Opinion: California environmental laws are essential to meet housing and climate goals

Ross is chair of Sierra Membership San Diego Chapter and lives in Del Mar Mesa. Andersen is vice chair of the Sierra Membership San Diego Chapter Conservation Committee and lives in Jamul. Chatten-Brown is an environmental legal professional representing PQ-NE Motion Group, which efficiently challenged the Junipers challenge in Rancho Peñasquitos, and lives in Mission Hills.

San Diegans deserve smart housing that gives safety from wildfires, site visitors gridlock and the ravages of local weather change. Sierra Membership San Diego favors sensible and reasonably priced housing, and we’re happy with our file supporting smart growth designed to make sure the well being and security of future residents and present neighborhoods. This consists of San Diego State College’s Mission Valley campus, which is able to present almost 5,000 housing items.

We enthusiastically help tasks that adjust to California state legislation from the starting stage by completion. The landmark California Environmental High quality Act, which has been cynically maligned by the constructing business, is a vital software for shielding the standard of life in California. It ensures the general public’s proper to take part in land-use choices and holds public businesses accountable to the communities they serve. CEQA isn’t any impediment to housing tasks which can be deliberate correctly and adjust to state legislation.

Sadly, too many elected officers in California have swallowed the manufactured “anti-affordable housing” CEQA sound chunk and proceed to help tasks that violate each the letter and spirit of the legislation.

Unlawful tasks put the general public in danger for wildfire, gridlock, site visitors, air air pollution and accelerated local weather change. Additionally they threaten the standard of life for our communities and impede progress in confronting local weather change. Furthermore, ignoring CEQA on the challenge approval degree invitations avoidable and costly building delays.

The Sierra Membership San Diego Chapter’s high priorities embrace combating local weather change, holding native governments chargeable for assembly their greenhouse gasoline emission discount obligations, and advocating for reasonably priced infill housing alongside public transportation corridors. The Workplace of the Lawyer Normal of California has joined the Sierra Membership in a number of profitable CEQA lawsuits difficult sprawl tasks within the county of San Diego for failure to mitigate wildfire and local weather change impacts inside the county.

The latest Junipers challenge in Rancho Peñasquitos is an instance of irresponsible growth. In Might 2021, Sierra Membership despatched a letter to each member of the San Diego Metropolis Council detailing the environmental points with the proposal for primarily single-family properties. The challenge is in a chosen “very excessive hearth hazard severity zone” removed from any transit, with insufficient hearth evacuation routes, and it gives no mitigation for the substantial greenhouse gasoline emissions produced throughout building and operation, far exceeding town of San Diego’s and the state’s Local weather Motion Plans.

Sierra Membership additionally detailed that the challenge would produce automobile emissions far above town common with no close by public transportation out there now or within the foreseeable future. Vehicles and vehicles account for over half of town’s greenhouse gasoline emissions and air air pollution. Moreover, we alerted the Metropolis Council to the absence of secure, efficient wildfire evacuation routes in an space with a historical past of stalled evacuations and hearth dangers.

Sierra Membership and different teams warned the San Diego Metropolis Council and Planning Fee that these violations of CEQA might find yourself in litigation. But the challenge was rubber-stamped whereas the cumulative impacts from different tasks within the rapid space — one actually subsequent door and already being constructed having escaped substantive environmental evaluate — had been ignored and acceptable mitigation was not required. In approving the challenge, the Metropolis Council failed to guard the individuals of San Diego from wildfire, evacuation, site visitors and larger greenhouse gasoline emissions.

Fortunately, a group group cried foul as a result of there was no evaluation of the extreme impacts of a number of different developments in Rancho Peñasquitos and Carmel Mountain Ranch. The group and its attorneys offered proof that these tasks would produce added wildfire and evacuation impacts from the hundreds of future new residents dwelling in a small space that weren’t studied and deliberate for.

This month, Superior Court docket Decide Ronald Frazier agreed that town failed to contemplate the cumulative impression of adjoining tasks on wildfire and evacuation routes. The individuals of San Diego County can thank this residents’ group, the Sierra Membership and decide Frazier for shielding their well being and security, one thing the San Diego Metropolis Council didn’t do.

The notion that San Diego should improve the availability of any housing, regardless of the place it’s positioned, how it’s constructed or whether or not it consists of acceptable mitigation, is unsupportable. San Diegans mustn’t should expend time and treasure to uphold their rights to scrub air, hearth security and transit-oriented housing when the legislation calls for it. It’s time that our public officers comply with the legislation and defend the residents of San Diego from damaging and unlawful tasks.