The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is applicable to projects undertaken by a public agency, funded by a public agency or projects that require an issuance of a permit by a public agency (CEQA Projects). CEQA requires public agencies with the principal responsibility for carrying out or approving CEQA Projects (Lead Agencies) to prepare, or cause to be prepared, and certify the completion of an environmental impact reports (EIR) on CEQA Projects 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 Lead Agencies to prepare a mitigated negative declaration for CEQA Projects 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.
AB 1307 specifies that for purposes of CEQA, the effects of noise generated by project occupants and their guests on human beings is not a significant effect on the environment for residential projects.
AB 1307 specifies that California Community Colleges, the California State University and University of California are not required, in an environmental impact report prepared for a residential or mixed-use housing project, to consider alternatives to the location of the residential or mixed-use housing project if: (1) the residential or mixed-use housing project is located on a site that is no more than five acres and is substantially surrounded by qualified urban uses, defined as residential, commercial, public institutional, transit or transportation passenger facility, or retail use, or any combination of those uses; and (2) the residential or mixed-use housing project has already been evaluated in the environmental impact report for the most recent long-range development plan for the applicable campus.
(AB 1307 adds Sections 21085 and 21085.2 to the Public Resources Code.)