BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 1833
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Date of Hearing: May 11, 2016
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Lorena Gonzalez, Chair
AB
1833 (Linder) - As Amended April 25, 2016
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Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program: NoReimbursable: No
SUMMARY:
This bill establishes the Advanced Mitigation Program (AMP) at
Caltrans to implement environmental mitigation measures in
advance of future transportation projects. Specifically, this
bill:
AB 1833
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1)Requires Caltrans to track all implemented advanced mitigation
projects to use as credits to fulfill environmental mitigation
requirements of any environmental law for a transportation
project eligible for the State Transportation Improvement
Program or the State Highway Operation and Protection Program.
2)Requires Caltrans, no later than February 1, 2017, to
establish an interagency transportation advanced mitigation
steering committee consisting, as specified, to support the
AMP.
3)Stipulates that the AMP does not replace or alter mitigation
requirements under the California Environmental Quality Act
(CEQA), the California Endangered Species Act, or other
applicable law.
FISCAL EFFECT:
An AMP would likely cost in the low tens of millions of dollars
annually, including Caltrans' administrative costs for the
steering committee. (This bill is identical to the advanced
mitigation proposal in the Governor's proposed transportation
funding package, except that the Governor also proposes $30
million annually to support the program.) Presumably, these
up-front costs would eventually be more than offset by the
avoided costs of mitigation within individual transportation
project budgets that are assigned AMP credits and by cost
savings related to shorter project delivery times.
COMMENTS:
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Background and Purpose. CEQA provides a process for evaluating
the environmental effects of applicable projects undertaken or
approved by public agencies. If a project is not exempt from
CEQA, an initial study is prepared to determine whether or not
the project may have a significant effect on the environment. If
not, the lead agency must prepare a negative declaration. If
the study shows that the project may have a significant effect
on the environment, the lead agency must prepare an EIR.
Generally, an EIR must accurately describe the proposed project,
identify and analyze each significant environmental impact
expected to result from the proposed project, identify
mitigation measures to reduce those impacts to the extent
feasible, and evaluate a range of reasonable alternatives to the
proposed project.
For large infrastructure development entities, like Caltrans,
whose activities can result in a broad range of impacts from
small, temporary disturbances associated with maintenance
activities to large multi-acre impacts associated with building
bridges or highway alignments, developing multiple small
mitigation sites can be costly, time consuming, and result in
fragmented habitats. To address these issues, both state and
regional entities have utilized advanced mitigation as a way to
provide high quality replacement habitat, achieve economies of
scale in its development, and reduce project delivered delays.
For the most part, Caltrans has greater experience developing
smaller-scale advanced mitigation sites is that it must rely,
almost exclusively, on funds from individual project budgets.
Since project funds are not available far enough in advance, it
is not possible for them to complete the costly and time
consuming steps needed to complete advanced mitigation before
the project goes to construction and mitigation credits are
needed.
While this bill includes no funding and places in statute a tool
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that Caltrans may already use under CEQA and other environmental
laws, it should provide added value requiring Caltrans to
coordinate with other agencies in planning for the use of
advanced mitigation for future transportation projects.
Analysis Prepared by:Chuck Nicol / APPR. / (916)
319-2081