Waste Management of Alameda County, Inc. v. County of Alameda

In Waste Management of Alameda County, Inc. v. County of Alameda (2000) 79 Cal. App. 4th 1223, a corporation in competition with an existing landfill facility filed a petition for writ of mandate, challenging the county's decision to allow the rival facility to accept certain nonhazardous solid wastes without first undergoing review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). ( Waste Management, supra, 79 Cal. App. 4th at pp. 1229-1232.) However, the corporation lacked personal standing to maintain the action because the corporation's "commercial and competitive interests are not within the zone of interests CEQA was intended to preserve or protect and cannot serve as a beneficial interest for purposes of the standing requirement." ( Id. at p. 1235.) "There are two prongs to the test for the beneficial interest required to pursue an action in mandamus. The first . . . is whether the plaintiff will obtain some benefit from issuance of the writ or suffer some detriment from its denial. The plaintiff's interest must be direct . . ., and it must be substantial. . . . Also, it generally must be special in the sense that it is over and above the interest held in common by the public at large. . . . The second prong of the beneficial interest test is whether the interest the plaintiff seeks to advance is within the zone of interests to be protected or regulated by the legal duty asserted. . . ." ( Id. at pp. 1233-1234.) The Court held a waste disposal company's commercial and competitive interests were not within the zone of interests CEQA was intended to preserve or protect, and thus could not serve as a beneficial interest for purposes of a mandamus challenge to the solid waste facility permit granted to a competitor. More specifically, the court said: "To permit a for-profit corporation to maintain a citizen's action for personal economic and competitive purposes, rather than out of demonstrable environmental concerns, would conflict with the legislatively declared policy that environmental review be carried out in the most efficient and expeditious manner in order to conserve financial, governmental, physical, and social resources for application toward mitigation of actual significant effects on the environment." (Waste Management of Alabama County, Inc. v. County of Alameda, supra, at page 1239.) In sum, Waste Management sought to suspend the receipt or disposal of solid waste at a competitor's landfill pending CEQA review of a competitor's permit. ( Id. at p. 1224.) Waste Management "complained that it was required to go through a permit revision process with CEQA review, while its competitor was not, thus identifying its injury as the extra cost it incurred and continuing competitive injury due to the competitor's lower costs." ( Id. at p. 1229.) The Court of Appeal, Third District determined that Waste Management's economic injury did not serve as a beneficial interest for purposes of the standing requirement, noting that Waste Management was not entitled "to insist that competitors be subjected to a regulatory process which otherwise may be inapplicable, merely because Waste Management was subjected to the process." ( Id. at p. 1235, fn. 4.) Rather, "with respect to the decision requiring Waste Management to undergo CEQA review, Waste Management's remedy was to seek judicial review of that decision." (Ibid.)