CEQA Lawyers
The attorneys at Kassouni Law represent clients on a wide variety of California property and environmental law subjects including matters involving the California Environmental Quality Act of 1970, or commonly known by its acronym CEQA.
More on CEQA from the Sacramento and Los Angeles CEQA lawyers at Kassouni Law…
CEQA came about in response to NEPA (its Federal counterpart). NEPA (The National Environmental Policy Act) was enacted in 1969 and was the first environmental protection act of the United States Federal Government. The California State Assembly felt it necessary for a state counterpart in response to NEPA’s passage, thereby creating a special committee within the state Assembly to develop a supplement to the Federal law. In response to the Assembly’s mandate, The Assembly Select Committee on Environmental Quality issued a report in 1970 entitled The Environmental Bill of Rights calling for the California Assembly to enact a state supplement to NEPA. CEQA was passed by the state legislature, and signed into law by Governor Ronald Reagan in 1970.
CEQA originally required state and local government agencies to identify the impact of their own projects and activities on the environment, and mitigate or avoid that impact. Later, in 1972 the California Supreme Court held that CEQA intended to define the term “projects” to include private projects, as well as government projects. Projects are now defined as:
“an activity which may cause either a direct physical change in the environment, or a reasonable foreseeable indirect physical change in the environment, and which is any of the following:
a) An activity directly undertaken by a public agency.
b) An activity undertaken by a person which is supported, in whole or in part, through contracts, grants, subsidies, loans, or other forrms of assistance from one or more public agencies.
c) An activity that involves the issuance to a person of a lease, permit, license, certificate, or other entitlement for the use by one or more public agencies.”
Public Resources Code Section 21065
As a result, most development and land planning requires government approval, and few projects are exempt from CEQA. Further, CEQA grants state and local regulatory agencies considerable authority and power over development projects -a power that can only be checked through court intervention.
In California, a myriad of governmental agencies and statutes (including CEQA) regulate development. Headquarted in Sacramento with additional offices in Los Angeles, the environmental and Constitutional property rights attorneys at Kassouni Law have extensive experience in representing clients who are subject to the Promethean task of getting a project approved. The attorneys focus on litigating development and planning projects, to keep projects on track, and seek recourse should problems arise. If you have any land use or CEQA related issues, please contact Kassouni Law at 877-770-7379. We will be pleased to assess your rights and remedies and help you form a plan of action to obtain positive results.
