The Rusty Duck and Hungry Hunter restaurants originally stood on a block of property where Interstate 5 crosses the American River in Sacramento, but they have since closed and their buildings have been empty for a while.
The land was recently purchased by a developer who secured authority from city officials to erect four new, high-rise structures on it, totaling 826 apartments.
A new cluster of apartment high-rises near downtown Sacramento would seem to be a perfect fit, given its location next to a busy freeway and the dilapidated state of the existing structures, city staff concluded when they exempted the project from a detailed review under the California Environmental Quality Act.
Nonetheless, the American River Association seeks to obstruct or, at minimum, postpone approval. The group has filed a lawsuit, appealing the city staff’s decision, claiming that the project will negatively impact wildlife habitat and cause light and noise pollution.
This exemplifies how CEQA, which was passed by then-Governor Ronald Reagan fifty years ago, is frequently used to stall projects that seem to have little to no environmental impact.
Housing advocates have long lamented the abuse of CEQA, and the political establishment in the state has made token efforts to reform it. A CEQA reform was previously referred to by former governor Jerry Brown as “the Lord’s work,” but he declined to take on union and environmental organizations who filed such an appeal.
By coincidence, CEQA reform may advance as a result of a recent state Supreme Court decision over a contentious Berkeley housing project.
Read Also: Florida Teens Arrested After Participating in ‘Exceptionally Dangerous’ TikTok Challenge
This ruling put an end to a three-year legal dispute about a 1,200-unit student housing complex that the University of California intended to construct on People’s Park, the storied location of antiwar and civil rights protests in the 1960s.
An appeal court decision favoring the project’s opponents stated that noise pollution from students’ living quarters was an environmental impact that needed to be lessened.
The verdict appeared to have given the not-in-my-back-yard people (NIMBYs), who oppose practically any project, a new weapon, which caused an immediate commotion in the media and in politics.
According to Chris Elmendorf, a housing law expert and law professor at UC Davis, the Supreme Court’s ruling may have a far wider effect on the ongoing discussion surrounding CEQA.
Elmendorf argues that it undermines the long-held belief that CEQA supersedes other regulatory regulations in a lengthy study that he released on X, the former Twitter.
Elmendorf stated, “The ruling in the UC Berkeley case, ‘Social noise is pollution?!,’ may be remembered by future generations as the pivotal moment between Old CEQA and New CEQA.” The 1970s CA Supreme Court rulings that established the “fullest possible protection” for the environment through a broad interpretation of CEQA gave rise to the “old CEQA.”
The Court of Appeal based its decision that student “social noise” is an environmental impact that needs to be considered and lessened when planning a long-term development plan or university housing project on this principle.
