California Environmental Quality Act: judicial relief.

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 authorizes a court, in an action or proceeding brought challenging the determination, finding, or decision of a public agency, to grant relief on the ground of noncompliance with CEQA. This bill would state the intent of the Legislature that, in undertaking judicial review under CEQA, insubstantial or merely technical omissions are not grounds for relief and that an omission in an environmental impact report's significant impacts analysis is prejudicial if it deprived the public and decisionmakers of substantial relevant information about the project's likely adverse impacts.