This Act provides to develop and maintain a high-quality environment now and in the future, and take all action necessary to protect, rehabilitate, and enhance the environmental quality of the state; take all action necessary to provide the people of this state with clean air and water, enjoyment of aesthetic, natural, scenic, and historic environmental qualities, and freedom from excessive noise; prevent the elimination of fish or wildlife species due to man’s activities, insure that fish and wildlife populations do not drop below self-prepetuating levels, and preserve for future generations representations of all plant and animal communities and examples of the major periods of California history; ensure that the long-term protection of the environment, consistent with the provision of a decent home and suitable living environment for every Californian, shall be the guiding criterion in public decisions; create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony to fulfill the social and economic requirements of present and future generations; require governmental agencies at all levels to develop standards and procedures necessary to protect environmental quality; and require governmental agencies at all levels to consider qualitative factors as well as economic and technical factors and long-term benefits and costs, in addition to short-term benefits and costs and to consider alternatives to proposed actions affecting the environment. The Act further declares that the use of environmental impact reports prepared pursuant to this division is subject to the requirements of this Act, which, among others, provides that the purpose of an environmental impact report is to identify the significant effects on the environment of a project, to identify alternatives to the project, and to indicate the manner in which those significant effects can be mitigated or avoided. The Act applies to discretionary projects proposed to be carried out or approved by public agencies, including, but not limited to, the enactment and amendment of zoning ordinances, the issuance of zoning variances, the issuance of conditional use permits, and the approval of tentative subdivision maps unless the project is exempt from this Act. Additionally, the Act provides for modernization of transportation analysis for transit-oriented infill projects; state agencies, boards and commissions; local agencies; implementation of the Sustainable Communities Strategy; housing sustainability districts; streamlined environmental review; master environmental impact report; focused environmental impact report; expedited environmental review for environmentally mandated projects; public assistance program; and special review of housing projects.
États-Unis d'Amérique · 1970-01-01