General (12)
Susana Barrios
From:Julie Filppi <jfilppi@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, August 25, 2026 2:13 PM
To:Rudy Emami; Cory Wilkerson; Rafael Cobian; Natalie Meeks; Public Comment
Subject:\[EXTERNAL\] Dudek Wildfire Evacuation Study
Warning: This email originated from outside the City of Anaheim. Do not click links or open
attachments unless you recognize the sender and are expecting the message.
To whom it may concern,
If a city evaluates every project solely by comparing its small addition to an already catastrophic status
quo, development would theoretically proceed to infinity because adding 50 cars to a 5,000-car gridlock
is mathematically a "minor" percentage increase.
However, California law explicitly forbids this logic, and multiple state statutes directly mandate
evaluating and remediating existing evacuation dangers.
California courts recognized the "Drop in the Bucket" loophole decades ago and created a firm legal
rule under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to kill it:
The Ratio Theory Prohibition.
Under CEQA Guidelines 15130 and 15065, if an existing environmental or safety condition is already
severely degraded (e.g., evacuation routes are already at or over capacity), any additional
contribution—no matter how small—is legally considered "cumulatively considerable".
The Court Rule: The worse the existing baseline condition, the more significant a small addition
becomes, not less. A lead agency cannot legally claim an impact is "insignificant" simply because the
existing traffic or evacuation gridlock is already terrible.
If a study shows that Santa Ana Canyon Road is currently at 100% evacuation capacity (as experienced in
2017), adding even 10 additional homes creates a Significant Cumulative Impact under state law,
requiring physical mitigation or project redesign.
The following court cases illustrate the points discussed above.
Kings County Farm Bureau v. City of Hanford (1990) 221 Cal.App.3d 692 (Case No.
F011485): The Fifth District Court of Appeal rejected the "ratio theory" (or "drop in the bucket"
approach) used to evaluate a proposed cogeneration plant's emissions. The court held that an
agency cannot determine a project's impact is insignificant simply by comparing its small
incremental addition against an already massive regional pollution problem, as this approach
would improperly insulate large-scale environmental issues from environmental review.
Communities for a Better Environment v. California Resources Agency (2002) 103
Cal.App.4th 98 (Case No. C038844): The Third District Court of Appeal reaffirmed and
broadened the rule established in Kings County, striking down CEQA Guideline provisions that
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allowed projects to avoid cumulative impact review if their emissions or impacts met de
minimis standards. The court ruled that when an environmental resource (such as roadway
capacity or an air basin) is already severely compromised, even a relatively small incremental
addition can be "cumulatively considerable" and legally significant.
California Building Industry Association v. Bay Area Air Quality Management District (2015)
62 Cal.4th 369 (Case No. S213478): The California Supreme Court clarified that while CEQA
generally evaluates a project's impacts on the environment rather than the environment's
impacts on a project, lead agencies are required to evaluate whether a proposed project
will exacerbate existing hazards. This principle directly applies to development in high wildfire
hazard zones where introducing new population or structures worsens existing evacuation
bottlenecks.
Sierra Watch v. County of Placer (2021) 69 Cal.App.5th 86 (Case No. C088130): The Third
District Court of Appeal invalidated an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for a large-scale
development in a high fire hazard area because the evacuation analysis relied on unrealistic
operational assumptions and failed to adequately assess traffic congestion on constrained
evacuation routes during wildfire events.
In closing, I want to add that the Wildfire Evacuation Study you are proposing points directly to one of the
most famous paradoxes in California land-use law: the "Drop in the Bucket" trap. Please reconsider
how you are proposing to measure a development's impact on our already severely impacted evacuation
routes in East Anaheim.
Sincerely,
Julie Filppi
Resident of Anaheim since 1972.
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