Environmental quality: water storage facilities.

The California Environmental Quality Act 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. The act 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. The act requires the lead agency to determine whether a project may have a significant effect on the environment based on substantial evidence in light of the whole record. The act exempts certain specified projects from its requirements. This bill would exempt a project to expand the storage capacity of an existing surface water storage facility, or to replace an existing surface water storage facility, that is owned and operated by a public entity if that public entity adopts, by resolution, findings and declarations that the project meets specified criteria.