SECTIONS 71000-71001 - California Statutes

PUBLIC RESOURCES CODE

SECTION 71000-71001

71000. This part shall be known, and may be cited, as the
Environmental Protection Permit Reform Act of 1993.

71001. The Legislature hereby finds and declares all of the
following:
(a) California's environmental protection programs have
established strict standards to reduce pollution and protect the
public health and safety and the environment. The single purpose
programs instituted to achieve these standards have been among the
most successful efforts in the world, and have produced significant
gains in protecting California's environment in the face of
substantial population growth.
(b) Continued progress to achieve the environmental standards in
face of continued population growth will require greater coordination
between the single purpose environmental programs and more efficient
operation of these programs overall. Pollution must be prevented and
controlled and not simply transferred to another media or another
place. This goal can only be achieved by maintaining the current
environmental protection standards and by greater integration of the
existing programs.
(c) As the number of environmental laws and regulations have grown
in California, so have the number of permits required of business
and government. This regulatory burden has significantly added to the
cost and time needed to obtain essential operating permits in
California. The increasing number of individual permits and permit
authorities has generated the continuing potential for conflict,
overlap, and duplication between the various state, local, and
federal environmental permits.
(d) To ensure that local needs and environmental conditions
receive the proper attention, the issuance of environmental permits
should continue to be made, to the extent feasible, at the regional
and local levels of the environmental programs. To establish the
framework for coordination among the regional offices of the
environmental protection programs, consistency in regional boundaries
should be achieved to the maximum extent practicable.
(e) The purpose of this division is to require the Secretary for
Environmental Protection to institute new, efficient procedures which
will assist businesses and public agencies in complying with the
environmental quality laws in an expedited fashion, without reducing
protection of public health and safety and the environment.
(f) Those procedures need to provide a permit process that
promotes effective dialogue and ensures ease in the transfer and
clarification of technical information, while preventing duplication.
It is necessary that the procedures establish a process for
preliminary and ongoing meetings between the applicant, the
consolidated permit agency, and the participating permit agencies,
but do not preclude the applicant or participating permit agencies
from individually coordinating with each other.
(g) It is necessary, to the maximum extent practicable, that the
procedures established in this division ensure that the consolidated
permit agency process and applicable permit requirements and criteria
are integrated and run concurrently, rather than consecutively.