In Tsakopoulos Investments v. County of Sacramento (2023) 95 Cal. App. 5th 280, the Third District Court of Appeal (“Court”) upheld the County of Sacramento’s (“County”) certification of the Mather South Community Master Plan (the “Master Plan” or “Project”) environmental impact report (EIR) under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). In the published portion of the opinion, the Court held that the County’s choice of numeric significance thresholds for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the Master Plan EIR was supported by substantial evidence, including the use of local and sector-specific data. To that end, the Court denied plaintiff Tsakopoulos Investments, LLC’s (“Tsakopoulos”) CEQA challenge to the County’s approval of the Project.
BackgroundIn 2020, the County approved a Master Plan and certified the EIR for an 848-acre project in Sacramento County, which included thousands of residential units, an environmental education campus, a research and development park, two elementary schools, commercial retail space, and open space. Tsakopoulos filed a petition for a writ of mandate asserting that the County’s approval of the Project violated CEQA; the trial court denied the petition.
On appeal, Tsakopoulos challenged the trial court’s judgment on two grounds: (1) the climate change analysis of the EIR was based on a methodology that the Supreme Court of California in Center for Biological Diversity v. Department of Fish &Wildlife (2015) 62 Cal.4th 204 (“Center for Biological Diversity”) and the Fourth District Court of Appeal in Golden Door Properties, LLC v. County of San Diego (2018) 27 Cal.App.5th 892 (“Golden Door”) had previously rejected, and (2) the County failed to assess the impacts of construction-related GHG emissions and analyze the human health impacts of the Project’s emissions.
Appeal Court DecisionBefore reaching Tsakopoulos’ CEQA challenge, the Court provided a detailed...
