Environmental quality: judicial review: standing.

(1) 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. CEQA also requires, in an action or proceeding alleging noncompliance with its requirements, that the grounds for noncompliance shall have been presented by any person to the public agency during the public comment period or prior to the close of the public hearing on the project before the filing of the notice of determination. CEQA requires a person bringing an action or proceeding alleging noncompliance with its requirements to have objected to the project during the public comment period or prior to the close of the public hearing on the project before the filing of the notice of determination. This bill would require that the alleged grounds for noncompliance shall have been presented to a public agency prior to the close of the public hearing on the project if the grounds for noncompliance were not known and could not have been known with the exercise of reasonable diligence during the public comment period or if no public comment period was provided by CEQA. The bill would limit the standing of a person objecting to the project prior to the close of the public hearing on the project before the filing of notice of determination to an action or proceeding challenging a project for which no public comment period was provided by CEQA. (2) CEQA, until January 1, 2016, precludes an organization formed after the approval of a project from maintaining an action unless a member of the organization has objected to the approval of the project orally or in writing and presented the grounds of noncompliance to the public agency. Existing law, on and after January 1, 2016, precludes an organization formed after the approval of a project from maintaining an action unless a member of the organization has objected to the approval of the project orally or in writing. This bill would extend the preclusion in effect until January 1, 2016, indefinitely.