Search Results

The federal government issued its long-awaited "Waters of the United States," or WOTUS, definition yesterday, extending federal authority to California's vernal pools and other naturally forming pockets of water. However, the new rule does not regulate groundwater nor many subsurface flows and states it will maintain existing provisions for stormwater systems and some ditches. However, business and Congressional opposition to the rule remains fierce. The Association of California Water Agencies expressed disappointment with the rule, saying "ACWA remains concerned that the final rule is too broad and our requests that water conveyance systems and water infrastructure adjacent to 'navigable waters' be excluded from the proposed rule was not met." Developers and local officials as well as agricultural and industrial businesses had sought to limit the "Waters of the United States" definition for fear it might impose Clean Water Act permitting processes on construction and water management proposals that had hitherto required only local approvals. The rule does make concessions to concerns from business, real estate and rural local governments that existing drainage systems and permit exemptions might be disrupted. California voices were very much included in this pattern, and many California local governments expressed anxiety about their stormwater discharge permits. As the "WOTUS" abbreviation suggests, the rule has been strongly identified with the Obama Administration by its opponents; the White House backed the rule with a supportive statement from the President. It cross-posted a position paper from the EPA, which prefers to call it the "Clean Water Rule." But it's debatable whether the new final rule expands federal authority or merely restores some of the scope intended by Congress before the question of the Clean Water Act's application to smaller waters was muddied by ambiguous Supreme Court rulings and the EPA's interim attempts to apply them practically.  The rule itself states it defines a narrower "scope of jurisdiction" than "under the existing regulation."  As anticipated, it applies federal Clean Water Act regulation to many small and intermittent water sources, such as marshes, small streams, California's vernal pools and the Eastern peat bogs known as pocosins. At the same time it emphasizes waters' status as tributaries to larger flows. It requires a tributary to have a "bed, bank and ordinary high water mark" and protects other waters through the logic of "significant nexus" to navigable waters. It says it "does not add any additional permitting requirements on agriculture".  Clean water advocates from arid regions may be disappointed by a logic that views the nature of headwaters in terms of tributaries rather than groundwater. It states it "does not regulate shallow subsurface connections nor any type of groundwater, erosional features, or land use."  The most favorable news for public officials and real estate developers may be a statement in the EPA's announcement summary that ditches are only covered if they could carry pollution downstream and that the rule "maintains the status of waters within Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems." The rule's preamble says it does not change exemptions from existing federal stormwater permitting requirements. As noted in an early commentary from the Allen Matkins law firm, the new rule limits itself to new jurisdictional determinations, locking in most existing decisions on Clean Water Act applicability. The EPA's opening assurances suggest the new final rule may not do much to change the terms of �402 National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for runoff or wastewater, but it might well broaden the applicability of �404 permit requirements for "discharge of dredged or fill material" into "waters" that can include wetlands and ditches. Other potentially affected areas include state and federal water quality standards and the coordination between them, oil spill prevention programs, pesticide permits and Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) standards for specified pollutants in waterways. (Quantities of trash in urban waterways are increasingly regulated under TMDL standards in California.) The full 297-page rule, in pre-publication form, is available on the conspiciously user-friendly Web page that the EPA has devoted to the "Waters Of" rulemaking process. It was expected to appear in the Federal Register imminently. Bitter National Publicity Campaign In recounting California's bad bygone days, Carey McWilliams relates a story that the land baron Henry Miller used to take title to public acres by claiming they fell under laws for distribution of "swamp and overflow lands" -- and would bolster those claims by having himself dragged over the land in a boat by teams of horses. Lately agribusiness, industry and real estate groups, and a fair percentage of Congress as well, have accused the EPA of claiming public jurisdiction over private lands by nearly similar standards. For a year and more, large-scale agricultural and industrial business groups, especially the American Farm Bureau Federation, have framed the "Waters Of" rule as a leading current menace in their campaigns against federal regulatory authority in general and the EPA in particular. By some accounts more than a million public comments were filed on the rulemaking. The EPA has responded by promoting the rule publicly to an extent that has drawn criticism in light of federal lobbying rules. The competing Twitter hashtags #ditchtherule and #ditchthemyth call up separate large clouds of commentary with predictably different moods. Similarly, the EPA page mirrors the Farm Bureau's "Ditch The Rule" Web site. The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) was prominent among environmental groups treating the rulemaking process as an occasion to broaden EPA jurisdiction. Environmental advocates' comments on the rule were often phrased in somewhat muted and technical language and often spoke in terms of public health rather than stewardship of natural habitats. This was presumably to avoid offering targets to right-wing indignation. Initial NRDC reaction to the May 27 announcement took the form of a blog post by president Rhea Suh. Reflecting the sense of an ongoing campaign rather than a victory, it was captioned, " Americans Need the Clean Water Rule to Keep Our Drinking Water Safe" . The Farm Bureau's initial reaction to the final rule said "we find little comfort in the agency's assurances that our concerns have been addressed in any meaningful way," attacked the EPA's "aggressive advocacy campaign," and said that in reviewing the rule "we are looking in particular" at the rules on ephemeral waters. Difficult Legal History The two main court cases in the "Waters Of" interpretive tangle -- Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers , 531 U.S. 159 (2001) (known as SWANCC) and Rapanos v. U.S. , 547 U.S. 715 (2006) -- both involved choices to fill in wetlands that had formed at distances from the "navigable waters" that are at the core of Clean Water Act jurisdiction.  The SWANCC ruling held the EPA could not stop plans to dump municipal garbage in a former gravel pit despite the EPA's argument that ponds in the pit had become a habitat for federally protected migratory birds. The much-debated split decision in Rapanos concerned a property owner's unilateral act of filling in a wetland that was miles from any "navigable" water. Rules derived from SWANCC and Rapanos , however, have not been limited to such stark changes in landscapes. For example, the National Association of Counties warned in a briefing on the issue last year that �404 permits have been required for maintenance of ditches, including ditches managed by county governments. In the text of the new rule, the EPA and Corps read Rapanos as showing agreement among the Justices that the Clean Water Act applies beyond "navigable waters." They grant importance to a rule stated by Justice Anthony Kennedy in a concurrence that added the tiebreaking fifth vote to an opinion otherwise stated more conservatively by Justice Antonin Scalia writing for four justices. Kennedy's much-debated rule would apply the Clean Water Act to peripheral waters or wetlands that have a "significant nexus" with navigable or potentially navigable waters. The EPA and Corps apply this "significant nexus" principle in stating distinctions under the rule. Opposition in Congress Bills are pending in Congress to block the rule from taking effect -- and those are only the latest of several efforts at legislative overruling. An initial attempt to stop the EPA and Corps rulemaking trajectory passed last year's House as H.R. 5078 . That bill died with the session but the "Cromnibus" year-end budget bill forced the EPA to withdraw a March 2014 "interpretive rule" from the "Waters Of" proposal that would have addressed farm conservation activities. The bills moving to block EPA over the past several weeks are H.R. 1732 and S. 1140 . ( Politico has detailed coverage of recent reactions and maneuvers in Congress and anticipated lawsuits.)  The leading bill on the matter in Congress, H.R. 1732, passed the House on May 12. It would specifically invalidate the new rule and would require the EPA and Corps to start the rulemaking over in mandatory detailed consultation with state and local officials and "stakeholders".  S.B. 1140 was a recent subject of hearings before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's  Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife. It would invalidate any interpretive rule on the "Waters Of" question to the extent it failed to comply with new rules for consultation with state and local officials and restrictions on content including avoidance of "intrusive Federal oversight".  Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, said in introducing H.R. 1140 last month, "What the administration is proposing now simply makes no sense. Under ... the new rule they are proposing, isolated ponds could be regulated as waters of the United States. This is the kind of pond that might form in a low-lying piece of land with no connection to a river or a stream. It could be in someone's back yard." But at the hearing, which was dominated by supporters of H.R. 1140, Prof. Patrick Parenteau of Vermont Law School protested that the bill was "based on bad science, bad law, and bad policy," particularly in assumptions that some water bodies could be "isolated" or that a stream could be fairly defined as a "natural channel" considering the existence of structures such as the lower Los Angeles River.

A developers' group is promoting a new piece of legislation that would postpone implementation of SB 743 – the bill that would change traffic analysis to vehicle miles traveled in environmental review – for a year. The bill has apparently revealed a split among developers who say they focus on infill projects. Sponsored by Assemblymember Cristina Garcia (D-Norwalk), who was elected in November, Assembly Bill 779 would postpone implementation of SB 743 until 2017. A lobbying group called the Infill Builders Federation is sponsoring a bill that, depending on its final form, would postpone the implementation of SB 743. Supporters insist that they embrace VMT but say that the two years are needed to help developers prepare for the switch and to work out what they see as kinks in the law. (The City of Pasadena has already implemented most of the provisions of SB 743.) The bill has progressed relatively smoothly through the legislative process. It passed easily, 15-0, through the Committee on Transportation and Natural Resources and has been heard by the Appropriations Committee. Whether Governor Jerry Brown, an avowed proponent of smart growth, will veto the bill remains to be seen.  The trouble, say the bill's opponents, is that California's cities need SB 743 yesterday. "Sure, there's a transition, but that's not a reason not to go ahead," said Curt Johansen board president of the Council of Infill Builders (CIB),  a nonprofit advocacy group that was once affiliated with IBF .  Garcia's office declined to speak to CP&DR on the record. IBF's lobbyist Erin Niemela declined as well. IFB board members did not respond to repeated requests for interviews. CIB, as well as other critics, claim that the IBF does not truly represent the interests of infill developers but rather is a front for greenfield developers (some of whom also do infill).  "The idea that's coming out of a nominally infill builders organization is really disappointing," said Ethan Elkind, Associate Director of the Climate Change and Business Program at UCLA Law School and advisor to the Council of Infill Builders. "Their arguments are wrong, but I also question why a group of infill builders would be pushing a measure that would hurt infill." The apparent concerns of AB 779's supporters are threefold:  (1) VMT analysis may unfamiliar, and therefore potentially burdensome, to many developers;  (2) because cities may still impose their own metrics, regardless of CEQA's requirements, some developments may be subject to two analyses;  (3)  given the litigious history of CEQA, VMT analysis — and, potentially, unforeseen holes in SB 743 — could provide more grounds on which opponents of a project could sue.  Supporters of VMT, and, specially, of the way SB 743 was crafted, reject all of these claims.  While CEQA provisions have been used in unfathomably creative ways since the law's 1970 passage, concerns about litigation are, supporters say, covered largely by the fact that projects in what the law defines as "transit priority areas" — a half-mile radius around an existing or planned "major transit stop" — and that are consistent with specific plans that have already passed CEQA scrutiny are exempt from VMT analysis entirely.  "A traffic study is a huge component of the time and the cost involved with entitlement work," said Johansen. "To be able to get an exception by a well located project…(is like) getting a free pass."  Supporters of AB 779 question the effectiveness of this provision in practice, given the historical aggressiveness of many project opponents and CEQA attorneys. One proposed solution that supporters are reportedly proposing would give the Office of Planning and Research the authority to determine significance thresholds – the levels of impacts at which a project would be considered in violation of CEQA. This sort of authority would be unprecedented for OPR.  OPR is proceeding with its guidelines process. OPR staff declined to be interviewed for this article, but Chris Calfee, senior counsel at OPR, issued this statement: "The Office of Planning and Research has conducted extensive public outreach over the past year and a half on its preliminary discussion draft and is currently developing a revised draft that responds to input received from the bill's sponsor as well as other stakeholders.  We look forward to completing the process that Senate Bill 743 set in motion." This provision does not, of course, shield developers outside transit areas, but that is by design. Under VMT analysis, they still may be subject to suits claiming insufficient analysis or mitigation just as they are today under LOS. Supporters of SB 743 say that this is intentional: the law discourages greenfield, less dense, and/or non-transit-adjacent development by measuring vehicle traffic and, in many cases, preventing developers from mitigating impacts simply by expanding roads (to relieve congestion at affected intersections).  "LOS basically allows you to buy your way out of traffic impacts," said Johansen.  Whether VMT analysis — by itself or in conjunction with conventional LOS analysis — is more burdensome for non-exempt projects remains to be seen. Supporters of VMT say that the burden will be negligible, especially since much of the data-gathering will be identical to previous methods and that there are widely accepted methods for analyzing data to estimate VMT.  "All the factors you need to calculate LOS accurately are the same as the factors you would need to calculate VMT," said Jeffrey Tumlin, principal and director of strategy at transportation planning firm Nelson-Nygaard.  "It's incredibly straightforward," said Elkind. "Compared to a stack of papers for a traffic study--you're talking 3-4 phonebooks--it's as off-the-shelf as it can get. The standard of review to challenge a VMT analysis is much higher." Tumlin noted that cities may have legitimate concerns about switching to VMT. Cities have often used LOS analysis as an exactions tool, to get developers to cover mitigation measures that cities otherwise might have to fund themselves. Likewise, SB 743 may impact highway projects developed by Caltrans. Neither cities nor Caltrans appear to be involved with AB 779. There are no representatives from any public entities on the IBF board.  While AB 779's supporters claim to support infill development and the wisdom of VMT, their opponents suggest that IFB and others are concocting objections to SB 743 in order to protect the interests of greenfield developers.  "I think what's happening is both the sprawl industry as well as under-resourced municipalities are finally understanding that this is real and that it's going to change the way they do business," said Tumlin.  The debate over AB 779 is but the most tangible manifestation of a rift that opened several years ago between rival groups. Representatives of the Council of Infill Builders, which used to be aligned with the IBF, say that they have not been invited to discuss the bill with Garcia's staff or with the IBF. CIB is a nonprofit advocacy group whereas IBF is a registered lobbying group.  "The makeup of the two organization probably speaks volumes about the principles that each one ascribes to," said Johanasen.  SB 743's supporters say that its passage would undermine the aggressive climate change goals that Brown has consistently set and, of late, codified in an executive order calling for a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.  "This seems to me like it would be a step backwards, and I would be surprised if he supports it," said Johansen.  Resources SB 743 Legislative Information   http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140SB743 SB 743 Transit Priority Areas http://www.opr.ca.gov/s_transitorienteddevelopmentsb743.php AB 779 Legislative Information http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB779

As California's drought continues to worsen, the state's 500-plus local governments face a twofold challenge: complying with state-mandated reductions in urban water use while at the same time planning for long-term development. While the state's housing needs are manifest – 220,000 units per year just to keep up with latent demand – the long-term water supplies required to supply new development and redevelopment have become less certain thanks to the drought.  In the wake of Gov. Jerry Brown's recent executive order, many districts are imposing cutbacks on institutional users, such as park and school districts, and on homeowners collectively. But unlike the 1990s, only a few communities appear to be placing moratoria on new development as result of the drought. But experts predict that further water conservation measures – including more water-efficient new residences – could take the pressure off of development moratoria in the future. The San Jose Water Company is one of the largest water providers at the high end of the reduction scale. It must cut 30 percent. That district is allocating thirteen 780-gallon units of water per home – as compared to the 2013 average of 19 units – regardless of a home's size. Homeowners will pay penalties for usage above their allocated units. Bakersfield is restricting outdoor water use to three days a week.  The Association of California Water Agencies has posted a list of water agencies, an interactive map, describing their responses at http://www.acwa.com/content/local-drought-response . Much of the information refers to regulations put in place in 2014, as many cities and agencies are still rolling out their plans to comply with current state restrictions.  One water official compared the statewide to rection to the drought to the "five stages of grief." "The first stage is denial," said Celeste Cantú, general manager of the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority. "I think we've pretty much moved past denial. We were in denial last year." Executive Order & Responses Roughly 40 percent of the state's water is "unused" and instead remains set aside for conservation, stream flows, and riparian habitats. Of the remainder, roughly 80 percent is used for agriculture and 20 percent for residential, industrial, and other urban uses.  With the state's snowpack at less than 10 percent of average in what is now the fourth year of drought, Gov. Jerry Brown finally ordered mandatory water restrictions in March, when it became clear that the current rainy season was going to give little relief.  A cascade of events and policies has followed that declaration, which ordered a 25 percent cut in urban use statewide. The state Water Resources Control Board has set conservation goals for the state's 400 urban water districts, with different reductions for different communities. Meanwhile, many of the state's farmers—including the almost growers who have become the symbol for thirsty agriculture – press on under their own set of water rules, many of which make their rights unassailable. (A group of farmers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta recently proposed voluntary reductions of 25 percent.) DWR has established a sliding scale for cities depending on their per capital water use. Water-efficient cities – which tend either to have strong environmental policies and/or relatively poor populations – must cut only as little as 8 percent compared to 2013 levels. They include places like East Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco.  The cities that must cut the most, 36 percent, are a mix of wealthy cities, like Beverly Hills and South Pasadena, and middle-class suburbs with relatively low density, such Hemet and Colton. Central Valley cities including Bakersfield and Redding are at the high end too; their hot climates lead to extremely high water use, partly because water evaporates quickly from irrigated lawns.  "There's a lot of pushback on this from inland districts," said Jeffrey Mount, senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. "They feel that they're being unfairly targeted because their weather is warmer and it takes a great deal more application of water to have verdant lawns and gardens." Districts that fail to achieve these reductions can be fined up to $10,000 per day. Cities and the water districts that serve them are employing a variety of penalties and incentives to compel residents to do their part. Gov. Brown's order and DWR's targets do not mandate the ways that districts must meet targets. They leave each district to develop programs, penalties, and incentives on their own.  While Mount said that this laissez-faire approach makes sense because "no two districts are alike," Cantú said that many water districts are frustrated and, per the second stage of grief, "angry."  "The water retail community is angry, and understandably so, because they've….successfully protected communities in Southern California from the impact of drought for years," said Cantú. "Now we need to step it up because our designed drought of 3-4 years—we've kind of exceeded that." The Los Angeles Department of Water and power is restricting outdoor watering and is policing domestic runoff that flows into streets. DWP is also one of several water agencies to offer cash rebates for removal of lawns; a cottage industry of turf removal companies, such as Turf Terminators, has cropped up to remove residents' lawns for free in exchange for the proceeds from the rebates. (Lawns consume far more water than anything that takes place inside a home.) One method cities are not employing is charging more to heavy users, as proposed by San Juan Capistrano. That approach, called tiered pricing, was ruled unconstitutional by the 4th District Court of Appeal, in April.  A Few Moratoria A handful of small communities have opted for the most extreme conservation policies: imposing moratoria on new water hookups as the drought has worsened over the past 1-2 years.  "Some of the coastal communities that were particularly hard hit in the Central Coast will find themselves having to ask some very painful and difficult questions because they don't have a diversified water supply," said Mount.  The perennially drought-prone community of Cambria, on a remote stretch of the Central Coast, instituted a water hookup waiting list in 1986. New applications are accepted according to projected water supplies in any given year. The list was closed to new applicants in 1990, and currently no applications are being approved. The upscale Los Angeles County city of South Pasadena, which is largely built-out, instituted a moratorium on new water hookups in July of last year.  The Paso Robles Groundwater Basin instituted and "urgency ordinance" in 2013 requiring new development to offset its water uses at a 1:1 ratio. Given the scarcity of water sources in the Paso Robles area, this ordinance effectively acts as a moratorium on new residential and agricultural development.  Some communities have pretty much run dry regardless of state targets and local policies. They largely include communities in the Central Valley that rely on tapped-out wells. For the most desperate communities, Gov. Brown approved a $1 billion package of emergency assistance.  To Grow or Not to Grow These cases of immediate moratoria and severely restricted development are, so far, anomalies. The vast majority of cities, large and small alike, are not deliberately restricting growth because of the drought. Ten or twenty years from now, water could be far more scarce than it is even today it could, effectively, be far more abundant. Both of these scenarios can occur regardless of whether normal weather patterns return.  Many officials assume that the vagaries of long-term weather patterns will even out and that water supplies will return to normal. In that sense, curtailing development today because of uncertain future shortages could prove pointless and reactionary.  "The governor's emergency declaration doesn't specifically step in and address the land use question," said Mount. "I think we're going to see more and more people talking about that as this drought grinds on."  To optimistic planners and developers, four years of drought is nothing compared to the decades of anticipated development and population growth. The state projects an increase in population from 38 million today to 50 million by 2055.  Santa Barbara city planner Renee Brooke said that her city council is not yet concerned about new development. "They see it being such a small percent of our overall water demands, they don't want to unnecessarily restrict development or a particular sector of our community," said Brooke.  Flinn Fagg, planning director in Palm Springs, said that the idea of a moratorium "pops up occasionally in public forums" but that no such restrictions are being seriously considered. "I think development is going to occur based on the market rather than on water supply," he said.  Growth in California is often seen as a force of nature, as inevitable as earthquakes if not rainstorms.  "In my experience, growth happens regardless of whether you plan for it or not," said Cantú. In 2014, roughly 85,000 new homes were built in the state, about as many as the previous year, according to the California Homebuilding Foundation.  One reason why development might continue is that cities' financial droughts may be more powerful than their hydrological droughts. Proposition 13, the 1978 ballot measure that curtails property taxes, is one of many incentives for cities to keep growing.   "This is one of the perverse side effects of Prop. 13," said Mount. "It spurs communities to create new development in order to increase revenue." Prius Desert Some speculate, in fact, that the drought may be a blessing in for those who want the Golden State to keep on growing. For all the pains that cities and water agencies are now going through, this much is clear: the more comfortable Californians become with brown lawns, the greater the state's water supplies will be in the future.  "One of the things we may see from this big push in conservation is that if conservation during this drought is kept in place afterward, that's going to probably free up a lot of water for development," said Mount. "That's one of the side-effects nobody thought about." In other words, conservation methods adopted today are likely to stick around even when the rains return.  "We've had a long history of being an oasis in the desert, especially Palm Springs and it was appreciated for its rather lush landscapes," said Fagg. "That attitude is changing…and I think people are generally aware of the severity of the drought that we are in and recognize that we do need to make some changes in our lifestyles." Mount noted that the state's population has grown by 8 million since 1990 without an appreciable increase in domestic water use.  Moreover, new development tends to be more water-efficient than many existing developments. So the marginal impact even of suburban single-family homes may be negligible. Dave Codgill, president of the California Building Industry Association, said that home built today, "have 50 percent reduction in the amount of water used in new homes compared to homes built prior to 1980." He noted that 9.1 million of the 13.6 million homes in the state were built before 1980 and may be ripe for retrofitting or replacement.  Brooke, of Santa Barbara, confirmed that "new development can result in a reduction in water use overall just because everything is so efficient." Any major development must comply with Senate Bills 610 and 221, a pair of addendums to the California Environmental Quality Act that require large developments – and general plans – to provide adequate water supplies for 20 years. Technological improvements, such as low-flow toilets, can be factored into a proposed development's long-term water needs fairly easily, according to David Todd, of the Department of Water Resources' Land Use Water Program. But shorter showers and xeriscaping may hold less promise for cities that want to grow.  "If it was a behavioral thing, that would be far more difficult to document" for the sake of SB 610 and 221, said Todd.  Codgill said that his industry is more than willing to institute further efficiency measures in order to keep up the pace of development. He supports the statewide application of the Model Landscape Ordinance and the speeding up of a "purple pipe" ordinance that was not scheduled to go into effect until 2017.      "We definitely consider ourselves as an industry as part of the solution and not part of the problem," said Codgill. "I've made it very clear to the governor and the water boards that we're willing to do whatever we can to help." On the opposite end of the planning spectrum from faucets and cactuses, new state planning strategies might also curb some of California's demand. Senate Bill 375, passed in 2008, is intended to reduce driving and greenhouse gas emission. But, by promoting compact development – which, by definition, includes less green space – SB 375 might also result in less use of thirsty landscaping.  "I hope that is the direction that we go in," said Cantu, referring to SB 375.  That will give us a much more secure vision of what a resilient community will look like down the road. "more density…is healthier anyway. We can easily accommodate growth and have a robust economy and a healthy environment in our current (water) budget. "I think this drought is a wake-up call that puts us firmly into the 21st century," said Cantú.

When I consider Wendell Cox's ideas, I remind myself that I am taking in not just a series of ideas but rather a whole worldview. It's kind of like reading Dune , which depicts the famously comprehensive desert world of Arrakis as imagined by sci-fi novelist Frank Herbert.  Cox spoke the other day to ULI's Los Angeles chapter along with USC demographer Dowell Myers. The two weren't exactly adversaries, but they were a study in forms of reasoning. Cox is all induction, beginning with theory and explaining how the facts match it. Meyers is deductive, presenting the facts and going from there.  Cox's a worldview that does not, I think, correspond well to reality -- certainly not the reality of California -- but it's a nonetheless a complete, mostly consistent view. An analysis of Cox, then, relies on finding those moments when his world matches up with the real world just closely enough to make a comparison.  Cox's narrative is a familiar Libertarian one -- and it's fine, as far as it goes. Rather than belabor it, I'd like to pick out a few of Cox's claims, all of which are worth considering if only because they are provocative.  In no particular order (numbered for future reference):  1. The US average for home purchase prices is three times annual household income. California is north of 5x and climbing towards 10x. 2. On a ranking of average commute times in world megacities, Los Angeles ranks last, with 28 minutes. The top city clocked in at 1 hour, 15 minutes.  3. It's sexy to tell stories about how milennials love living in center cities. But not nearly as much as everyone else loves living in suburbs, with 90 percent of new households forming on the fringes.  4. Anyway, even hipsters are going to move away once their kids are old enough to go to school.  5. The Los Angeles region has plenty of land on which to build.  6. The dispersion of employment centers in concert with the dispersion of residential areas has led, on average, to shorter commutes.  7. Construction costs are the same as they are in center cities as they are on the urban fringe, but land costs are lower, and there's less opposition.  8. Cox says that he helped pass the funding legislation for the Los Angeles subway. He's not a fan of subways, but he'd do it again because otherwise the RTD (predecessor to LA Metro) would have squandered money on something else.  9. SB 375 will "force" developers to reduce suburban greenfield developments but will not, because of "regulations," promote much infill.  10. Accounting for housing costs, the poverty rate in California rivals that of Mississippi.  11. Cities with regulations limiting land development have the worst ratios of purchase prices to annual incomes (Hong Kong is the worst globally).  (No offense to Myers, who had a great presentation on demographics, but, you know, if you're not willing to say that Mojave should become the next great L.A. suburb then, well, you're not going to get as much press.) Some responses. See which one of us you agree with.  1. If you compare California to the entire rest of the country , you end up comparing it with many places that aren't nearly as prosperous, not nearly as appealing, and, therefore, not nearly as expensive. With that said, yes, we have a housing crisis .  2. Rankings depend on the objects being ranked. The No. 1 city on Cox's list was Jakarta. Does anyone think that Jarkarta is relevant to a policy discussion about Los Angeles?  3. True enough. It is a sexy story, and we shouldn't be seduced by anecdotes. But you know what's a salient, if less sexy, story? That of all the people forced into the suburbs -- not by choice but by necessity -- because of lack of supply in the center cities.  4. We do need to fix the schools. Before we do that, we need to fix the funding schemes that hurt urban schools. Prop. 13, I'm looking at you.  5. Here's where Myers and Cox got into it. Myers helpfully pointed out that Los Angeles has some pretty significant barriers to development, one of which is called the Pacific Ocean. That's when Cox gestured towards the desert. I'm still having trouble figuring out why it's more preferable to build houses Victorville and Palmdale, which have more meth labs than offices, than it is to build apartments in Santa Monica, which has twice as many jobs as it has bedrooms.  6. Surely this claim is spot-on for some people. If you live in Upland and work in Claremont, more power to you. If you live in El Monte and work in Century City, not so much... 7. This got me thinking. It's true that land on the fringe follows different economic rules than that in the center. Land is dear in the center, so landowners can estimate highest and best uses and charge accordingly. The cagiest landlords effectively suck up all the economic rent. On the fringe, one parcel is a lot like the others; it's a buyers market, and the buyers can bid land costs down. Oh, and there's Prop. 13 again, which encourages landlords to hang on to their properties, sans improvements, indefinitely.  8. 150,000 daily riders thank him. So do the drivers aboveground on Wilshire Bl. (If only we had sandworms to dig tunnels for us!) 9. Most of Cox's arguments are based on passionate readings of actual data and are supported by theories that carry some glimmer of truth. This one, however, nudges discomfortingly into Tea Party / Agenda 21 conspiracy theories.  10. This is a crime and a travesty. See responses to 1 and 11.  11. I've saved the richest one for last. Over and over and over we hear free-market advocates and/or fans of sprawl decry the constraints and distortions of regulations. I'm not unsympathetic, just as Cox isn't, to be fair, a raving maniac about it. But the effect of regulations depends in large part on where you stand: one person's restraint is another person's savior. I'm also tired of wholesale condemnations of "regulations." That does two things: first, it enables conservatives and aggressive developers to nod knowingly and self-satisfyingly; second, it prevents us from actually enacting regulatory reform. See, "regulations" can mean anything you want it to mean -- usually CEQA, sometimes AB 32, sometimes SB 375, lately AB 779 . Prop. 13 isn't a "regulation" of course, because it's all about property rights and freedom. I challenge Cox and his fellow travelers no longer to refer to "regulations" but instead to refer to the specific regulations that they want to change. That approach with force them to explain why the regulation is bad and maybe to propose a solution. He also might consider whether regulations precede or follow the enormous demand that may have pushed up prices in the first place.  Interestingly, Cox aimed his critique largely at regulations that complicate the development of greenfields. I did not hear him express support for, say, looser restrictions on density in urban areas. Houses will solve our real estate crisis, but, somehow, apartments will not. Regulations that protect virgin land are bad, but regulations that constrain the highest and best use of infill parcels � be they height restrictions, density restrictions, or parking requirements�are, I guess, fine.  It's worth noting the location of this event: Century City. We were on the 22nd floor of an office building, 50 miles from the nearest desert, with westerly and northerly views of single-family homes, the Los Angeles Country Club, and the Santa Monica Mountains. The audience consisted of developers who have probably never heard of Victorville, much less been there. They're all trying mightily to develop in Los Angeles � higher, denser. The jobs are already here and the demand is already here, whether Cox likes it or not.  I left the presentation at 9:30 a.m. and crawled westward on Olympic Boulevard. I was caught in the morning traffic. Everyone at that hour is trying to get into Santa Monica, from the east. They can't come from the west. There's an ocean there. Valet, please bring me my sandworm...

The Fourth District Court of Appeal has upheld the City of Newport Beach's decision to "approve" a development project on Banning Ranch, saying that the city complied with both the California Environmental Quality Act and its own general plan. A trial judge had ruled that the city complied with CEQA but violated its own general plan.  The project is still pending before the Coastal Commission. It was the second time in less than three years that the Fourth District upheld Newport Beach's action on the Banning Ranch project. In December 2012, the court ruled that the city's EIR had properly analyzed the impact of the project on adjacent parks.  Banning Ranch  is a 400-acre parcel of land located on a coastal bluff above the Pacific Ocean in Newport Beach that was formerly the site of oil drilling. The development plans calls for remediation of the oil drilling's damage, as well as construction of 1,375 residences, 75,000 square feet of retail space and a boutique hotel to be built on approximately one-quarter of the property. A local conservancy has opposed the development project and advocated for public purchase of the entire property.  Newport Beach's coastal land use plan, or CLUP, was approved by the Coastal Commission in 2005. However, the city has never submitted an implementation plan to the Coastal Commission, so even though the city reviews development projects in the coastal zone, the commission still must approve all permits. Furthermore, the coastal land use plan specifically excludes Banning Ranch, categorizing it as a "deferred certification area" – a strategy that was apparently intended to ensure that controversy over Banning Ranch did not hold up certification of the CLUP. Thus, any action on Banning Ranch must include not just permit approval but approval of the coastal land use plan for the Banning Ranch property. The general plan's land use element calls on the city to "coordinate with state and federal agencies" – more specifically to "work with appropriate state and federal agencies to identify wetlands and habitats to be preserved and/or restored and those on which development will be permitted."  The coastal land use plan, which is part of the general plan, calls on the city to identify environmentally sensitive habitat areas, or ESHAs, in reviewing any coastal project.  In challenging the city's "approval" of the Banning Ranch project, the Banning Ranch conservancy argued that the city violated the general plan by not identifying and mitigating for the loss of wetlands and other environmentally sensitive lands prior to project approval; and that the city violated CEQA by not identifying ESHAs in the environmental impact report. Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert Louis Becking ruled that the city complied with CEQA but violated the general plan. A three-judge panel of the Fourth District affirmed Becking on the CEQA issue but overturned him on the general plan issue, effectively upholding the city's final action.  Upholding Becking on the CEQA issue was a relatively straightforward matter for the appellate court. The court agreed that the CLUP states that the city must identify ESHAs in reviewing any project in the coastal zone. However, the court pointed out that the CLUP specifically excludes Banning Ranch, which will be subject to a separate land use plan that will require separate certification from the Coastal Commission. The court's reasoning on the general plan issue required a much longer and more closely reasoned argument, which turned on the question of what constitutes "coordination" under the general plan. In arguing that the city violated the general plan, the Banning Ranch Conservancy relied heavily on California Native Plant Society v. City of Rancho Cordova (2009) 172 Cal.App.4th 603. In that case, the Third District Court of Appeal ruled that the City of Rancho Cordova, outside of Sacramento, did not sufficiently coordinate with state and federal agencies in designing mitigation for lost wetlands, as called for in its own general plan. Judge Becking bought the argument. But the Third District did not. Referring to specific provisions in the Rancho Cordova and Newport Beach general plans, Justice Raymond Ikola wrote: "… he City's LU 6.5.6 is not as clear as Rancho Cordova's NR 1.7.1.  In the context of discussing the substantive requirements for mitigation, NR 1.7.1 issues a specific command to Rancho Cordova to coordinate with a specific agency (‘Mitigation shall be designed by the City in coordination with the . . . Service') to accomplish a specific task (i.e., the design of the mitigation measures). … The mitigation at issue pertained to a biological resources evaluation that had to occur ‘prior to project approval.' "In contrast," he added, "LU 6.5.6 (entitled "Coordination with State and Federal Agencies") does not compel coordination with the Coastal Commission prior to approval of the Project: ‘Work with appropriate state and federal agencies to identify wetlands and habitats to be preserved and/or restored and those on which development will be permitted.' The Coastal Commission is not mentioned in the text or in the referenced implementation actions.  There is no indication in LU 6.5.6 that this ‘work' must be completed before the City approves the Project."   Justice Ikola criticized Judge Becking sharply for the way he interpreted the city's general plan. Ikola acknowledged that in the Rancho Cordova case, the general plan required "something in between consultation and capitulation". He added: "The appellate court declined to dictate the terms of the writ of mandate, leaving it to the trial court." In the Banning Ranch case, however, Judge Becking went much further, even though the general plan language required less. Justice Ikola took Becking to task for what he characterized as judicial activism: "The court does not explain what it means, in practical terms, to coordinate and work with the Coastal Commission prior to project approval. Presumably, it is something in between consultation and capitulation.  But the lack of specific guidance in the general plan indicates to us that it is unreasonable to find the City's view of LU 6.5.6 to be arbitrary.   He added: "It is improper for courts to micromanage these sorts of finely tuned questions of policy and strategy that are left unanswered by the general plan.  Cities are free to include clear, substantive requirements in their general plans, which will be enforced by the courts.  But courts should not invent obligations out of thin air." The Case: Banning Ranch Conservancy v. City of Newport Beach , No. G049691 (May 20, 2015)  The Lawyers: For Banning Ranch Conservancy (Plaintiffs and Appellants): John G. McClendon, Leibold McClendon & Mann, john@ceqa.com For City of Newport Beach (Defendants and Appellants): Whitman F. Manley, Remy, Moose & Manley, wmanley@rmmenvirolaw.com For Newport Banning Ranch LLC (Real Party in Interest): Susan K. Hori, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, shori@manatt.com For Coastal Commission (Amicus Curiae): Jamee Jordan Patterson, Deputy Attorney General, jamee.patterson@doj.ca.gov

This morning, Hector Tobar, a respected Los Angeles-area commentator, personally heaped all the ecological sins of humankind on to the current residents of Los Angeles in an editorial in the New York Times , a publication that has gotten increasingly feisty about its hatred for California of late. Tobar writes:   "As a native of Los Angeles, I am significantly more responsible for global warming than your average resident of planet Earth. We pioneered an energy-guzzling lifestyle for the masses and taught the world to follow our lead. Now a parched, endless summer is our punishment.   "My own sins against Mother Nature started when I was 15, growing up in the suburb of South Whittier in the 1970s. Every day, I drove my mother's Pinto station wagon an hour to my first job, downtown. Back then, we burned gasoline with abandon, churning greenhouse gases into the atmosphere before any of us were familiar with the phrase. The clouds of smog that choked the Los Angeles basin of my childhood eventually came to smother Beijing, New Delhi and Cairo."  As a "native of Los Angeles," Tobar should know better.  If The New York Times is going to report old news, why not tell us about the sinking of the Titanic while they're at it? You could poll all 40 million collective residents of Beijing, New Delhi, and Cairo and every one of them would tell you something unflattering, and at least partly true, about Los Angeles' environmental impact. It's not like people didn't notice the 250-mile scar that William Mulholland dug in the Earth in 1913. In the 1950s, Los Angeles wasn't called "Smog City" for nothing.    I can accept old criticism if it's useful and true. Dispiriting self-flagellation is another matter.   In blaming his 15-year-old self, Tobar implies that every choice about releasing carbon is a conscious, autonomous act that inherently acknowledges and accepts its own consequences. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth — especially in the 1970s. Humanity did not know then what it knows now about climate change. We learn slowly as a species, and we implement policy changes even more slowly. That doesn't mean that a kid in Whittier — or any of the 10 million others who live in the L.A. area — needs to blame himself.  People in Los Angeles, even those blinded by some orange-hued vision of the American dream, did not just wake up one day and decide that they "wanted" what they got. The sprawl, freeways, and (not incidentally) segregation of Southern California was as much a function of policy as economics. The federal government's role in suburbanization (partly through the GI Bill) is well documented. Banks contributed too. Plenty of companies, from homebuilders to pipe-forgers loved the idea of building sprawling, infrastructure-intensive developments. This pattern persisted all over the country. (Levittown, the first mass-produced suburb, is in Long Island.)  So let's also look at the national picture. Tobar's ecological footprint isn't large because he's from Los Angeles. It's large because he's from the United States . With the exception of a few oil-rich states, we as a country use more energy and create more emissions per capita than any other peoples in the history of the world. Amid this orgy, guess where California ranks among the states in per capita energy consumption? Forty-ninth . We're not Manhattan — which is remarkably efficient, because of shared walls and non-car transport — but we're not Bloomfield Hills either. (Here's an interactive nationwide map of carbon footprints. See if you can spot the center cities.) Tobar blames Los Angeles for ushering in the global age of the automobile. But being first doesn't mean that we are responsible (or even that we are "we" — anyone who had a drivers license in 1925 is long dead). If L.A. hadn't done it first, I'm sure Detroit would have found some other place willing to build roads, highways, and parking garages. Some other city's trolleys would have fallen into disrepair, and the people of that city probably would have been just as thrilled to discover the freedom of the automobile as the people of L.A. were.    I've published many choice words about the short-sightedness and intellectual myopia of Modernist planners — the ones who, following Le Corbusier, dreamed of motion, freedom, and compartmentalization -- but I don't necessarily blame them. Even Robert Moses was doing what seemed right for the time. What's wrong is to keep doing that same thing in the face of evidence of its harm. If I may agree with Tobar for a moment, it's further inaction that makes us sinners today. It just seems like Tobar would have us cut off carbon and turn all of that ticky-tack into apartment buildings all at once. (Elon Musk might be able to help us with the first part; developers will tell you that the second part is going to take a while.)  Tobar solemnly decries our past reliance on driving only to imply that nothing has changed: "In response to the drought emergency, the state is trying to force people to use less water, but only the bravest California politician would suggest we force people to drive less to fight global warming " (emphasis added).  In so doing, he ignores the literally millions of people who are trying to repent, incrementally, at least — and who didn't need his beratement to understand their opportunities and responsibilities to create a more sustainable Southern California.   In fact, by Tobar's measure, California's politicians should be storming the beaches of Normandy. Since the editors of the Times op-ed page didn't bother to check Tobar's facts here, for the record, are a few tidbits that Californians have supported, signed, voted for, and implemented:  AB 32 : The Global Warming Solutions Act (2006)  SB 375 and the regional Sustainable Communities Strategies (2008 and ongoing)  SB 743 : Replacing Level-of-Service metrics with Vehicle Miles Traveled (2014)  Los Angeles Measure R: $40 billion for transportation , only 20 percent of which is for roads (2008)  Los Angeles' Sustainability City "pLAn" (2015)  Gov. Brown's executive order on greenhouse gas emissions (2015)  In cities and counties across the state, not to mention at the Capitol, this list grows nearly by the day. This may not qualify as heroism. We haven't reversed the thermometer yet. But I'll be damned if people aren't trying. And,yes, every one of these policies calls, explicitly or implicitly, for Californians to drive less. I literally cannot go to a conference without multiple public officials touting a car-free future.  These laws, policies, and funding measures — which have made California the greenest jurisdiction west of Iceland -- represent the will and effort of politicians like former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Assemblymember Fran Pavley, former Senate President Pro Tem Darrel Steinberg, the board and staff of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and his staff, current Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and his staff, the majorities of the state Assembly and Senate, the staffs and boards of the state's metropolitan planning organizations, and, indirectly, the voters who elected them.  Speaking of voters: one of those policies, Measure R, represents 67 percent of Los Angeles-area voters in the 2008 countywide election. That's 2.039 million people -- 2.039 million people in our smog-choked wasteland who get to be proud of the progress they are trying to make and who are primed to support more efforts to come.  I guess Tobar wasn't one of those voters. But that's OK. We don't need him. We have a long road ahead of us (hopefully one with fewer roads) and many brave souls leading the way.

The Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP) has taken on the difficult task of bringing high-flown talk about renewable energy goals down, literally, to earth, in the form of land use planning. It's asking members of the energy, planning and environmental fields to cooperate in adding a new dimension to the meaning of property ownership in California's southeastern deserts.  But it's also running into resistance from local governments that don't want the plan to restrict their own land use power; Imperial County, for example, has banned new solar facilities. And some environmental groups are criticizing the plan because of the potential environmental impact of large-scale solar and other renewable energy facilities. It's an ironic clash between a governor who wants rapid progress on renewable energy and local and environmental groups who are concerned about the environmental impact of large-scale solar facilities. The plan is a state and federal "landscape-scale" effort to find room in the Mojave and Colorado Deserts for large wind, solar and geothermal projects that would generate 20,000 more megawatts of power by 2040. It's driven by ambitious state carbon-reduction goals, especially the current Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS) requires utilities to buy 33% of all their energy from renewable sources by 2020. This standard is driven, in turn, by former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Executive Order S-3-05 to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, and Gov. Jerry Brown's recent Executive Order B-30-15 , which sets an interim goal of 40% reduction by 2030. The plan is further encouraged by less strenuous federal policies promoting alternative energy. The affected area extends from Calexico to the Tehachapis to the Owens Valley across some 22.5 million acres in seven California counties: Inyo, Kern, San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Riverside, Imperial and (less extensively) San Diego.    The 20,000-megawatt scale of the plan presumes that by 2040 California will be populated by some 48 million people who draw about two-thirds of their electricity from zero-carbon sources without the help of nuclear power, using long jolts of that power to run at least 18 million electric vehicles. That scenario presumes California will restrict emissions more sharply in the future in order to meet the goal of the two executive orders. The DRECP plan's calculations presume about two-thirds of energy used in California will have to be from renewable sources by 2040. In his inaugural speech this January, Governor Brown called for increasing renewables from 33% in 2020 to 50% in 2030. Bills are pending in the Legislature to write the 50% goal into law: AB 197 , AB 645 and SB 350 .  (Separately, an appeal before the California Supreme Court is testing how much consideration metropolitan planning organizations must give to EO S-3-05 in preparing Sustainable Communities Strategies. State Sen. Fran Pavley has introduced SB 32 , which would anticipate the court's ruling by writing EO S-3-05 GHG reduction standard into law more firmly.) Managed Collision Environmental advocates, local officials and others have different ideas about the uses and purposes of desert land and the means available to generate and conserve power. Among key criticisms is the allegation expressed in a Basin & Range Watch comment that "As drafted, the DRECP errs by positioning a single means, utility-scale desert renewable energy, to be an end unto itself."  In interviews, California Energy Commission officials defended the plan as an exercise in understanding existing policy -- working out where and how sufficient generation projects can be built to meet state renewable-energy goals that are already established policy. To them, the plan innovates by working to connect the institutional worlds of energy planning and land use planning in a large-scale advance regional planning process, rather than wait for those worlds to collide piecemeal in the contexts of individual projects. "Land use types of considerations in planning have not traditionally been thought of very much in energy planning at all," said Karen Douglas, who is the lead California Energy Commission member for the DRECP process. Where planners or local officials would view local land use permitting, including CEQA environmental review, as the central "point of approval" for a project, she said energy planning focuses more on procurement and transmission.  The disconnect is such that the 2014 Integrated Energy Planning Report mentions a stakeholders' discussion where parties disagreed on what might seem an elementary question: "whether and how environmental information should factor into procurement." (That's in Chapter 8 of the report, which Douglas recommended as relevant context; the chapter also discusses long-term progress in connecting procurement processes with land use planning.) The DRECP plan seeks to merge these two planning processes farther upstream. It would steer utility-scale renewable energy projects toward "development focus areas" while shielding more valued cultural and natural resources under the National Landscape Conservation System or requiring mitigation. It would coordinate regulatory changes and agreements among multiple agencies, led by the "Renewable Energy Action Team" (REAT): the California Energy Commission, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Because the DRECP applies previously established energy policies, Douglas said "what this project does not do is affect the state energy policy decisions going forward about how we're going to achieve our goals." For example, she said, it doesn't control how strongly the state encourages or subsidizes rooftop solar generation. Hence, in discussing the rooftop solar issue, she said, "What I hope is that people don't see sending a comment letter in on the DRECP as the most effective step to promote rooftop solar if that's their overall goal."  Begun under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the planning process has continued through multiple changes of leadership. Douglas said she and Kevin Hunting, chief deputy director at the Department of Fish and Wildlife, had worked on the whole process from Schwarzenegger's first executive order, while Michael Picker served as lead representative from both governors' offices, and was succeeded by Ken Alex, director of the Office of Planning and Research, as of Picker's appointment to head the California Public Utilities Commission. 12,000 Comments Some 12,000 comments were submitted by the February 23 comment deadline for the DRECP's draft Environmental Impact Report and Environmental Impact Statement (EIR/EIS) . Generally those letters did not hark back to the happy notions that were popular during Governor Edmund "Jerry" Brown's first term about solar and wind generators as environmentally benign sources of free energy. Instead, many insisted that although wind, solar and geothermal power sites make minimal use of fossil fuels, the habitats and human land use possibilities that they displace aren't so renewable.  Comments were thick with technical recitals of 21st-century limits and protests about embattled desert tortoises, unique oases facing groundwater risks, and constricted tax bases. They reflected a political transition, driven by the recent Recovery Act solar projects, toward identifying large-scale "clean" energy plants with the hazards of grandiose public works rather than the benefits of avoiding fossil fuels.  (In a few current renewable energy conflicts meanwhile, Inyo County has passed a General Plan amendment discouraging solar thermal projects such as the Hidden Hills installation, and the Energy Commission joined the county in opposing that project . Imperial County has placed a moratorium on new solar project permits . Recently the Commission posted a report saying that about 3,500 birds appear to have been killed by the Ivanpah thermal solar generator in one year. And the Manzanar Committee has been petitioning against a plan by the L.A. Department of Water and Power to place a "Solar Ranch" installation near the Manzanar National Historic Site. Environmental advocates -- and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – argued in their comments that the proposal, in planning for 20,000 megawatts of additional renewable power, overstated the need for large installations. They argued the DRECP paid too little attention to air and water impacts, and would not sufficiently protect important habitats and resources, such as parts of the Amargosa River watershed.  But some utility advocates, especially those concerned with wind power, argued that the 20,000-megawatt figure was too low and that that proposed development focus areas gave them too little usable space. Wind and solar industry advocates wrote that a larger proportion of installations could go on BLM land rather than private property.  Groups concerned with historic preservation, recreation and tourism objected similarly to disruption of existing landscapes. There were protests from tribal governments, notably the Quechan and Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla . There were objections to visual impacts on historic and tourism destinations, and to possible limits on hiking and off-road vehicle recreation. Imperial Valley business, farm and local government commenters worried about effects on farmland and the Salton Sea. The Desert Sun reported Imperial County officials feared the DRECP's mitigation program could compete financially with the Imperial Irrigation District 's existing Salton Sea Restoration and Renewable Energy Initiative , a plan to fund Salton Sea remediation with proceeds from geothermal energy projects. Douglas, in response, said she had "followed pretty closely some of the interest in using revenue" from geothermal projects on mitigation work, and the plan drafters would work with the county to resolve the matter. Los Angeles County is by far the most coordinated with the DRECP process. Its freshly updated General Plan for unincorporated county land designates expanded Significant Ecological Areas (SEAs) for conservation and Economic Opportunity Areas to concentrate development. County officials said the DRECP's drafters have agreed to keep their Development Focus Areas out of both types of zones, and that the final DRECP plan would reflect the recently finalized new boundaries. Los Angeles County was among recipients of renewable energy planning grants under AB X1 13, passed in 2011. Other recipients in the DRECP area were Imperial, Inyo, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, all of which have therefore worked on planning updates for renewable energy. Small business and farming groups objected to the DRECP's preference for placing installations on private rather than public land. In inland counties where much of the land is public, county officials protested the potential loss of tax revenue, either through direct construction of renewable energy projects or through mitigation measures creating habitat easements. Several comments bristled defensively about the primacy of local land use authority.  The Wilderness Society's comment observed that in passing last year's SB 871 solar project tax exemption, the Legislature created a "huge disincentive for counties to be willing to site projects on suitable private lands." A Step Back Via Phasing In what was widely reported as a concession to pressure, the REAT agencies announced plans March 10 to separate the DRECP's three regulatory parts, handling them one by one in a "phased approach" that starts with the less controversial Land Use Plan Amendment (LUPA) affecting lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).  That will leave the agencies more time to negotiate over the latter two components of the plan, which more directly affect private property and local government authority. Those are the General Conservation Plan (GCP), drafted for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approval and intended to govern federal "incidental take" permits on damage to species in non-federal lands; and the Natural Community Conservation Plan (NCCP), prepared for approval by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to apply to the whole project area. The phasing approach won't solve everything: the Sierra Club responded to the announcement by warning that "more federal public lands could be developed for renewable energy, at least in the short term." Phasing does not directly address the expressions of confusion about function, authority and geographic detail that appear in many comments -- including comments from the California Desert Renewable Energy Working Group , a roundtable of environmental and energy industry players.  Why 20,000 Megawatts? All of the proposed DRECP scenarios call for the same volume of new renewable generation capacity: an additional 20,000 megawatts by 2040. The EPA , Sierra Club and Basin & Range Watch were only a few of many commenters making that argument. A Sierra Club analysis (see p. 54 ff) argued that 10,000 to 15,000 megawatts would be a sufficient goal and suggested the DRECP numbers were incorrectly slanted in favor of utility-scale renewable energy installations rather than other means of carbon reduction. A MoveOn petition , reporting more than 1,400 signatures, was among comments calling on the DRECP agencies to give rooftop solar generation more of a chance in calculating demand for power. By the DRECP agencies' own account, the 20,000 figure is rounded up from estimates that are themselves uncertain. Douglas said it isn't a forecast, only "a planning framework for some reasonable amount of renewable energy that may happen." In fact she said the planning group chose to project numbers for 2040, not 2050, because scenarios for meeting the EO S-3-05 goal call for a huge further increase in electric vehicle use that would double total demand for electricity from 2040 to 2050. And the more distant the projection, "the less comfortable we are." But Douglas argued it was less risky to over-plan than to under-plan, saying the plan itself didn't create procurement or transmission line approvals, and "We could sit here and say there are potential future scenarios where none of this is needed, or we could do the planning work today in case it is needed." The calculations underlying DRECP energy demand assumptions were downplayed in the draft EIR/EIS, appearing not in the executive summary but in the Appendix F3 "acreage calculator" section. Analyst David Vidaver of the Energy Commission's Energy Assessments Division, who led the work on the calculations, pointed out the main demand figures used for the DRECP land use proposals on Page 21 in the third column of a table displaying four possible sets of assumptions. It's the one captioned "15,000 MW CSDG Scenario." That scenario calls for 49,233 megawatts of "zero-carbon" energy generation statewide by 2040, of which 18,327 would come from utilities' energy installations in the DRECP's seven-county desert area. (The 20,000 figure is rounded up from there.) The "15,000 MW CSDG" is an assumption more generous to rooftop solar than some scenarios: it presumes that "customer-side distributed generation" -- likely to be rooftop solar-- will generate a further 15,000 megawatts by 2040 statewide. Meanwhile, Energy Commission spokeswoman Laurie Sinsley called attention to a comment from the California Wind Energy Association that argued the 20,000-megawatt estimate was arbitrarily low, especially its wind energy component. It cited to higher figures in studies cited by the Air Resources Board and in a recent study by Energy and Environmental Economics, Inc. (E3). Vidaver said the E3 study called for more "standalone" wind and solar facilities although it started from assumptions similar in the DRECP calculations.

A South-Central Los Angeles fast-food establishment constituted a public nuisance that merited additional restrictions on its operations, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled. The City of Los Angeles determined that Tam's Burgers No. 6 - located at Figueroa and 101st Street - constituted a public nuisance even though the burger stand's owners claimed most of the problems arose from the fact that the burger stand was located in a high-crime neighborhood. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert O'Brien ruled in favor of the city and the Second District, Division Five, upheld O'Brien's decision. The City of Los Angeles Zoning Administrator declared Tam's No. 6 a public nuisance in 2012, after the Los Angeles Police Department determined that Tam's had been the subject of an inordinate number of police calls. The city required Tam's to add a wide variety of operational restrictions, including limiting hours of operation, establishing a complaint hot line, and installing a six-foot wrought-iron fence. An appeal to the Los Angeles City Council failed, and then Judge O'Brien ruled against Tam's. On appeal, Tam's argued that the trial court should have reviewed the matter de-novo, using its independent judgment. Tam's also argued that the nuisance ruling should be overturned because "the City failed to establish a causal connection between their operations and the nuisance activity of third parties."   Writing for a three-judge panel of the Fifth Division, Justice Richard Mosk concliuded that, no matter what standard of review the trial court uses, the appellate court must use a substantial evidence standard of review.  Once that had been established, he wrote: "The trial court properly found that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that the cost of operating conditions would force Tam's out of business.  Mosk also wrote that the substantial evidence found that Tam's did operate in a manner that constituted a nuisance. Even though Tam's No. 6 argued that ambient crime in the neighborhood was the problem, the appellate court noted that another Tam's 20 blocks away did not have similar problems. "Plaintiffs assert that they should not be responsible legally for the problems that occur in a high crime area. But there was substantial evidence that the plaintiffs failed to take steeps to ameliorate the problem," Mosk wrote. The Case: Jack Benetatos v. City of Los Angeles , No. B253491  The Lawyers:  For Benetatos: Benjamin Reznik, Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell, MR@jmbm.com  For City of Los Angeles, Amy Brothers, Deputy City Attorney, amy.brothers@lacity.org

Back in the early days of email, before Facebook and Buzzfeed, people used to send jokes around as chain messages. "Forwards" we sometimes called them. My favorite of these forwards was "Ways to Confuse Your Roommate" (here's a version of it). My favorite way: "Go to the gym. Use the multipurpose room. For just one purpose." I've often thought about streets the same way. We usually use them for just one purpose, especially in California. And yet, no one is ever baffled.  The complete streets movement is changing this attitude. As most planners know, complete streets have been gaining popularity for the past few years, as the infrastructural equivalent of smart growth. Inspired by the Dutch woonerf and, before that, by the simple reality of multi-use, pre-automobile streets, complete streets seek to accommodate a diverse array of transportation modes all in the same space. The movement contends that feet and cars can peacefully coexist, and that streets can be places that people inhabit rather than pass through.  As with so many new urban interventions, converting existing streets into something more "complete" takes a lot longer than building them in the first place. Expanding sidewalks, installing traffic-calming structures, replanting, and repaving comprise a complex task. But that's easy compared to the planning and approvals process that any such project has to endure.  We can chart the progress of complete streets in Southern California by the UCLA Lewis Center's Downtown Los Angeles Forum on Transportation, Land Use and the Environment , the eighth edition of which takes place May 14. The conference first focused on complete streets in 2011, back when the idea was fresh, exciting, and largely untested. This year's rendition, entitled "Complete Streets, Competing Priorities" comes at moment when complete streets are catching on and when cities are transitioning from pilot projects to more widespread adoption of the complete streets ethos. Complete streets have become so prominent that none other than U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx will be giving a keynote at the conference.  CP&DR spoke with conference organizer Madeline Brozen, of UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs, and panelist Stephanie Seskin, deputy director of the National Complete Streets Coalition  (a project of Smart Growth America, for which CP&DR publisher Bill Fulton formerly worked), about the state of complete streets in America and California today. Its advocates hope that it won't be too much longer until a single-purpose street is a source of confusion.  How has the discussion in L.A. evolved since 2011? Madeline Brozen: In 2011 we brought in people from outside regions. In 2012 we were trying to get a little more explicit about what this means for California. We had a couple different presentations from agencies in the Bay Area. The conversation was getting a little more advanced. We were hearing about more involvement from public health departments and there was more discussion about how this integrates with other planning efforts. In 2013 we were starting to expand more into how Complete Streets has become more integrated into everyday planning. For example, we had someone from Seattle talked about one of their complete streets worksheets. We heard from one of our local champions, Pasadena, about travel times and networks. We were starting to hear an elevated discussions from municipalities in the area, but there was still a lot to learn. There weren't necessarily as many projects on the ground. Two years later, there's huge leaps and bounds. One of the big legislative changes we're talking about was SB 743 and making sure we're not just talking about transportation impacts by vehicle impacts alone. We're also starting to hear how this isn't just planning for walking and biking....but really becoming more integrated into everyday transportation and mobility planning. Where does the complete streets movement stand nationwide, and how does the L.A. area rank among other places? Stephanie Seskin: I think the way that Madeline has gone through their previous forums…is kind of similar to what is happening at the national level over the last 8-10 years. The attitude has been, "here's a really great idea that we've seen implemented in very few places....but we know that it is beneficial. " We've seen research come out from different sectors. We're building year over year. Now we have 700 jurisdictions with a complete streets policy. We're asking: How does this really work? What are people doing? How does this play into the larger conversation about how we manage our cities and create places to people to access the services they need and the goods they need and just to be around each other? We're talking about how you need to be innovative and try new things. How prevalent are complete streets in these 700 jurisdictions? Are they pilot projects? Have any implemented complete streets all over the place? Seskin: The idea is that it's not just one project but it is an overall approach that you use for the project development and delivery process, starting from the biggest picture of long-range transportation plans down to the intersection design in a specific neighborhood. I think a lot of cities have really grabbed on to this as the way they are moving forward. Any of the major cities that you can think of – New York, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, Austin, Charlotte -- they're all moving in this direction. A lot of the midsize cities and smaller communities have adopted policies. In the most rural and small towns they probably haven't seen much happen yet just because they probably have a longer timeframe between projects. It really is a mix from places that have done a lot to places that are still waiting but ready. The National Complete Streets Coalition recently released " Safer Streets, Stronger Economies ." What does this report conclude? Seskin :  "Safer Streets, Stronger Economies," is based on before-and-after data from about 37 projects from around the country. The number is limited because we struggled to find enough places that collected before and after data on even the most basic things like mode share, crashes…..oddly, those aren't collected all the time or in a consistent way that made them useful for a metaanalysis. We really need to have something more concrete about what we're looking for and they were happy to support this project. We don't expect everyone to measure everything. But we're putting out some tips and best practices will help spark more agencies to undertake this project evaluation. What does a complete street look like circa 2015? Seskin : I think the movement has struggled in thinking about complete streets as a standard that you apply. So you end up with 6-lane arterials that have a four-foot bike like and a sidewalk. While the elements are there, I would not say that that fulfills the complete streets mission. We really want to focus on making sure that we're not just accommodating transit users or bicycles or people who are walking but really try to create places where those modes are as safe, comfortable, and convenient as it is to drive. In California, we have a lot of enormous arterial streets. Should planners worry about those streets, or should planers focus on smaller streets that they can really transform? Seskin : I think you want to have a network approach. I don't think it's helpful to think about specific streets only as needing to be changed. Once you've looked at the network you can prioritize corridors for upgrades. In some places it does mean rethinking those arterials in a fairly dramatic way. It's a culture issue a lot of times, not just in California but everywhere. It starts with the network and understanding that are relatively workable with small changes and then balancing those bit bigger arterials like Figueroa, for example. If you're a planner in an agency and you want to get into complete streets, what's your best advice for them? Seskin : The first is making friends with your local community groups, whether they're transportation-specific or not. These kinds of changes have to be coming from residents and they need to be communicated to the political leadership as well as the appointed leadership. You need to have that partnership. I think it can be difficult being a young professional trying to do right and now getting much support from your superiors. Having the advocacy coming from outside can be very helpful. I think the other piece with agencies is there's a lot of worrying, and understandably so. The way to make it happen is to be willing to just try things and be willing to do the before and after. A lot of times you can try it with just paint and inexpensive planters. Doing open Streets events helps get people thinking about what public space means and what access means. Brozen : One of the things that I have started thinking about is to really attach people to the idea of neighborhoods and get them to think about how they use their neighborhoods and think about what they like about them: What do neighborhoods look like? What are people attracted to? Do you want to drive everywhere? Try to listen to that and see if you can approach transportation through other livability principles.

This week, Gov. Jerry Brown announced an  executive order to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40% from 1990 levels by 2030. It's being hailed as the most aggressive climate change policy pursued by any government in North America – but will it put the squeeze on California's metropolitan planning organizations and their sustainable communities strategies? Brown's order has drawn attention for its combination of ambition and immediacy. But it does not come out of thin air. Brown's 2030 targets fit, substantively and chronologically, between those of Fran Pavley's 2006 law Assembly Bill 32, which mandates lowering GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2010, and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's goals of 80 percent reduction by 2050, also established by executive order. Meeting them means that, in relatively short order, California will look, drive, and power itself far differently than it does today — especially as its population continues to rise.  The order requires all state agencies with jurisdiction over sources of greenhouse gas emissions to participate. Agencies must prepare implementation plans by September 2015, with guidance from a technical advisory group that will be set up by the Governor's Office of Planning and Research.  The governor's order does not explicitly mention Senate Bill 375, the companion legislation to AB 32 that promotes reduction of GHG emissions through changes in land use. But it could have a profound impact on the regional Sustainable Communities Strategies that are at the heart of SB 375.  Sustainable Communities Strategies are at the heart of SB 375, outlining regions' land use plans and ways that localities can promote walking, biking, and use of public transit. Though the spirit of SB 375 is in keeping with the Brown's goals, SCS's have a fraught relationship with executive orders.  In 2013, the environmental impact report for the 2011 Regional Transportation Plan — a crucial component of the SCS adopted by the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) — was invalidated by a 2013 superior court ruling, which was upheld in November by the Fourth District Court of Appeals. The courts reasoned that Schwarzenegger's executive order effectively made 2050 greenhouse gas emissions analysis mandatory under the California Environmental Quality Act. While the RTP was found to meet 2020 goals, it fell woefully short of 2050 goals and therefore was in violation of CEQA.  In March the California Supreme Court granted SANDAG's request for review. With Brown's order, all SCS's — not just San Diego's — may find themselves in limbo.  If the Supreme Court sides with the lower courts, the question becomes: Does any executive order on greenhouse gas emissions become part of CEQA, and will all of the state's 20 SCS's have to be updated accordingly? If so, the ruling would create a major conflict between two well intentioned policies that should, by all accounts, complement each other. And it could set back years of work that have been intended to put California's metro areas on the path to smart growth.  Shortly after Brown made his announcement, CP&DR 's Josh Stephens posed these questions to OPR director Ken Alex, who was also speaking at the NACW conference. Alex said that he does not expect Brown's order to require any changes in SCS's regardless of the Supreme Court's decision.  Alex said that the court was focused on the science behind the executive orders — and not on the orders per se. Essentially, he felt that the court struck down the RTP not because it failed to conform with an executive order but because, by leading to increased carbon emissions post-2020, it violated just about everything that SB 375 and AB 32 stand for. Alex said that because Brown's new targets are reasonable and necessary steps on the way to Schwarzenegger's targets, they should essentially be a non-issue for SCS's and the metropolitan planning organizations that are drafting them. (Meanwhile, Pavley has introduced Senate Bill 32, which would codify Schwarzenegger's 2050 goals.) Clearly, California's MPO's are going to hope that Alex is right. But Alex may be focusing more on outcomes than on process. Unfortunately for the MPO's, CEQA is all about process, and a ruling against SANDAG that effectively makes Brown's executive order part of CEQA, could add a major step in what is already a long process. 2020 is only five years away. 2030 will be here before we know it.

BEVERLY HILLS -This week's  Milken Institute Global Conference  brought together more CEO's, heads of state, hedge fund managers, and industrialists than, I reckon, any other annual gathering in the United States. It's a strange event at which to be an urbanist - and not just because it takes place in one of our most unusual cities, Beverly Hills.  Planners, developers, and sundry folk love and believe in our cities. Many of us love our cities, and we are inspired daily by their dynamism and, in some case, their enormity. Los Angeles has 4 million people. And it functions (sort of). Amazing, right?! I think so. But then you pass the Splenda to a CEO in the coffee line and realize that the annual revenue of his or her company might exceed that of a city's budget, or even its gross metropolitan product. That's humbling. It's more humbling when you consider that some of these companies, from Twitter to Google to all the finance companies, hardly exist in physical space. They might employ a handful of people and deliver all of their products online.  As global capital becomes more powerful, more autonomous, and more placeless, it's crucial to consider how the capitalists feel about cities. One version holds that global capital has colonized a few cities, or parts thereof, that serve the business and lifestyle demands of the ultra-wealthy. They offer hotels where meetings can take place, airports where they can land private jets, free-trade office parks where they can avoid taxes, and overpriced real estate that they can collect when they need some shut-eye. The capitalists don't care about these cities' fortunes as such, and they are happy to displace and exploit local populations. These are the  "boutique" or "luxury" cities  of Manhattan, Moscow, Dubai, London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Beverly Hills. That's the dark, Mike Davis version.  The more sanguine version holds that the world's financial leaders appreciate cities for many of the same reasons that planners do. They bring people together and embrace diversity. They foster innovation and development of new knowledge. When designed well and not crushed by debt, they are great places for everyone to "live, work, and play" (to cite my least-favorite reduction). They hold the key to environmental sustainability. They drive national economies and create wealth for countless people. Sentiment aside, the economic data backs up all of these claims: a full 60 percent of the $77 trillion of the gross planetary product is produced in the  top 600 cities . Funny that many of the same American politicians and parties that are pro-business are also vehemently anti-urban. A handful of panels focused explicitly on urban and urban-related issues. Here are a few highlights from the sessions I attended, from the local to the global: "Why L.A. is Working": This may be news to San Francisco, but the rivalry between Los Angeles and the Bay Area lives on. By most accounts, Los Angeles is doing all right. The cluster of tech startups known as "Silicon Beach," located in Santa Monica and Venice, solidifies by the day and a diverse, diffuse array of tech firms makes Los Angeles County the leading manufacturing county in the country. Of course, all of that activity pushes up office rents and cost of living for the employees of Silicon Beach. It makes you wonder where those companies were when the Santa Monica City Council  voted  to down-zone the city last week. I guess they were too busy Snapchatting each other to go to the city council meeting.  Detroit: A Case Study in Rebuilding a City's Fortunes: Some of the leaders of Detroit's bankruptcy settlement and recovery shared some lessons for how to deal with a crisis - and how not to. The consensus was that the only thing worse than declaring bankruptcy today is declaring bankruptcy tomorrow. They said that, despite the depths to which Detroit had sunk, the past two years have brought back a semblance of stability, and the private sector is responding. (I covered this session at length  here .) Conversation with U.S. Governors: Democratic Governors Hickenlooper (CO) and McAuliffe (VA) have their differences with Republican Governors McCrory (NC), and Ricketts (NE) have their political differences. But they expressed clear consensuses on the need to improve education - including vocational training and two-year colleges - and to invest in infrastructure. McCrory and Ricketts did not explain how they intended to convince their fellow GOP'ers in Washington to adopt their sense of urgency. "The Urban 6 Billion:" There's a strange comfort in hearing facts and concepts that you already know - and a surreal feeling to realize that other people in the audience don't know the same. For the record, half the people in the world live in cities, and the urban population is indeed hurtling towards six billion. Of all the panels I saw, this one touted most strongly the benefits of urban agglomeration and made me believe that capital and cities can get along. There was consensus that stolid "anchor institutions," such as universities and medical centers, are important, but possibly not as important as the helter-skelter of today's startups in the innovation economy (see my Q&A with innovation sage Enrico Moretti). The lesson for developers: reject the dogma of asset classes. It's not about investing in "office space" or "residential." Connections matter more than typologies, and diversity matters more than comparative advantage does. Planners have known this for a long time. The future is about mixed-uses, placemaking, design, and neighborhoods. It's time developers and funders figured it out too.    Finally, former Greater London Authority Chief Economic Advisor Bridget Rosewell heaped on Los Angeles the highest praise I've ever heard: "Los Angeles is the only successful polycentric city I know." I'm not sure I agree, but cheers to that. Innovative Cities: It's funny to think that a half-century ago, the Modernists felt that they had the keys to the future. Many of today's visions of the future are now trying to un-do that vision of the future, now that the future has come and gone. We hear a lot about urban innovations these days: buildings are greener, transportation networks are smarter, cities are wired within an inch of their lives. The 128-story  Shanghai Tower , designed by L.A.-based Gensler, will have turbines on top and "sky gardens" at 14-story intervals. Urban accelerators like London's  Level 39  are simultaneously fueling and employing these innovations. Nonprofits like Atlanta-based  Purpose Built Communities  are addressing place-based poverty. Some technologies are baubles, and some will be crucial for cities' future health, especially amid climate change and sustainability goals. One thing is for sure about Future 2.0: cars will drive themselves. Or maybe they won't. Gov. Jerry Brown: The conference concluded with one of Gov. Jerry Brown's two announcements about his ambitious new targets for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions: 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. The business community often has a fraught relationship with environmentalism, to say the least. But, if Detroit can rise from bankruptcy, Shanghai can turn into a megacity, a sexting app can be worth $19 billion, and developers can embraced mixed-use, then anything is possible. Especially in the state that, with the world's eighth largest economy, is a giant among nations.  The conference presented many reasons why urban stakeholders and global businesspeople alike should be optimistic about the state of the world's cities. Everyone has to recognize the symbiosis between healthy cities and general prosperity. While powerful people discussed all this and more at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, parts of Baltimore burned.

After 20 years, Los Angeles is on the verge of obtaining a new National Football League team. And as it turns out, the winning play for the NFL in Los Angeles may have been drawn up in a courtroom in Sacramento. In the cities of Carson and Inglewood, competing sponsors of stadium proposals are employing, simultaneously, a newly legitimized tactic to exempt their projects from review under the California Environmental Quality Act. Carson used the tactic to approve its stadium last week in record time.  Last year, the California Supreme Court decided Tuolomne Jobs & Small Business Alliance v. Superior Court of Tuolomne County  in favor of Walmart, which had proposed a ballot initiative to approve a superstore in the City of Sonora. Before the initiative went to voters, the city council adopted the language of the initiative, effectively approving the project and claiming the CEQA exception that would have been granted had voters actually approved the project. It was a clever maneuver that combined two quirks of the California initiative process – the ability of a local government to simply adopt an initiative rather than place it on the ballot and the fact that the courts have ruled, particularly in 2001's Friends of Sierra Madre v. City of Sierra Madre, that initiatives are not subject to CEQA review because the constitution trumps statute. The court ruled that the California Elections Code allowed for this maneuver.  The Tuolumne decision means that, essentially, CEQA review can be avoided not only by popular vote but also by council action – if the council is adopting an initiative that has qualified for the ballot. Members of California's environmental community have feared that the ruling opens up a huge hole in the state's defensive line against environmentally insensitive development.  "I think the decision, if you just look at the legal background and what the election code says, was correctly decided," said David Pettit, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "I think it's a bad decision in terms of public policy, because you're cutting out… two most important values of CEQA." Pettit described those values as public participation and the ability of opponents of a project to file lawsuits if they believe an EIR is faulty.  The Tuolumne precedent applies to any potential project that falls under CEQA jurisdiction. But the coincidence of two high-profile projects both employing the tactic of council approval of proposed ballot measures suggests that developers and public officials are eager to use the new tool to speed up some projects.  In Inglewood, more than 22,000 residents signed a petition to place the proposed stadium and entertainment center on the ballot. Proposed by a partnership between Stan Kroenke, the owner of the St. Louis Rams, and Stockbridge Capital, the major partner in the mixed-use redevelopment of the Hollywood Park race track site (http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-2337), the 80,000-seat stadium would presumably house a relocated Rams team.  Shortly after the group submitted its signatures in late January, the Inglewood City Council indicated that it would dispense with the actual vote and proceed with direct approval of the language of the ballot initiative. City officials considered the actual vote to be superfluous. Opponents of the stadium project circulated a petition to place on the ballot a referendum that would un-do council approval, but that effort appears to be waning.  "We had more people sign the initiative than had ever voted in an election in Inglewood, so we were certain that it was going to pass," said Inglewood Mayor James Butts. "We would have spent $200,000 on an election for something we knew would pass." Butts added that the Hollywood Park redevelopment has been planned since 2006. It is only now getting underway, having spent three years going through the CEQA process and weathering the 2008 recession.  A similar pattern is playing out in Carson, where a partnership between the Oakland Raiders and the San Diego Chargers has proposed a stadium that would house both teams. Backers submitted 14,000 signatures – almost double the required number – March 21. The City Council approved the project one month later. With both stadiums headed for approval the question is whether they will inspire an onslaught of similar attempts or whether they amount to two high-profile anomalies. It may turn out that the Tuolumne tactic makes sense only under specific conditions.  "I can certainly see the appeal of this tactic, if you've got a smaller city and you feel that people just want the jobs more than anything else," said Pettit. "In a place like L.A. or San Francisco, I think it's very less likely to work." Large cities pose a challenge because of political rivalries and the challenges of amassing the tens of thousands of signatures that may be required to put a question on the ballot. Conversely, projects that are not on the billion-dollar order of a football stadium may have relatively little trouble with the conventional CEQA process in the first place.  As well, competition between Inglewood and Carson may have prompted them to use the Tuolumne tactic to fast-track approvals, since it is likely that the NFL will approve a team (or teams) for only one of the two projects.  "When you have a situation like this where there are competitors that want to do what you're doing, to unnecessarily slow yourself down, it's suicidal economically for your community," said Butts. Butts said that one of the benefits of using the Tuolumne provision is that it makes the project much less susceptible to lawsuits, including, he said, lawsuits that could be filed by the competition in Carson.  "What I don't like about CEQA….you open yourself up to people outside your community suing you," said Butts. "I am certain that would occur." Supporters of the tactic insist that council approval of a would-be vote is not lacking in safeguards. And supporters have to ensure that the project that is circulated for the vote and approved by the council is essentially shovel-ready. By contrast, the EIR process gives developers the chance to introduce mitigation measures along the way.  Carson City Attorney Sunny Soltani insisted that, were the City Council to approve the language of the ballot initiative (which has not yet come before the council), it would be anything but a rubber stamp. She said that the Council reserves the right to conduct its own environmental analysis of the proposal and to reject it if it causes what they consider undue impacts.  "The council can require staff to hire consultants to look at the initiative's mitigation measures to see if they are giving due consideration to the issues that they would be concerned about," said Soltani. Butts said that the Inglewood stadium proposal amounts to a modification of the existing Hollywood Park redevelopment plan, which had a full EIR. He emphasized that it will not generate significantly more traffic than the racetrack did or than the nearby Forum does.  He said that the city would not be approving the project were it not for those existing conditions and the rigor of the review that has already been conducted.  "It wasn't like we were going to put a nuclear power plant or even a gas station," said Butts. "It was a substitute entertainment venue." Nonetheless, cities and developers are likely to explore the precedent that Tuolumne has set. Pettit said that he would "definitely" advise clients to pursue this tactic if he was representing developers and not environmental interests.  "I think the development community is watching these two stadiums with huge interest," said Petit. "If it does work, I think you're going to see...a fair amount of development projects using this instead of going through CEQA."  It remains to be seen whether the Legislature agrees with Pettit and other environmentalists who say that the ruling violates the spirit of CEQA.  "I do believe it is outside the intent of CEQA, which is to not let public agencies escape their responsibilities by passing them off to the voters," said attorney Antonio Rossmann. "The interesting thing to watch for will be this year to see if, after going back and forth on CEQA, there is a consensus that builds around some CEQA amendments. And if changes to CEQA prove too controversial, as they often have, there may be opportunities to amend the Elections Code instead."  Contacts:  James Butts, Mayor, City of Inglewood, (310) 412-5111 David Pettit, senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, 310-434-2300 Antonio Rossman, partner at Rossmann and Moore, LLP, (415) 861-1401 Sunny Soltani, City Attorney, City of Carson, (949) 250-5407