Bill Gorham

Strategic assessment under the Californian Environmental Quality Act

Bill Gorham
Industry Director – Oil and Gas, AECOM, WA and California USA

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) facilitates sustainable assessments in a variety of ways including:

  • considering the whole of the project,
  • tracking, evaluating, and modifying changes or subsequent phases of a project,
  • ensuring mitigation or other measures are completed successfully,
  • involving the public actively in the process, and
  • providing certainty yet flexibility for proponents once CEQA’s completed.

CEQA is "self-executing", i.e. each California public agency implements CEQA; there is no central governmental agency with final authority to produce CEQA assessments.

Under CEQA, the whole of the project must be considered, requiring disclosure of both immediate and longer-term plans, objectives, and intentions. The agency taking the action (including granting a discretionary permit), has the responsibility for putting the proposed project in the larger context of other activities proposed for the area,
particularly those that could lead to significant and unacceptable cumulative impacts.

The intent of the cumulative impact assessment is to ensure projects are sustainable.

A key requirement for a successful sustainable assessment program is trust among the affected parties. CEQA’s demand for public involvement and the threat of project delays for inadequate assessments, favours the trust built on experience but backed by data and facts.