California Environmental Quality Act: exemption: Five-Mile Basin., the official text

An act to add Section 21080.65 to the Public Resources Code, relating to environmental quality.

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires a lead agency, as defined, to prepare, or cause to be prepared, and certify the completion of an environmental impact report on a project that it proposes to carry out or approve that may have a significant effect on the environment or to adopt a negative declaration if it finds that the project will not have that effect. CEQA also requires a lead agency to prepare a mitigated negative declaration for a project that may have a significant effect on the environment if revisions in the project would avoid or mitigate that effect and there is no substantial evidence that the project, as revised, would have a significant effect on the environment.
This bill would exempt from the requirements of CEQA a project to remove sediment from the Five-Mile Basin in the City of Chico.
This bill would make legislative findings and declarations as to the necessity of a special statute for the City of Chico.

The people of the State of California do enact as follows:

SECTION 1.
Section 21080.65 is added to the Public Resources Code, to read:
21080.65.
This division does not apply to a project to remove sediment from the Five-Mile Basin in the City of Chico.

SEC. 2.
The Legislature finds and declares that a special statute is necessary and that a general statute cannot be made applicable within the meaning of Section 16 of Article IV of the California Constitution because of the significant flooding risk present until a sediment removal project is complete within the Five-Mile Basin is unique to the City of Chico and the area that immediately surrounds it.