The California Environmental Quality Act 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.

Existing law requires a person who owns, leases, controls, operates, or maintains specified structures within certain areas to maintain a defensible space around the structures meeting certain requirements.

This bill would exempt from CEQA projects undertaken or approved by a public agency for purposes of maintaining defensible space to comply with the above requirements.