At its weekly convention held on August 24, 2022, the California Supreme Courtroom acted to switch its latest majority opinion in County of Butte v. Division of Water Assets (State Water Contractors) (2022) ___ Cal.5th ___, Case No. S258574. In granting the request, made in a letter signed by a variety of main CEQA practitioners, for modification to right an faulty assertion in its opinion about required subjects of EIR dialogue (see my 8/19/22 submit on counsel’s letter here), the Supreme Courtroom issued an “Order Modifying Opinion” stating:
The bulk opinion on this case, filed on August 1, 2022, and showing at ___ Cal.5th ___, is modified as follows:
The final full sentence on web page 13 of the filed opinion, starting “The doc should embrace”, is modified to learn:
The doc should embrace an outline of the proposed venture and its environmental setting and discussions of (1) the potential environmental results of the venture, (2) possible measures to mitigate any important adversarial environmental results of the venture, (3) the comparative environmental results of a variety of affordable alternate options to the proposed venture, together with a “no venture” various, and (4) the cumulative impression of the venture’s varied environmental results. (CEQA Tips, §§ 15124, 15126, 15126.4, 15126.6, 15130.) An EIR may additionally embrace a dialogue of the financial and social results of the venture. (Id., § 15131.)
This modification doesn’t have an effect on the judgment.
(8/24/22 Order, emph. added.)
The Courtroom’s corrective motion in eradicating “financial and social results” from its checklist of necessary EIR discussions, and including the sentence italicized above, makes clear – according to longstanding legislation – that an EIR’s required focus is on bodily impacts to the atmosphere, and that it could, however is just not usually required to, talk about subjects (resembling “financial and social results”) that don’t fall into that class.
