JENI L. PFEIFFER et al. v CITY OF SUNNYVALE CITY COUNCIL Country/Territory United States of America Type of court National - higher court Date Oct 28, 2011 Source UNEP, InforMEA Court name California Court of Appeal for the Sixth Appellate District Judge BAMATTRE-MANOUKIAN, MIHARA and LUCERO Reference number No. H036310 Language English Subject Land & soil Keyword Land-use planning Abstract Palo Alto Medical Foundation proposed to expand a medical complex in the City of Sunnyvale. The proposal involved demolishing several existing structures, including three single-family residences, and then constructing a medical office building, a parking garage, and a storage and waste management area. The City prepared and certified an environmental impact report and approved the project. Concerned neighbors petitioned for a writ of mandate, challenging the EIR and project approvals. The trial court denied the petition, and the neighbors appealed, arguing that the project was inconsistent with the City's general plan and that the EIR failed to properly analyze the project's traffic and noise impacts. The 6th District Court of Appeal affirmed, finding no merit in the neighbors' arguments. In this case, the City had made specific findings that the proposed expansion was consistent with several general plan policies. Therefore, the neighbors could not show that the City abused its discretion, even if the project was inconsistent with another policy elsewhere in the plan. The court found that the neighbors had not met their burden to show, based on all of the evidence in the record, that the City's determination of general plan consistency was unreasonable. The neighbors argued that a traffic baseline for evaluating a project's traffic impacts may take into account only existing conditions, and that the City had abused its discretion by also analyzing projected conditions. The court reasoned that although an EIR must describe existing traffic conditions, it may also use projected traffic conditions to analyze a project's impacts. In this case, there was substantial evidence that traffic conditions in the project area could vary from existing conditions due to projected traffic growth and construction of other approved projects. Therefore, the City did not abuse its discretion in using future projections to analyze traffic impacts. Finally, the neighbors argued that the EIR was inadequate because it did not account for traffic noise impacts on the existing environment, and because it failed to analyze mitigation measures or alternatives that would reduce construction noise impacts to a less than significant level. The court rejected both arguments. First, the record showed that the City had expressly evaluated traffic noise impacts on the existing environment, both in the body of the EIR and in an Environmental Noise Assessment contained in an appendix. Second, the court found that CEQA requires an EIR to identify a project's significant effects on the environment and describe feasible measures for mitigating those effects. CEQA does not, however, require analysis of mitigation or alternatives that would reduce the impact of construction noise to a level of insignificance. Full text COU-158085.pdf