Court Denies Petition Against Biomass Cogeneration Plant
In California, Siskiyou Daily News reports that the Siskiyou County Superior Court denied a petition for a writ of mandate likely giving Roseburg Forest Products clearance to move forward on a biomass cogeneration plant at its Weed facility. A writ of mandate is a court order to a governing agency or another court compelling that entity to correct a course of action it has taken.
The petition, filed by the Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center and Weed Concerned Citizens (petitioners), would have compelled Siskiyou County to augment the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) prepared for Roseburg’s planned biomass facility. The petitioners contended that the county’s EIR for the project was deficient in a number of areas, including a reasonable range of alternatives, air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, noise impacts, water impacts, project description and response to comments.
The court’s decision, authored by Judge Francis Barclay, details the standards for reviewing an EIR’s compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the reasons for denying the petition:
An EIR “is presumed adequate and the burden is on the petitioner to show that the EIR is legally inadequate,” and that the court does not pass judgment on the correctness of the environmental conclusions, “but only upon its sufficiency as an informative document.”
The court also looks for “adequacy, completeness, and a good faith effort at full disclosure,” the decision reads.
More on the story available here.
