IMPLEMENTATION OF CALIFORNIA’S
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)
has evolved into one of the state’s most
powerful public information programs.
At Yorke Engineering, we’ve found
that the result can be complicated le-gal
challenges for Lead Agencies (the
agency primarily responsible for project
approval when more than one public
agency is involved) in obtaining routine
municipal building permits to permits
from state commissions overseeing en-ergy,
utilities, and coastal lands. In the
required CEQA environmental review
and determination of impacts for proj-ects
requiring discretionary permits or
approvals, air quality impacts and green-house
(GHG) emissions are typically
primary concerns.
Project planners must decide early in the
planning process on the appropriate level
of CEQA documentation because this will
influence the structure of their approach
to CEQA for the rest of the project. They
must consider what kind of document to
prepare and they must be aware of con-sistency
or lack of consistency between
CEQA analysis and air permits, the poten-tial
32 SOURCE winter 2017
for guidelines to change during docu-ment
preparation, and available strategies
for addressing GHG emission impacts.
Levels of CEQA Review
An Environmental Impact Report (EIR)
and a Memorandum of Negative Declara-tion
(MND) are the most commonly used
types of CEQA documents. An MND is
used when all potential impacts can be
mitigated to be below significance thresh-olds
and there is no substantial controver-sy
expected. An EIR is a more extensive
document that details significant impacts
and describes mitigation aspects and/or
overriding considerations that must be
made for a project to proceed if unmitigat-ed
impacts remain once a significant im-pact
determination is made.
Since processing an MND is gener-ally
much faster than an EIR (three to
six months for an MND versus six to 12
months or more for an EIR), it can be very
tempting to try to shoehorn the project’s
review into an MND. An EIR undergoes a
far more robust environmental and public
review process. If there is a chance that the
Lead Agency or other responsible agencies
might not accept some of the results as be-ing
insignificant or that the project is high-ly
controversial, or future add-ons to the
project may be contemplated, then it’s like-ly
that the EIR is a better choice. (One must
be cautious, however, that future add-ons
are only in the roughest of conceptual stag-es
or a mere possibility. Otherwise, holding
back the future aspects of the project could
be considered “piecemealing.”) Likewise,
even when an MND has been completed,
if it is determined that that there could be
significant impacts or the project is likely
to garner substantial public comment and
controversy, the Lead Agency may be re-quired
to start over with an EIR, extending
the process. In such cases, deciding to go
with an EIR and assuring that impacts are
thoroughly analyzed can end up saving
time in the long run. Likewise, if it’s pos-sible
that the project will grow or change,
then an EIR can make preparation of a
Subsequent or Supplemental EIR or Ad-dendum
more efficient than building an
additional MND.
Permitting Consistency
Although most government agencies
MANAGER’S CORNER
AIR QUALITY IMPACTS and
GREENHOUSE (GHG) EMISSIONS
Sailing Through CEQA
Overlapping agency jurisdictions and often close relationships between the Lead Agency and project proponents can
result in inconsistencies between how a project is analyzed during the CEQA process and how a permitting agency may
see it when considering regulatory compliance. Given these sometimes competing interests, planning teams must take
into full account all the variables that can come into play as a project moves toward implementation.
By Greg Wolffe and Sara J. Head