San Diego adds public reports, hearings to climate efforts after lawsuit
SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — New teeth have been added to the net-zero emission goals outlined in San Diego’s ambitious climate action plan after city leaders reached a settlement agreement in two lawsuits from environmental groups.
The agreement, which was unanimously approved by the city council on Tuesday, set additional transparency requirements on San Diego’s progress towards reducing its greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2035 through the release of annual updates.
Described by the groups’ leaders as precedent setting, these updates will provide a more immediate understanding about how the city is faring on meeting its goals, instead of waiting until the release of a 2030 report as initially laid out in the in the city’s climate action plan.
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If the city is falling short, public hearings and amendments to the sweeping climate plan for more aggressive action will be triggered to identify how the city can realign with its climate targets.
“San Diego is ground zero for suffering through the impacts of the climate crisis,” founder and CEO of Climate Action Campaign, Nicole Capretz, said in a statement. Climate Action Campaign was one of the two groups who filed a lawsuit against the city over its climate action plan.
“This settlement finally requires the city to take action and correct course if they are off-track on meeting their pollution reduction goals,” she continued.
Climate Action Campaign brought their lawsuit after the city released an update to the 2015 climate action plan in 2022, accusing the city of violating the California Environmental Quality Act, one of state’s most stringent environmental laws.
A separate lawsuit brought by the Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation, also settled on Tuesday, claimed similar CEQA violations tied to a development plan that was approved for Mira Mesa in 2022.
The blueprint set out to grow Mira Mesa’s population by nearly 65,000 people over the next 30 years, while breaking up car-centric areas and allowing for more multi-story housing complexes. According to city documents, the plan linked its environmental review with the approval of the climate action plan.
While the groups acknowledge the city has been ahead of the curve on climate action, both suits argued the exisiting plan violated CEQA as it failed to include accountability mechanisms to keep San Diego on track to meet its goals of reducing emissions by 40% in 2030 before getting down to net-zero by 2035.
The settlement agreement reached between the two groups and San Diego requires policy changes if the city falls over 12.5% short of these goals and other incremental targets for various steps like converting the city’s vehicle fleet to all-electric and boosting bike and transit ridership.
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In a staff report to the council, however, city officials said the litigation caused “significant delay in development” and other projects, particularly Mira Mesa’s neighborhood development plan.
FOX 5 reached out to the City of San Diego for comment on the settlement of the lawsuits, although city officials in the staff report said the “agreed upon commitments generally reflect already planned items in the Sustainability and Mobility Department’s Work Plan.”
Under the agreement, the city will also pay $120,000 to the two groups for costs and attorneys’ fees. The first status report on the city’s climate action efforts will likely come sometime next year.
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