Bakersfield Citizens for Local Control v. City of Bakersfield and Panama 99 Properties (2004)
Topics: Environment | Lawsuits
Bakersfield Citizens for Local Control (BCLC) challenged the development of two retail shopping centers in the southwestern portion of the City of Bakersfield, alleging violations of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The shopping centers, when completed, would create a combined total of 1.1 million square feet of retail space. Each shopping center was designed to contain a Wal-Mart Supercenter plus a mix of large anchor stores, smaller retailers, and a gas station. An Environmental Impact Report (EIR) was prepared and certified for each project. BCLC appealed the City of Bakersfield, California’s approval of these projects, charging that the EIRs were insufficient. In this court decision, the 5th District Court of Appeals ruled that the EIR’s did not fulfill their informational obligations because they failed to consider the projects’ individual and cumulative potential to indirectly cause urban/suburban decay by precipitating a downward spiral of store closures and long-term vacancies in existing shopping centers. The court also found that the developers’ cumulative impacts analyses were defective because they did not treat the other shopping center as a relevant project or consider the combined environmental impacts of the two shopping centers. Finally, the court ruled that failure to correlate the acknowledged adverse air quality impacts to resulting adverse effects on human respiratory health was erroneous. The court decertified the EIR’s and reversed the project approvals and land use entitlements made by the city of Bakersfield, and sent the case back to the city to redo the EIRs. This decision caused work on two Wal-Marts, which were partially built, to come to a complete halt, causing at least one year’s delay.
