Jack Shu, a member of the board of directors for the Cleveland National Forest Foundation, talks to KPBS about his organization’s lawsuit against SANDAG’s regional transportation plan.
By Maureen Cavanaugh, Megan Burke
and Peggy Pico
Click here to listen to the KPBS Midday Edition segment
Earlier this week, a San Diego Superior Court judge ruled against a 40-year plan devised by San Diego County officials on the region’s transportation needs.
The San Diego County Association of Governments, or SANDAG, plan outlined $200 billion in projects from the building of new freeway lanes to new public transportation and bicycle projects.
Local leaders touted the fact this was the first long-range transportation plan from any California county since the state set regional targets for reducing greenhouse gases. So what went wrong?
Erin Chalmers, an attorney from Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger, who represented the Cleveland National Forest Foundation and the Sierra Club in their suit against the plan, told KPBS that SANDAG “barely met some short-term greenhouse gas reduction requirements of state law.”
“However it really failed to grapple with the fact that long-term needs to keep reducing emissions go far beyond these short-term goals,” he said.
He pointed to the executive order that mandates reducing greenhouse embassy emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050.
“Even though SANDAG’s plan goes to the year 2050, they ignored this long-term need to reduce emissions,” he said. “And that’s what the judge said, for a long-term plan like this, you need to look at the long-term trend of greenhouse gas emissions. So SANDAG looked at some short-term greenhouse gas reductions that it admits were mostly caused by the poor economy, not by its plan, but then ignored the fact that its plans allows emissions to significantly rise over time.”
SANDAG declined KPBS’ request for an interview, but sent the following statement by email:
“The SANDAG Board of Directors will meet in closed session on Friday, Dec. 7 to discuss Judge Taylor’s ruling on the Regional Transportation Plan (RTP). We stand behind the plan and its environmental impact report. As Judge Taylor noted, the RTP “involved thousands of hours of effort by numerous talented professionals.” The plan was approved by the California Air Resources Board, California Department of Transportation, and U.S. Department of Transportation.”
But Chalmers said the judge decided that environmental impact report does not meet the requirements of law.
“This environmental impact report is required to do two things in particular that SANDAG didn’t do,” he said. “It’s required to inform the public and decision-makers about the full impact of its project over the entire life of the project. That’s where it failed here by only looking at the short-term greenhouse gas reduction goals, as opposed to grappling with the long-term goals. And secondly, SANDAG was required to take a leadership role and really mitigate the impact of its project by encouraging or spending money on measures that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the long-run.”
“It basically kicked the can down the road and said, well, we’ll do more later,” he added. “So it wasn’t the plan itself that didn’t meet the short-term greenhouse gas reductions, but it was in fact the environmental impact report that the judge invalidated.”
Jack Shu, a member of the board of directors of the Cleveland National Forest Foundation, told KPBS that SANDAG’s plan also failed in other ways.
“One is against CEQA (the California Environmental Quality Act),” he said. “And it also failed the people. People are looking for transit. We want more transit. This win that we had early this week is a win for workers and students, people who for whatever reason rely on public transit. They need to spend less time getting from one part of the city to another to get to work. It’s a win for businessmen and retailers who want more vibrant economies within their urban areas. Transit would help do that. It’s a win for parents and grandparents who want fewer cases of asthma for their kids and less cancer. It’s a win for a lot of people.”
Claire Trageser contributed to this report.