Farm Bureau Anti-HSR Suit Clearly Intended to Stop Project
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By Robert Cruickshank
There's been a lot of discussion of the California Environmental Quality Act lately and the need to reform it. My view is that environmental regulations and reviews of projects are very important, but that it should not be used to stop good and environmentally friendly projects from going forward. If the review process is used with the intent of making a project better, that's great! But that's not what's happening with high speed rail.
Recently, two farm bureaus - from Merced and Madera counties - were in superior court in Sacramento to argue why CEQA should be used to stop the high speed rail project in its tracks. As this report from the Ag Alert, a publication of the California Farm Bureau Federation, makes clear, the goal is indeed to stop HSR and CEQA is merely the vehicle to achieve a result the plaintiffs could not win at the ballot box or in the state legislature:
"Regardless of the federal approval and regardless of the Obama administration's promise to expedite permits, the CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) case will stop the project if the preliminary injunction is issued," said Anja Raudabaugh, Madera County Farm Bureau executive director. "If they can’t get past the CEQA challenge, the project gets stopped….
"That the judge is going to allow our preliminary injunction hearing to occur [in November] is huge. If an injunction is issued, they will not be able to release federal money in time to complete by the December 2017 deadline, which stops our segment of the project," Raudabaugh said.
That's as clear a statement as you need to know that stopping the project outright is their goal. That question shouldn't be decided in the courts and it shouldn't be decided by using CEQA. When it comes to environmentally friendly projects like sustainable, electric passenger trains, approval by voters and legislators should be enough to determine that it will go forward. CEQA's role should be to ensure that it is built in ways that help the environment, and that any impacts are properly mitigated. And the court's role is to see that those rules are followed.
What the Farm Bureaus are after is something else entirely – using the CEQA and court processes to destroy a project they couldn't stop through the normal democratic processes. They have a right to want to stop the project, sure. But they're abusing CEQA in the process. And so this lawsuit becomes yet another piece of evidence in the growing case for CEQA reform.
As to the Farm Bureau's concerns about HSR's impact on the ag industry, I'm not sure I agree with this logic:
"This case for us is about preserving ag land," Raudabaugh said. "The threat that this project poses is the biggest threat to the Central San Joaquin Valley that has ever happened, because of the size of the project and the potential to urbanize prime farmland."
I strongly support preserving ag land too. But I do not see how HSR threatens it. It certainly won't urbanize it. The best comparison to the HSR project is Interstate 5, built through the middle of farmland on the west side of the Central Valley. It didn’t lead to urbanization, as you can see by the long, empty, almost desolate drive on I-5 between Tracy and the Grapevine.
And because HSR stations will be in the middle of existing cities, it won't create pressure for urbanization. Instead it will create pressure to densify existing urban areas, with the most pressure coming in the areas immediately adjacent to the stations. Farmers in Merced or Madera counties whose land won't see tracks running through it will see no impacts at all. Farmers whose land will have tracks running through it will obviously see impacts, but those are minor and can be mitigated.
Who knows what will happen in Sacramento Superior Court in November. But this does show what should happen in the Sacramento State Capitol in 2013, and that is reform of CEQA so that people can't use the law to try and kill good, environmentally friendly projects they personally dislike.
Robert Cruickshank writes on California politics at Calitics and California High Speed Rail Blog. This article was originally published at California High Speed Rail Blog.
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Your blog post relies upon the false assumption that the HSR Project is environmentally beneficial. There is mounting evidence that the Project will be more destructive and less beneficial than the CHSRA has acknowledged in their propaganda, er, their environmental review documents and business plans. That multiple CEQA law suits have been brought to challenge the deficient EIRs is the consequence of the CHSRA's hubris and deafness to the concerns of many communities and businesses that will be injured and even devastated by the Project. The Farm Bureaus (and the broad coalition that they are a part of) have brought a lawsuit that seeks to determine the CHSRA's compliance with CEQA. This is the very purpose of allowing judicial review, and is no abuse.
It's only one of the largest public works projects in California's history. Can't see why we'd need those thousands of long-term construction jobs with double-digit unemployment in the Valley. By all means, let's shut that down under the guise of not-good-enough and show the rest of the country that California is exactly as hostile to development as the right-wing likes to paint it.
California has become the poster boy for environmental regulation, yet environmental lawsuits are crippling the State. Unfortunately, regulatory protection measures that defy logic and good science not only damage the credibility of resource biologists and managers, they may also have stark political implications that threaten the fundamental premise of conservation.
The actual conservation value of environmental regulation is seldom questioned; many environmental regulations appear little more than knee-jerk reactions to avert legal challenges. Nonetheless, it is unfortunate that calls for California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) reform come mostly from people with poor understanding of the law, or those who would rather not disclose the impacts of their projects in the first place.
A nuanced approach to environmental protection, CEQA provides a general blueprint for disclosing and analyzing potentially significant environmental impacts that is very different from endangered species legislation. In my opinion, one of the best pieces of environmental legislation ever written, rather than any intrinsic flaws, the decision-making body’s inability to distinguish bogus self-serving environmental concerns from legitimate CEQA issues is more the fault of the people practicing this law.
My knowledge of CEQA comes from twenty-two years of consulting for forest landowners in northern California. Having learned the importance of controlling the narrative and tiering off existing planning documents, I still find dealing with Lead Agencies a frustrating experience. Challenging timber harvesting has become a virtual cottage industry and the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection is often compelled to address speculative impacts and infeasible recommendations.
A common tactics that stakeholder groups and rival resource agencies employ to micro-manage or obstruct controversial projects, there seemed something inherently wrong with a process more interested in questions than answers. However, the CEQA Guidelines and careful reading of relevant case law make clear that applicants have no obligation to address comments and concerns that are speculative, untrue, or outside the authority of law.
The California Department of Fish and Game has a particularly poor record making statutory interpretations. The results of a policy formulated by biologists unfamiliar with the law and land planners ignorant of biology, it is common to find baseline conditions ignored or misrepresented and potential impacts to population resources exaggerated.
There also seems to be great confusion as to what constitutes a significant environmental effect in the first place. Limited to a locally occurring plant or animal community threatened by elimination or substantial habitat reduction, or some alleged esthetic resource, a review of the type of generic CEQA comments cited by the public show the extent that this process is misunderstood.
Fortunately, the courts are finally starting to see through frivolous CEQA claims. A minor procedural fault is no longer enough to hold up a project. Claimants must now also be prepared to provide substantial evidence that specify which environmental resource is at risk.
The Farm Bureau is free to sue anyone they want, but seeing that economic and social changes resulting from a project shall not be treated as a significant environmental effect, I think they are going to have trouble convincing the court that “urbanizing farmland” is a CEQA issue. Barring any flagrant endangered species issue, it is very likely that the safety and efficiency of the State’s transportation system may outweigh any environmental concerns. I only wish they would pick up their own tab and not pass it on to State taxpayers, as is the custom with their opposite number in the environmental community.
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