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Board of Supervisors <br /> January 28, 2013 <br /> Page 6 <br /> it simply requires that those decisions be informed, and therefore balanced."(Citizens of Goleta <br /> Valley v. Board of Supervisors(1990)52 Cal.3d 553, 576 (Goleta II).) <br /> In the City of Del Mar case, the petitioner municipality(Del Mar), in attempting to force <br /> the approval of an alternative development project less dense than what its sister city (San <br /> Diego) had proposed and approved, asserted that the respondent lead agency "ha[d] <br /> misconstrued the scope of CEQA's infeasibility requirement" by equating "feasibility" with <br /> "desirability." The Court of Appeal disagreed Emphasizing that San Diego had attempted to <br /> accommodate various economic and social factors in reaching its land use decision, the court <br /> reasoned as follows: <br /> "feasibility" under CEQA encompasses "desirability" to the extent that <br /> desirability is based on a reasonable balancing of the relevant economic, <br /> environmental, social, and technological factors. <br /> (133 Cal.App.3d at p.417 (emphasis added).) <br /> Under City of Del Mar, a court reviewing a lead agency's ultimate assessment as to <br /> whether an alternative is "infeasible"—a determination made in findings, not in the EIR—looks <br /> only to see whether the agency has reasonably balanced competing environmental, economic, <br /> social, and technological considerations, and has supported its decision with substantial <br /> evidence. <br /> Another leading case, Sierra Club v. County of Napa (2004) 121 CalApp.4th 1490 (Sierra <br /> Club),upheld a lead agency's reliance on an applicant's project objectives in rejecting alternatives as <br /> infeasible in findings. There, a wine-making company submitted to the respondent county an <br /> application for a use permit to develop a 1.4 million square foot integrated winery facility on 218 acres <br /> of property zoned for industrial uses and located in an industrial park near the county's airport. The <br /> applicant identified several objectives related to its desire to consolidate at a single location existing <br /> wine-making and warehousing facilities operating at different locations.(Id at p. 1499.) The EIR for <br /> the project concluded that, despite mitigation, impacts to wetlands would be significant and <br /> unavoidable. The EIR analyzed three project alternatives: a no project alternative, an alternative <br /> that avoided all on-site wetlands, and a reduced-scale alternative. Based in large part on the <br /> applicant's objectives and information submitted by the applicant, the county board of <br /> supervisors,in approving the project,rejected the alternatives as infeasible. <br /> Sierra Club sued, arguing that the county had insufficient bases to reject the reduced- <br /> scale alternative as infeasible. The reduced-scale alternative would have reduced the size of the <br /> project by 50 percent, thereby reducing the impacts of the project, including those relating to the <br /> wetlands. Rejecting this challenge, the appellate court found that substantial evidence supported <br /> the conclusion in the county's findings that this alternative would frustrate the objectives of <br /> consolidating winery operations and thereby reducing the existing traffic and air quality impacts <br /> occurring from the existing, fragmented operations. (Id. at pp. 1506-1509.) <br />