California (CEQA)
From SEA.unu.edu/wiki
Contents |
Screening
California has extensive experience with plan-level environmental impact assessments, especially in water management and land use. The Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) reports are known as Programatic EIRs.
These fields are the responsibility of many federal, state, regional and local agencies and districts. All federal agencies are subject to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and must prepare environmental impact assessment as required by NEPA. In California, all the state and local agencies and districts are subject to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and must prepare environmental impact documents under that law.
In 1993, the California legislature enacted a relatively new type of "tiered" alternative to the traditional environmental impact (EIR) that is required under the CEQA. Known as the Master Environmental Impact Report (MEIR), this innovative concept falls between Programatic EIR and project-level environmental impact report.
Stages
Screening
The environmental assessment studies in California are mostly focused on the following fields :
Water Management
As 1/3 of the federal land is in federal ownership. Mostly 4 major land use agencies are concerned by programmatic EIR, namely :
- Bureau of land management
- US Forest Service
- US Fish and Wildlife Service
- National Park Service
The main strategic actions requiring programmatic environmental impact statements are :
+ State water agency management programs
+ Water district master plans
+ Water transfer agreements
+ Flood control plans
+ River basin plans
+ Water reclamation and reuse plans
+ Groundwater management plans
+ Water quality improvement programs
+ City and county water elements of comprehensive plans
Forestry and land use
Each year, dozens of programmatic environmental impact studies are prepared on a broad variety of water plans and programs, in order to provide a constantly developping new plans and programs for providing additional water supply and distribution. These studies include :
+ National Forest Management Plans and Area Plans
+ Public Land Management Plans and Area Plans
+ National Park Management Plans and Subplans
+ Wildlife Habitat Management Plans
+ National Wildlife Refuge Plans
+ Fishery Management Plans
+ Military Base Reuse Plans
+ Vegetation management
Scoping
Neither CEQA nor the State CEQA Guidelines prescribe a standard methodology for preparing EIRs on plans. However local governments have, through experience, developed workable approaches to evaluating the impacts of land use plans. The following 5 steps are generally followed by cities and counties preparing plan-level EIRs :
1 . Forecasting future conditions. This involves answering the following questions :
* What future activities are likely to occur ? * Where are those activities likely to occur ? * When are they likely to occur ?
2 . Estimating the potential changes in human activity. This step includes quantifying the following :
o population increase
o new housing
o employement
o location of facilities
o production of material
o movement of goods and people
3 . Identifying and quantifying the environmental changes Impact evaluation in a plan-level EIR attemps to determine and quantify effects on resources and anticipated pollution levels that are likely to occur from changes in human activities.This evaluation will differ from plan to plan depending on the specific issues to be relevant during the scoping process. For instance, concerning land use, most impacts are evaluating using a quantitative methods.
4 . Comparing the impacts of alternative scenarios Although not required to by CEQA, plan-level EIRs often evaluate the impacts of each alternative in relatively equal level of detail. The conclusions of the alternative analysis are generally compared in a matrix format.
5 . Developing plan-level mitigation mesures
At the plan-level, these measures generally consist of changes to the plan or map that would apply to future development.
Techniques
Typical impact methodologies used for evaluating local land use plan-level EIRs in California include:
* Computer simulation modeling bases * GIS * Mapping * Photographic analysis * Quantifications * Qualitatives discussions
Public participation
The application of CEQA to both water agency plans and programs and land use planning and programmatic environmental impact assessment in California greatly enhance the opportunities for the public to participate. CEQA's procedures for preparing Program EIRs include the same opportunities for public involvement that are typically found in project-level review, such as scoping, public notices, opportunities to comment, and monitoring. In many Program EIRs, hundreds of individuals and organisations often participate. Thus, the public viewpoint is routinely considered in decisions.
Evaluation
By now, there has been considerable experience of programmatic EIRs in California. The methodologies for impact analysis are well-developed, and seem to achieve successfully the 5 primary objectives of EIA :
* disclosure * impact avoidance * public involvement * intergovernemental coordination * agency accountability to the public
The implementation of environmental assessment at the plan and program level has fostered better intergovernment relations between state, federal, and local agencies and districts. It has created new opportunities for agencies to comment on, and then influence, the outcome of other agency's planning.
