California Eminent Domain Report

With the recent flurry of coastal law bills before the California State Legislature and the myriad headlines advising that we must retreat from the shore, sea level rise (SLR) and related climate change topics remain front and center in California. Join our Water Industry Group on May 27, 2021 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. PT for "Living on the Edge: Managing Sea Level Rise in California" as we sort through the pending legislation and discuss the basis for this ever-increasing concern with the encroaching ocean.

Comprised of attorneys from Nossaman’s Water, Environment & Land Use and ...

Yes, but the sea might beat them to it. In 2015, the California Coastal Commission adopted the Sea Level Rise Policy Guidance. This Guidance document discusses a number of potential measures for responding to sea level rise, including "managed retreat." As explained in the Guidance document, "[r]etreat strategies are those strategies that relocate or remove existing development out of hazard areas and limit the construction of new development in vulnerable areas." Examples of retreat strategies include the acquisition and buy-out of "threatened" properties. While many ...

In September 2014, the Court of Appeal for the Fourth Appellate District issued a surprising decision, finding that even if an applicant maintains that it is accepting imposed permit conditions "under protest" and expressly asserts that it plans to challenge those conditions in court, it waives any such challenge by building the approved project.  (Lynch v. California Coastal Commission (2014) 229 Cal.App.4th 658.)  In reaching this conclusion, the majority found that the protest procedure provided in the Mitigation Fee Act was inapplicable because that Act does not ...