The 2018 California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Guidelines Update has been finalized and are found in the California Code of Regulations Section 15000 et seq. In the Final Statement of Reasons, the Natural Resources Agency organized the changes into three categories: Efficiency Substantive Improvements Technical Improvements Efficiency Using Regulatory Standards in the CEQA Process The
California passed 15 bills designed to address the state’s housing problems, including solutions to streamline housing approvals, enact inclusionary housing requirements for residential rental projects, and generate funds for affordable housing projects. Three bills–-SB 35, SB 540, and AB 73–-have the greatest effect on the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) process for housing projects. This
In 2017, California passed 15 bills designed to address the state’s housing problems, including solutions to streamline housing approvals, enact inclusionary housing requirements for residential rental projects, and generate funds for affordable housing projects. Three bills–SB 35, SB 540, and AB 73–have the greatest effect on the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) process for housing
In 2017, California passed 15 bills designed to address the state’s housing problems, including solutions to streamline housing approvals, enact inclusionary housing requirements for residential rental projects, and generate funds for affordable housing projects. Three bills—SB 35, SB 540, and AB 73—have the greatest effect on the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) process for housing
The effect of shade cast by new bridge construction is often considered a permanent impact, when it could be permitted as temporary. This discrepancy increases mitigation costs and unduly burdens county Public Works department budgets. Effective site assessment to determine expectation of in-situ recovery and persistence of self-sustaining habitat can justify temporary impacts, saving your
The environmental impact report (EIR) for the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) new world-class motor vehicle and emissions testing and research facility is one of the first projects to use zero-emissions thresholds for evaluating greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts in a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) document. CARB established the zero-emission goal to be proactive in
Kaiser Permanente’s ambitious goal for a new 450-bed hospital included LEED Platinum Certification and becoming a valued neighborhood resource. The new medical campus was recently named the Best Healthcare Project in California in 2017 by Engineering News Record. “When you’re building a hospital, it’s like building a mini-city,” said Shawn Shamlou, AICP, Dudek’s CEQA Principal
The City of San Diego has selected Dudek to provide environmental impact studies for two separate projects as part of major upgrades planned for the city’s high-profile Mission Bay Park, the largest aquatic park of its kind in the United States. The 4,600-acre half-land, half-water park is visited by more than 15 million people each
The passage of California Senate Bill (SB) 743 introduced vehicle miles traveled (VMT) as the new recommended threshold for transportation impacts under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review, eliminating level of service (LOS) as a CEQA threshold. The City of Pasadena (City) was among the first to update its CEQA thresholds in 2014. The
Powin Energy’s 2-megawatt (MW)/8-MW-hour battery energy storage system (BESS) recently went online fewer than six months after the project was awarded, marking an energy industry first for the speed of manufacturing, installing, and commissioning of an asset of this size on a distribution feeder. Located in Irvine, California, the system provides peaking capacity and grid