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Cal. Pub. Res. Code § 21001

Policy

Known as the California Environmental Quality Act

The act spans §§ 21000–21189 (300 sections).

Applied in 36 court decisions — leading case 52 Cal. 3d 553 - Citizens of Goleta Valley v. Board of Supervisors (1990)

Most recently applied in Protect Niles v. City of Fremont (July 2018)

Amended by Stats. 1979, Ch. 947.

How often courts cite this section

1980199020002010201840
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

The Legislature further finds and declares that it is the policy of the state to:

(a) Develop and maintain a high-quality environment now and in the future, and take all action necessary to protect, rehabilitate, and enhance the environmental quality of the state.

(b) Take all action necessary to provide the people of this state with clean air and water, enjoyment of aesthetic, natural, scenic, and historic environmental qualities, and freedom from excessive noise.

(c) Prevent the elimination of fish or wildlife species due to man’s activities, insure that fish and wildlife populations do not drop below self-prepetuating levels, and preserve for future generations representations of all plant and animal communities and examples of the major periods of California history.

(d) Ensure that the long-term protection of the environment, consistent with the provision of a decent home and suitable living environment for every Californian, shall be the guiding criterion in public decisions.

(e) Create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony to fulfill the social and economic requirements of present and future generations.

(f) Require governmental agencies at all levels to develop standards and procedures necessary to protect environmental quality.

(g) Require governmental agencies at all levels to consider qualitative factors as well as economic and technical factors and long-term benefits and costs, in addition to short-term benefits and costs and to consider alternatives to proposed actions affecting the environment.

Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.