Planning — CEQA Statute and Guidelines (2025

Planning and Conservation League (PCL) challenged the EIR certified by the Department of Water Resources (DWR) for the approval of amendments to long-term water supply contracts for the State Water Project. The original contracts were executed in the 1960s with 75-year terms ending between 2035 and 2042. The amendments extend the contract terms to 2085 and make other changes to the contracts’ financial provisions, including expanding the facilities listed as eligible for revenue bond financing. PCL also challenged the amendments under elements of water law, but those issues are not examined here.

PCL claimed that the EIR used the wrong baseline (i.e., existing contracts and water deliveries), improperly segmented the contracts from related projects (e.g., Water Fix), and failed to consider the direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts of extending the contracts. The Court dismissed each of these claims in turn. Existing conditions are properly the baseline, per the State CEQA Guidelines. Other projects, while arguably related to the water deliveries that would follow from the contract amendments, had independent utility and were not dependent upon approval of the amendments. This avoided the segmentation standard under case law. The EIR analyzed all impacts to the extent that was reasonable without resorting to speculation. Contrary to PCL’s claim, DWR is not required to analyze future projects that the amendments do not commit to and that are not caused by the project.

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Association of Environmental Professionals 2025

Summary of Key 2024 CEQA Court Cases

PCL also claimed that the project description was inadequate. The Court also dismissed this argument. The project description is not required to include other projects where the amendments would not alter the existing authority to build new or modify existing facilities of the current contracts. The Court concluded: “The project description portion of the EIR describes this amendment as providing enhanced funding mechanisms and goes on to detail the precise revisions. We see no inaccuracy in these descriptions.”

PCL argued that the EIR failed to include a reasonable range of alternatives. Again, the Court disagreed. The plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that the seven alternatives analyzed in the EIR are manifestly unreasonable and identify evidence of a potentially feasible alternative that meets the project objectives and that would reduce significant impacts. The Court rejected PCL’s argument for an economic alternative because CEQA “is not an economic protection statute.” The EIR’s no project alternative correctly did not consider a future in which the contracts are allowed to expire. Given the “critical role” of water deliveries to urban and agricultural users from the State Water Project, envisioning a world without these contracts is not required.

Prior to certifying the Final EIR, DWR added information in response to comments on the draft EIR regarding a rejected reduced deliveries alternative. PCL claimed that this warranted recirculation of the draft; the Court rejected that claim because the information “did not disclose a new environmental impact of the project or an increase in the severity of an impact.”

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