## Facts

- Two large retail shopping centers were proposed in southwest Bakersfield, about 3.6 miles apart, each anchored by a Wal-Mart Supercenter and totaling about 1.1 million square feet of retail space.
- The City prepared and certified separate CEQA environmental impact reports (EIRs) for each project and then approved both projects.
- During the administrative process, a citizens’ group submitted comments and evidence asserting the projects could cause “urban/suburban decay,” including store closures, long-term vacancies, and deterioration in existing shopping centers.
- Each EIR stated urban decay would not be significant, but neither included an analysis explaining how that conclusion was reached.
- Each EIR’s cumulative-impacts discussion did not treat the other shopping center as a related project and did not analyze combined impacts.
- The EIRs identified significant air-quality impacts but did not explain how those impacts related to adverse human respiratory health effects.
- The trial court found both EIRs inadequate and ordered decertification, but left approvals in place and allowed most construction to proceed (except Wal-Mart components) pending additional CEQA compliance.
- Appeals followed, including challenges to standing, exhaustion, mootness, the EIR adequacy rulings, and the scope of the remedy.

## Issues

1. Whether the citizens’ group had standing, exhausted administrative remedies, and whether the disputes were moot due to ongoing construction.
2. Whether CEQA required analysis of reasonably foreseeable indirect physical effects in the form of urban/suburban decay.
3. Whether the EIRs’ cumulative-impacts analyses were inadequate for failing to include the other shopping center and combined impacts.
4. Whether CEQA required the EIRs to correlate significant air-quality impacts with adverse human respiratory health effects.
5. Whether an inadequate EIR required rescission of project approvals and entitlements rather than allowing approvals and most construction to remain in place.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal held the citizens’ group had standing, exhausted administrative remedies, and the appeals were not moot.
- The court held both EIRs were legally inadequate because they:
  - failed to analyze the projects’ individual and cumulative potential to indirectly cause urban/suburban decay;
  - used defective cumulative-impacts analyses by omitting the other nearby, similar shopping center and failing to assess combined impacts; and
  - failed to connect acknowledged adverse air-quality impacts to adverse human respiratory health effects.
- The court held these errors were prejudicial.
- The court required decertification of the EIRs and rescission of the project approvals and associated land-use entitlements, rejecting a remedy that left approvals intact while most construction continued.

## Legal Principles

- CEQA’s EIR requirement is informational; an agency may not state a “no significant impact” conclusion on a disputed topic without a reasoned analysis that explains how the conclusion was reached.
- When record evidence supports a fair argument that a project may indirectly cause physical environmental deterioration through urban/suburban decay, the EIR must evaluate that potential impact.
- A cumulative-impacts analysis must realistically account for related and nearby projects that are similar in type, scale, timing, and geographic relationship; isolating closely connected projects can render the analysis inadequate.
- Where an EIR identifies significant air-quality impacts, it must explain their practical meaning, including reasonably foreseeable adverse effects on human respiratory health, rather than providing technical data without context.
- Substantial CEQA defects that impair informed decision-making warrant meaningful relief; approvals and entitlements dependent on invalid EIRs must be set aside until CEQA compliance is achieved.

## Conclusion

The court held that the City’s EIRs failed CEQA’s informational requirements by omitting analysis of urban decay, omitting a combined cumulative review of two closely related retail centers, and failing to relate significant air-quality impacts to respiratory health effects; because these defects were prejudicial, the proper remedy required decertification of the EIRs and rescission of the approvals and entitlements.


Bakersfield Citizens for Local Control v. City of Bakersfield, 124 Cal. App. 4th 1184 (Ct. App. 5th Dist. 2004)