“Significant effect on the environment” means a substantial, or potentially substantial, adverse change in the environment.
Cal. Pub. Res. Code § 21068
Definitions
Known as the California Environmental Quality Act
The act spans §§ 21000–21189 (300 sections).
Applied in 21 court decisions — leading case City of Carmel-by-the-Sea v. United States Department of Transportation (1997)
Most recently applied in 215 Cal. App. 4th 1013 - Taxpayers for Accountable School Bond Spending v. San Diego Unif. School Dist. CA4/1 (March 2013)
Added by Stats. 1976, Ch. 1312.
How often courts cite this section
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.
Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.