Extra

Berkeley Citizens For a Better Plan filed a CEQA law suit on August 19, in the Alameda County Superior Court. BC4BP is suing not only the Regents and University of California Chancellor Carol Christ, but also the donor for the 16/story luxury dorm, the Anchor project on Oxford Street, the Helen Diller Foundation, its subsidiaries Prometheus Real Estate Group and Oski 360, and DOES 21 through 40 donors and subsidiaries for the 17 story luxury student apartment on People’s Park.  

This California Environmental Quality Action case challenges a Final Environmental Impact Report prepared by the University of California, Berkeley for its Long Range Development Plan effective until 2036-7.  

The FEIR fails to comply with the informational requirements of CEQA, caused by UCB drafting an EIR that is inclusive — insofar as it fails to address the population increase —and over inclusive —as it shoves two construction projects into the EIR for the LRDP. The result is an unintelligible and legally inadequate EIR.  

Our other cited issues are serious inadequacies in the final EIR with very little attention to possible mitigations including alternatives to vastly increased student population never fully described.  

The EIR fails to comply with the informational requirements of CEQA. Nowhere does the final EIR examine alternatives to the population increase. Instead it only examined impacts of planned demolition and construction presumed to be required to accommodate the proposed increase.