Habitat and Watershed Caretakers v. City of Santa Cruz CA6

I. Background

The City certified an environmental impact report (EIR) for a project to seek an amendment of the City’s sphere of influence (SOI) to include an undeveloped portion of the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) campus known as “North Campus.” The purpose of the amendment of the City’s SOI was to permit the City to provide extraterritorial water and sewer services to proposed new development in North Campus. The draft EIR found one significant and unavoidable direct impact: “ ‘The proposed project would result in future provision of water service to the North Campus portion of the UCSC campus that would support new planned development and growth to the year 2020. There are inadequate water supplies to serve the project under existing and future multiple dry year (drought) conditions.’ ” (Habitat & Watershed Caretakers v. City of Santa Cruz (2013) 213 Cal.App.4th 1277, 1285 (Habitat I).) In other words, the City lacked the water supply necessary to provide the service that the project proposed. Habitat filed a mandate petition contending that the City had failed to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) (Pub. Resources Code, § 21000 et seq.).…