It was interesting to read about SCOPE’s new claims about Mayo expansion and the proposed medical office building on Singing Hills Drive & McBean today. It seems that they’ll claim in their appeal that the projects aren’t up to par with AB 32 and that both would increase greenhouse gas emissions.
“We’ve worked on this issue for three years,” she said. “The judge said the city did not have to mitigate for greenhouse emissions, but we have state law AB32 that says they have to mitigate. How can they build new developments without meeting greenhouse gas standards?”
See here’s the thing about AB 32 and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). It’s not like denying building permits in the SCV will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And it doesn’t necessarily follow that building Mayo out or the new building on Singing Hills drive will necessarily increase GHG emissions either.
Why?
What if 1,000 SCVers drive over the hill on I-5 every week to get to Dr’s appointments in the SFV? During their drive, they’re outputting x amount of GHGs.
But if we built Mayo out and added more medical office space, it stands to reason that Drs and medical services would eventually move into those spaces. Consequently, some portion of those 1,000 SCVers won’t have to drive over the hill; their commute to the Dr’s office will be shorter and they will emit less GHG because they won’t have to drive as far.
The same would be true of the physicians, nurses, and medical office workers who currently drive over the hill to get to their jobs. If they found work locally, they might emit less GHGs.
In fact, one could argue that having more goods and services available locally will reduce the amount of GHGs Santa Clarita drivers emit overall, even if it increases traffic on local roads. And that’s before we get to efficiencies designed into higher-density buildings or alternative modes of transportation that are easier to use when your destination is local and not over the hill.
Am I wrong? It’s a complicated subject that even the City and County haven’t entirely figured out yet. But I think it’s too simplistic to say that building new office buildings in Santa Clarita will increase GHG emissions.
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Your logic is sound Jeff.
OMG, I agree with KK and KK agrees with JW.
Speaking of “what if”… suppose SCVers drove from their homes to existing medical offices within 1.5 miles of Henry Mayo?
The ‘global warming’ debate should not be part of whether a building is constructed or not. Where buildings are placed won’t change global warming one iota. There have been many other good arguments for not putting excessive development on that property, but ‘global warming’ isn’t one of them.
Then again the whole ‘Gore-bull warming’ debate is just that – bull. It is so arrogant of environmentalists to think that the last 200 years of industrialization is the reason for a warming trend. The earths temperature is never static. It is always either trending up or trending down. There are many factors, including sun activity, that lead to climate change beyond greenhouse gasses. Who knows what the optimum temperature for the earth is anyway?
Lets not throw away our economic engine for the sake of unproven science.
Sorry, Jim, you are with the flat-earthers on this one. Deny all you want, but the scientific evidence is there. A few crackpots that have been discredited fight it, but that’s abotu all. A little google searching on the authors of the allegations of the denial people shows their true colors.
While the science may indeed be indicating we are in a warming cycle, it is not nearly conclusive that it is a man made warming cycle. There are not just a few ‘crackpots’, but many credible scientists on the rational side.
Sorry, but the graphs and data behind it clearly correlate the warming to the burning of fossile fuels, and not to the cyclical and random fluctations over history. But if you refuse to look at the data, you can continue to live in denial.
Just a factual comment: In California, the State adopts regulations governing how public agencies, like the City of Santa Clarita, prepare Environmental Impact Reports.
The regulations, called “CEQA Regulations” have the same force and effect as laws adopted by the Legislature. The City has to comply with them.
California law requires each county to appoint a “CEQA Judge” who will learn this very complex area of law: the California Environmental Quality Act.
One such CEQA judge in Los Angeles County named David Yaffe knows those CEQA Regulations backwards, forwards and sideways, and woe be it onto any public agency’s lawyer who doesn’t know them and has forgotten to look at them and comply with them before he/she ends up standing in front of Judge Yaffe.
Los Angeles County used to have another CEQA judge who was so intellectually lazy, and reversed so often by the Court of Appeal on a whole broad realm of decisions, that she was actually defeated when she ran for “re-elecction”…almost unheard of for judges. The Governator re-appointed her, but then she retired.
So now the “new CEQA judge” is some clown down in Norwalk, who has little no experience with CEQA let alone knowing what is in the CEQA Regulations. The also has little or no experience in the whole legal framework of law called “writs practice” which involves virtually all lawsuits against public agencies. That is who the hospital case was assigned to because “somebody” didn’t want Judge Yaffe to hear it.
City Attorney Carl Newton particularly dislikes Judge Yaffe, for obvious reasons.
The problem is with this new CEQA judge in Norwalk is that he is required to enforce the CEQA Regulations, even if he doesn’t like them. The CEQA Regulations require this “climate change analysis” to be in EIRs and mitigation measures relating to micro-climate impacts of large buildings to be mitigated.
That’s where this new judge slipped up. He used his personal, political opinions to simply ignore the CEQA Regulations on climate change analysis. In fact, he said a lot of really stupid stuff on the record in the hearing.
Generally, Superior Court judges who refuse to enforce specific laws, and who make stupid statements on the record, get reversed on appeal. The Court of Appeal calls their acitons an “abuse of discretion”. The more the trial judge is a newbie, the more likely they are to get slapped down hard by the Court of Appeal.
I’ll never forget a hearing before the Court of Appeal where an old, grouchy woman justice asked why the lazy woman CEQA judge from LA County refused to consider a particular issue. What could we say but the truth, supported by the transcript. The judge said she had a headache and a lunch date with one of her friends, and wanted to get out of the court room by 11:30AM. You should have seed the Court of Appeal judges roll their eyes, and ask for the transcript page. At that moment, it was all over for the lazy woman judge.
I expect the same thing will happen when they read the transcript with this dumb newbie CEQA judge shooting his mouth off about his political and scientific views. Eye rolling, and private calls to the Presiding Judge of the LA Superior Court reporting the new CEQA judge doesn’t know what the heck he is doing, and better be transferred to personal injury and breach of contract cases.
ttorney General Jerry Moonbeam Brown is “very big” on these CEQA Regulations on climate change analysis, so Santa Clarita may even see the Attorney General intervening in the case to defend these CEQA Regulations against the brainless mumbling of this newbie CEQA judge.
You and I might think climate change analysis for one project in Santa Clarita is a crock, but the law is the law.
The City made HUGE real estate business decision making errors in approving this project, allowing the building of the commercial buildings with no guarantee that the hospital facilities will be built, let alone built first. The City’s stupid real estate business decision making was one of the touchstones of the Gauny and Boydston campaigns.
So understand the reality: CEQA litigation is often a tool to fix other dumb decisions by stupid or corrupt city councils and city staff members.
Judge Yaffe is famous for saying that only the voters can remove stupid city council members; that he cannot undo stupid business or public health/safety decisions, but he can force cities and counties to follow CEQA, including the CEQA Regulations and CEQA cases, to the letter.
So don’t criticize what you don’t understand.
To learn anything about how CEQA works, one has to buy a huge book on the subject, which costs something like $400. Most land use and environmental lawyers use that book as their cheat sheet, because the law is so complicated.
Obviously this newby CEQA judge on the hospital case hasn’t bought let alone read the book. Obviously, he’s clueless about what a “Writs Judge” is required to do.
Unfortunately this clown is in Norwalk, not downtown L.A. where he could watch Judge Yaffe and learn the technical details of his job.
Interesting to see Farley oppose global warming when his fellow hospital attacker Plambeck uses it for her basis in filing an appeal.
Lynne Plambeck and myself are not ‘fellow hospital attackers’. I am in opposition to the expansion for the basic reasons Gauny and Smart Growth were opposed, not from the standpoint of it’s impact on alleged global warming. She and I have never discussed the hospital expansion – just for clarification.
While we may have disagreement on the global warming issue I do believe that Plambeck and Scope are good for Santa Clarita. Not believing in man made global warming does not mean that one does not want a clean environment.
But it DOES mean you are being selective in only examining data that supports your conclusion based in denial. The historical record clearly correllates human fossile fuel burning with the warming trend, and not to random and cyclical warming in the past.
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