California Environmental Quality Act: geographic terms: maps.

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 requires the Office of Planning and Research to prepare and develop, and the Secretary of the Natural Resources Agency to review and adopt, guidelines for the implementation of CEQA. This bill would authorize the office to prepare and develop, and the secretary to review, adopt, amend, or repeal, maps for purposes of CEQA to illustrate or clarify geographic terms. The bill would specify that the adopted maps establish a rebuttable presumption of the presence of geographic terms depicted by the maps. The bill would prohibit a lead agency or responsible agency from making a contrary finding of the presence of the geographic terms depicted by the maps unless the contrary finding is supported by a preponderance of evidence in the record of proceedings.