Michelle Ouellette

In mid-April, Ouellette attended the International Bar Association’s biennial environmental law conference in Lisbon, Portugal, as chair of the group’s Environment, Health & Safety Law Committee. An expert in the intricacies of the California Environmental Quality Act, she found the law has its counterparts in many countries — with a difference.

“CEQA evolves here through court cases because the Legislature doesn’t want to touch it,” she said. “Elsewhere, governments update their versions as necessary.”

Ouellette has recently won environmental victories for clients the City of Santa Ana and the City of Montebello in separate cases in different state appellate courts. She led a Best Best & Krieger team that successfully defeated environmental and other legal challenges to a residential and habitat preservation project in Montebello. In January, a 2nd District Court of Appeal panel affirmed a lower court’s order denying a petition for a writ of mandate that claimed the project plan was inconsistent with the city’s general plan and that the city violated open meeting laws during the approval process.

The project is planned on a nearly 500-acre plot of undeveloped land previously used for oil production. About 150 acres are slated for a residential community with the rest dedicated to open space, including 260 acres reserved for the California gnatcatcher, a bird on the federal threatened species list. Citizens for Open and Public Participation v. City of Montebello, B277060 (Cal. App. 2nd Dist., filed Dec. 23, 2014). The plaintiffs are currently seeking review by the California Supreme Court.

Last May, she argued and won for Santa Ana a decision by a 4th District Court of Appeal rejecting several legal challenges to a residential project on a portion of a former orange grove in the city. The panel upheld a 2015 trial court decision and ruled in the city’s favor on all grounds. It found that the Old Orchard Conservancy plaintiffs’ CEQA challenges lacked merit. Old Orchard Conservancy v. City of Santa Ana, G053003 (Cal. App. 4th Dist., filed April 12, 2014).

“Over the last 28 years I guess I’ve become something of an idiot savant in CEQA and NEPA and the Endangered Species Act,” Ouellette said, using the acronym for the National Environmental Policy Act. “God forbid I should have to do a contracts case,” she joked. “But these projects are significant green-lights for much needed new homes. You know what the state of housing in California is like.”

— John Roemer