Clover Valley Foundation v. City of Rocklin

INTRODUCTION

This is a case where CEQA worked. 1 The City of Rocklin (the City) in 2007 approved a residential development project for an undeveloped area of the City known as Clover Valley. The approval culminated more than 10 years of planning and environmental review for the site’s development. Since 1981, zoning authorized nearly 1,000 homes for the site. The site’s owners applied to develop a project for that size in 1991, and environmental review began in earnest in 1995. As a result of environmental concerns analyzed since then, the approved project is roughly half the size it could have been. The amount of open space has increased by a factor of five. The project owners have already paid millions of dollars to the City to construct needed *207 infrastructure. The approved project has been redesigned to protect numerous environmental resources on the site, particularly prehistoric Native American artifacts.

Plaintiffs Clover Valley Foundation, the Sierra Club, and the Town of Loomis, however, claim the City has still failed to conduct legally sufficient environmental review. They filed separate petitions for writs of mandate challenging the City’s project…