono counsel are several attorneys with Arnold & Porter, the same firm that also recently won a settlement in Fresno for 36 homeless people who lost property in a city sweep of encampments. UCLA's attorneys include counsel from Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. Brentwood School is represented by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. The following resources have more on the West L.A. Campus case: The ACLU's page on the case . Clearinghouse.net . Rep. Henry Waxman's office . August 2014 GAO report on VA land use agreements that was included as an exhibit to the recent injunction petition. News features in The Nation in March and April 2013. Los Angeles Times profile of lead plaintiff Greg Valentini in 2011.

With a split decision in a long-awaited case, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled that the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) should have analyzed a gubernatorial executive order on greenhouse gas emissions in the environmental impact report on its long-range transportation plan. The ruling was not as broad as some expected. It did not, for example, conclude that SANDAG actually had to meet Executive Order S-3-05's target of an 80% reduction in GHG emissions by 2050. Rather, the majority ruling by Presiding Justice Judith McConnell said the EIR was deficient in not analyzing the Regional Transportation Plan/Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS/RTP) against the policy contained in the executive order. In a strongly worded dissent, Justice Patricia Benke stated the Executive Order "does not have an identifiable foundation in the constitutional power of the Governor or in statutory law" and said the majority has impermissibly elevated the Executive Order to a significance threshold "without … having to expressly declare that they are doing so." Although SB 375 only requires an SCS to extend to 2035, the SANDAG SCS that was challenged – technically part of the Regional Transportation Plan – extended to 2050. (AB 32, on which SB 375 is based, contains only a GHG reduction target for 2020, but in the implementation documents for SB 375 the California Air Resources Board set targets for 2035 and often referred to the Executive Order.) The EIR predicted a reduction in GHG emissions at first but acknowledged that emissions would go up in the out years, and concluded that this increase was not significant for the purposes of an analysis under the California Environmental Quality Act. The Cleveland National Forest Foundation and other environmental groups sued, claiming that the Executive Order was, in fact, state policy and that SANDAG had to take it into account in the SCS. In 2012, San Diego County Superior Court Judge Timothy Taylor ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. Just two weeks ago, a different Fourth District panel struck down San Diego County's Climate Action Plan, saying the county had failed to show how it would conform with the "trajectory" of the Executive Order, as it had promised. (See http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3617 .) The Cleveland National Forest Foundation case was viewed as a possible blockbuster that could have given the Executive Order the force of law. Executive Orders are issued by the governor to guide state agency actions and typically do not contain such power. But in the end, Presiding Justice McConnell cast the ruling in fairly typical CEQA terms, saying that the Executive Order should have been taken into account in the EIR analysis and that SANDAG should have considered other alternatives and mitigation measures. Perhaps most important, she concluded that even though CEQA Guidelines section 15064.4, which lays out the significance thresholds for GHG emissions reduction analysis, does not expressly adopt the Executive Order's target, SANDAG was compelled to consider the target anyway. Noting that the Guideline section states that agencies must use the listed factors "among others" in determining significance, she concluded the following: "the use of the Guideline's thresholds does not necessarily equate to compliance with CEQA, particularly where, as here, the failure to consider the transportation plan's consistency with the state climate policy of ongoing emissions reductions reflected in the Executive Order frustrates the state climate policy and renders the EIR fundamentally misleading." In reaching this conclusion, McConnell noted that the Executive Order "led directly to the enactment of AB 32" one year later and also influenced the way CARB is required to implement SB 375. "Thus," she wrote, "the Executive Order, with the Legislature's unqualified endorsement, will continue to underpin the state's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout the life of the transportation plan." Then, McConnell lowered the boom: "SANDAG contends the EIR cannot analyze the transportation plan's consistency with the Executive Order because there is no statute or regulation translating the Executive Order's goals into comparable, scientifically based emissions reduction targets. However, we do not agree the lack of such targets precludes the EIR form performing a meaningful consistency analysis in this instance … Although SANDAG may not know what future emissions targets the transportation plan will be required to meet, it knows from the information in its own Climate Action Strategy the theoretical emissions reduction targets necessary for the region to meet its share of the Executive Order's goals." McConnell referred repeatedly to the fact that land use and transportation investments, once made, stay in place for many decades and therefore decisions made under the current plan will play a major role in determining whether SANDAG can meet any long-term future emissions reduction targets the state may impose. McConnell's opinion also found SANDAG acted improperly by evading meaningful alternatives analysis and mitigations. For example, she said the EIR contained three feasible mitigation measures that were easy to meet but contained no concrete steps to reduce emissions, as well as three infeasible mitigation measures that were could not realistically be implemented. She concluded: "Missing from the EIR is what CEQA requires: a discussion of mitigation alternatives that could both substantially lesson the transportation plan's significant greenhouse gas emissions impacts and feasibly be implemented." For this conclusion she relied on Lincoln Place Tenants Association v. City of Los Angeles (2007) 155 Cal.App.4th 425, the same case that the Fourth District relied on in striking down San Diego County's CAP. Benke wrote a very long dissent that harshly criticized the majority opinion "Whereas the majority purports to enforce CEQA and its Guidelines, I believe my colleagues weaken and confuse the law," she wrote. Benke gave considerable space in her dissent to arguing that the Executive Order on its face "does not unilaterally qualify as a threshold of significance." The majority opinion – while stating that the Executive Order must be taken into account – doid not say that it should be used as a significance threshold. Benke appeared to view this as evasion. She wrote: "They offer that the policy underlying the Executive Order is of such overarching importance that it must be included in the significant factors listed" in the CEQA Guidelines – which, she argued, essentially means the majority concluded that the Executive Order must be regarded as a significance threshold. Benke concluded that "I believe the GHG statewide emissions reduction targets set forth in the Executive Order are nothing more than mere policy recommendations unless and until our Legislature independently acts to adopt such targets, which … it has done for 2020 and 2035, but not for 2050." The case is Cleveland National Forest Association v. SANDAG , No. D063288. It can be found at http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/D063288.PDF . For a prior report on briefing in the case, with comments from plaintiffs' attorneys, see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3625 .

California American Water won clearance from the Coastal Commission on November 12 to dig its disputed slant well from the Cemex sand mining plant in North Marina on the Monterey Peninsula. The well would allow feasibility studies for a desalination plant fed by sand-filtered water to be drawn from under Monterey Bay. The project had some unbudging opponents but received support from some conservation groups, in part because it called for subsurface rather than open-water intakes. Proof of legal access to the starting point for the dig was a prerequisite for the approval . Days before the Commission meeting, Cal Am reached a settlement allowing it to dig the well from the Cemex plant. Cal Am had previously sued Cemex to take the use of the land by eminent domain. The contemplated desalination plant would offer a way out of the bind created by the State Water Board's 2009-issued cease and desist order requiring Cal Am to stop all illegal water diversions from the Carmel River by the end of 2016 -- but the river is still the Monterey Peninsula's primary water supply. The conditional approval of the permit request overruled a denial by the City of Marina. The Monterey Herald reported the Commission rejected arguments that the well could harm nearby water supplies. Critics included the Marina Coast Water District and the Ag Land Trust, which two years ago were suing each other over a separate desalination issue. Howard "Chip" Wilkins III of the Remy Moose Manley firm, representing the Marina Coast Water District, wrote to the Commission that the matter was not ripe for Commission review, that the Commission lacked jurisdiction over the whole site and that, although the well was described as temporary, it could possibly become a supply source for desalination. The 1110-page staff report included supporting letters from the mayors of Seaside and Carmel, and the statewide and Monterey Peninsula Chambers of Commerce. Conservationist supporters included the Sierra Club and Surfrider Foundation, both of which were among parties to a settlement of a prior Public Utilities Commission dispute over the desalination proposal -- formally the Monterey Peninsula Water Supply Project. (For the settlement see http://www.watersupplyproject.org/testwellappeal .) Susan Jordan of the California Coastal Protection Network wrote in support as well -- in part citing Cal Am's interest in using subsurface intakes. Jordan has fought the proposed use of open-water intakes for desalination in Huntington Beach. Open-water intakes have been criticized, including by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) , because ocean organisms may be drawn into the intake pipes or pressed against their protective screens. The Monterey County Weekly reported Cal Am hoped to start construction quickly ahead of Western snowy plover nesting season. The company announced in September it received a $1 million state grant to dig the test well. The Carmel Pine Cone reported the company also had a foundation grant to test the water for human pathogens. (For further coverage of Monterey water supply tensions see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3598 .) The annotated November agenda with linked staff reports is at http://coastal.ca.gov/meetings/mtg-mm14-11.html . UCSB plan approved with sustainability settlement The Commission unanimously endorsed UC-Santa Barbara's new 15-year Long Range Development Plan, which calls for expanding the 1100-acre campus and adding housing and academic structures for up to 5,000 undergraduate and 1,380 graduate students . The staff report called for 20 modifications, all of which the university accepted. The Sustainable University Now (SUN) Coalition, formed in response to the plan, reached a settlement in 2011 agreeing to support it. (See pp. 268ff of the staff report.) The Independent reports SUN's principal organizer was Prof. Richard "Dick" Flacks, a legendary 1960s figure , coauthor of the 1962 Port Huron Statement from Students for a Democratic Society. A SUN representative, longtime Santa Barbara environmental attorney Marc Chytilo, endorsed the plan at the hearing. The agreement calls for specific measures on sustainable transportation, habitat stewardship, water supply, energy conservation, community participation in governance, and housing availability, including improvements to the jobs/housing balance. Commissioner Jana Zimmer questioned the sufficiency of water supply for the plan. The staff report includes assurances by the Goleta Water District -- but often with reference to its 2010 Urban Water Management Plan. (See http://www.goletawater.com/documents/ .) Zimmer noted the district was currently not allowing new water connections , and is supplied from the State Water Project and the diminished Lake Cachuma. Jack Ainsworth, Coastal Commission Deputy Director for the region, responded that the Goleta district's groundwater was sufficient, continuing "feedback loops" would recheck adequacy of supply, and new projects would have to offset their effects through conservation. In other Coastal Commission action: - The Commission overruled its staff by a 7-4 vote to issue a determination of consistency with the Coastal Act that allowed the Navy's Silver Strand coastal campus facility to go forward in San Diego County. The San Diego Source has details , including that its functions would include assisting SEAL teams. Concerns had included effects on the Nuttall's Lotus, " traffic and visual impacts ," and the staff's complaint of insufficient access to enough information to decide if the project would create a need for a seawall or otherwise affect coastal dunes. - The Commission approved amendments to a Coastal Development Permit for beach management by the City of Santa Cruz. The Pacific Legal Foundation, which livetweeted all three days of the November meeting with exceptional diligence, reported the vote was 9-2 and came only after Commissioner Mary Shallenberger, supported by at least two others, questioned whether provisions for a nighttime curfew served the goal of preserving beach access. - The Commission heard many single-family home disputes including a number of teardown-rebuild applications for single-family houses in suburban Southern California neighborhoods. It heard public comments on usual-suspect issues including Venice zoning and the Banning Ranch. It granted extensions of time on consideration of Local Coastal Program (LCP) revisions for Chula Vista, Imperial Beach, and Malibu. It approved an amendment to the Santa Barbara LCP to create buffers between agricultural uses and "new non-agricultural development and uses." - The Commission approved 12 grants totaling $1 million for work on LCPs. - It rejected an appeal of a decision to allow emergency call boxes on Highways 1 and 128 in Mendocino County. - The meeting was the Commission's first in San Mateo County. Commissioner Groom, the local host, pronounced herself "ecstatic" but the Half Moon Bay Review noted there were few local items on the agenda. A Commissioners' field trip included the site of the "Big Wave" project proposal , subject of a recent redesign mainly affecting a part of the project designed as affordable housing for 50 adults with developmental disabilities and 20 staff. Per a recent county Planning agenda , there would also be 108 business condominium units. The Coastal Commission rejected an earlier design for the project two years ago. (The project's own site is at http://bigwaveproject.org/ . The Midcoast Community Council's page with timeline and links for the project is at http://www.midcoastcommunitycouncil.org/big-wave-project/ .) - As part of this month's anti-fracking protest, the Center for Biological Diversity announced it was delivering a petition with 30,000 signatures. - The December meeting, in Monterey, will include a long-anticipated workshop on lower-cost visitor-serving accommodations -- that is, on preservation of the cheap California seaside vacation as public resource. See http://coastal.ca.gov/mtgcurr.html . - In Coastal Commission action apart from the recent meeting, the Malibu Times reported Coastal Commission Enforcement Officer Pat Veesart was invoking the Coastal Commission's recently augmented enforcement authority under SB 861 , to warn the owners of the Paradise Cove beach access area to stop charging visitors for public access. As the Los Angeles Times reported previously , complaints about parking charges have included some from members of the Black Surfers Collective who said they had not been allowed to carry their surfboards across the sand. - Separately the Monterey Herald reported that legal troubles continue for the Sand City "eco-resort" plan in Sand City (see prior coverage of the Coastal Commission settlement at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3474 ), while a separate hotel and time-share proposal for the Sand City dunes, by developer King Ventures, goes before the Coastal Commission in December on appeal by the Ventana Chapter of the Sierra Club.