Sacramento County Superior Court Issues Tentative Ruling That Sutter Hospital Rebuild Is Out of Compliance with Environmental Law

Sacramento- Today, the Sacramento County Superior Court issued a tentative ruling on Sutter Health's rebuild of Sutter Medical Center in downtown Sacramento. The tentative ruling states that Sutter's Environmental Impact Report (EIR) neglected to substantiate the scope of traffic, parking and ozone precursor impacts and is therefore in violation of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

If the tentative ruling is upheld, it would require the City of Sacramento to rescind its previous approval of the hospital project. The City would then be required to make corrections to the EIR as required by the Court before the project could proceed any further. 

The ruling cites deficiencies in the following three areas:

• Traffic Generation Impacts: "…the substantial evidence to support the trip generation projections for the hospital would be the "trip generation and parking occupancy surveys conducted at Sutter Memorial Hospital" referred to in the EIR. The Court has not been able to locate any such surveys in the record…Lacking an accurate citation to the underlying site survey data, the Court cannot find that the trip generation projections for the hospital are supported by substantial evidence."

• Parking-Related Impacts: "The EIR's discussion of parking related impacts suffers from the same flaw as does its discussion of trip generation impacts. The stated numbers for estimated peak parking demand for the hospital component are based upon parking occupancy surveys conducted at Sutter Memorial Hospital, yet the Court has not been given any citation to the underlying data in the record that supports these numbers…the Court cannot find that the EIR's conclusions regarding estimated parking demand are supported by substantial evidence."

• Ozone Precursor Impact: "…the Court cannot find that the EIR's discussion of NOx emissions is supported by substantial evidence and as a result cannot find that the EIR fulfills its purpose as an informational document on this issue, because the actual scope of the impact is unknown."

"The Court's ruling validates what Sacramento residents have been saying all along: 'Sutter must be held accountable,'" said Sal Rosselli, President of SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West. "This could have all been avoided if the Sacramento City Council had enforced CEQA from the beginning."

Last January, the Sacramento City Council ratified Sutter's EIR for the Sutter Medical Center rebuild project, despite environmental and health concerns from community groups, healthcare workers, and local Sacramento residents about the downtown construction project. SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West, who represents healthcare workers who live in Sacramento, filed a petition challenging the adequacy of Sutter's compliance with CEQA.