California Environmental Quality Act: exemptions: highway safety improvement projects.

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 includes exemptions from its environmental review requirements for numerous categories of projects, including, among others, emergency projects undertaken, carried out, or approved by a public agency to maintain, repair, or restore an existing highway under specified circumstances. This bill would further exempt from the requirements of CEQA highway safety improvement projects, as defined, undertaken by the Department of Transportation or a local agency.