Environment: CEQA: lead agency: documents.

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 (EIR) 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. CEQA authorizes a lead agency to charge and collect a reasonable fee from a person proposing a project that is subject to CEQA to recover the estimated costs incurred by the lead agency in conducting the environmental review. The bill would authorize a public agency to charge and collect a reasonable fee from members of the public for a copy of an environmental document, as defined, that does not exceed the cost of reproducing the environmental document. The bill would authorize the public agency to provide the environmental document in an electronic format.