Are the days of "levels of service" as a performance measure under the California Environmental Quality Act numbered?

In an unpublished opinion, the First District Court of Appeal has rejected an attack on San Francisco's single-use plastic-bag ban, saying that the city did not violate the California Environmental Quality Act and that local plastic-bag bans are not overridden by the state's Retail Food Code.

In a new opinion, the Sixth District Court of Appeal has unraveled a confusing set of events surrounding the certification of the environmental impact report for San Jose's new general plan, concluding that an environmental group exhausted all administrative remedies and can sue over the EIR.

The California Clean Energy Committee sued over the certification of the EIR, saying that it should not be penalized because of the confusing way San Jose certified the EIR. The Sixth District agreed.

In the pantheon of developer complaints about the California Environmental Quality Act, perhaps the most common one is that it's too easy to use it to file crazy lawsuits purely for the purposes of gumming up the works.

Which is maybe why the building industry and property rights advocates have spent so much time lately filing CEQA lawsuits apparently designed to gum up the works.

Jerry Brown may have given up on CEQA reform this year, but Darrell Steinberg has not.

The Senate leader released details of his proposed reform of the California Environmental Quality Act yesterday. It's not sweeping reform. Rather, it contains a series of incremental changes designed to speed projects along. These include statewide significance treshholds on some topics including traffic; some reforms to CEQA litigation procedures; and $30 million in annual funding to the Strategic Growth Council to continue providing statewide planning grants.

The Court of Appeal has upheld an environmental impact report dealing with mining in a dry riverbed in Santa Barbara County.

Troesh Materials, Inc. submitted an application to the County of Santa Barbara ("County") to operate a new mine within the dry bed of the Cayuma River. The mine would be positioned away from the active streambed and roughly 1,500 feet upstream from an existing, active mine. Potential excavation could proceed to a maximum depth of 90 feet, with an average production of 500,000 cubic yards per year.

The CEQA reform landscape – which looked pretty robust all winter – was turned upside down on Friday.

Two weeks ago, CP&DR reported on a study by the law firm of Holland  & Knight that broke down 95 legal challenges to projects under the California Environmental Quality Act over the past 15 years. The study provided a comprehensive look for the firs ttime - finding, for example, that 60% of the cases challenged "infill" development projects as opposed to "greenfield", and over 70% of the cases were brought forth by local organizations.