## Facts

- Newhall Land and Farming Company and Valencia Corporation proposed the West Creek project, a mixed residential and commercial development in northern Los Angeles County.
- Because the project required discretionary approvals, Los Angeles County acted as the CEQA lead agency and prepared an environmental impact report (EIR).
- The draft EIR estimated the project would require about 2,194 acre-feet of water per year.
- The EIR discussed regional water supply and demand and included supply figures based in part on local water purveyors’ contractual “entitlements” to State Water Project (SWP) water.
- The SWP’s entitlement system assumed facilities capable of producing about 4.23 million acre-feet per year, but the SWP was not fully completed and was then producing only about 2 to 2.5 million acre-feet per year.
- Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment (SCOPE) commented that there was no assurance water agencies would receive 100% of their SWP entitlement amounts and that using full entitlements overstated available water.
- The final EIR responded by acknowledging that future demand might exceed supply, but concluded the West Creek project would not create an unavoidable significant impact because future development would have to show water availability at the time of later approvals.
- The County certified the final EIR and approved the project.
- SCOPE petitioned for a writ of mandate challenging the adequacy of the EIR’s water-supply analysis; the trial court denied relief, and SCOPE appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether the EIR’s water-supply analysis satisfied CEQA by providing a reasonably thorough, non-misleading discussion of the amount of water that would actually be available to serve the project.
2. Whether the County could treat full SWP contractual entitlements as available supply without analyzing the gap between entitlement amounts and the SWP’s real-world ability to deliver those amounts.
3. Whether the EIR could address acknowledged water-supply uncertainty by shifting the problem to future, project-by-project proof of supply rather than analyzing water availability in the EIR for the approved project.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal reversed the judgment denying the writ petition.
- The court held the EIR’s water-service discussion was inadequate because it relied on SWP entitlement figures without a realistic analysis of actual, deliverable SWP supplies given known production and delivery limitations.
- The court rejected the EIR’s approach of acknowledging possible shortages while concluding impacts were not significant because later projects would be required to demonstrate water availability.
- The matter was remanded with directions that writ relief issue requiring the County to set aside its EIR certification and project approvals unless and until an EIR with an adequate water-supply analysis was prepared and certified.

## Legal Principles

- Under CEQA, an EIR must contain a reasonably thorough analysis that informs decisionmakers and the public; it must not present a misleading picture of environmental conditions.
- When water supply is a central project assumption, an EIR must analyze the actual amount of water likely to be available, using real-world conditions and reasonable forecasts, not merely contract “paper” allocations.
- If known constraints make full delivery of an asserted supply doubtful, the EIR must disclose and analyze that uncertainty in a clear and meaningful way.
- An agency may not avoid CEQA’s disclosure duty by approving a project based on optimistic supply assumptions and then stating that future development will have to prove supply later.
- CEQA does not require perfect prediction, but it does require a good-faith, fact-based analysis that enables informed public review and decisionmaking before approval.

## Conclusion

Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment v. County of Los Angeles held that an EIR’s water-supply section must evaluate the water that will actually be available to serve a project; reliance on full SWP contractual entitlements, without addressing known limits on SWP production and deliverability and without a meaningful present-time analysis, fails CEQA and requires the agency to revise the EIR before proceeding with approvals.


Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment v. County of Los Angeles, 131 Cal. Rptr. 2d 186 (2003)