TO: Napa County Climate Action Committee
FROM: Brian D. Bordona, Director of Planning, Building & Environmental Services
REPORT BY: Jesse Gutiérrez, Principal Planner, Sustainability
SUBJECT: Presentation and Discussion: Napa County Regional Climate Action and Adaptation Plan CEQA Approach Memorandum
RECOMMENDATION
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PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION: FISCAL IMPACT - NAPA COUNTY REGIONAL CLIMATE ACTION AND ADAPTATION PLAN CEQA APPROACH MEMORANDUM
STAFF REQUEST: Receive a presentation from Ascent Environmental and discuss the CEQA approach options and alternatives outlined in the Napa County RCAAP CEQA Approach Memorandum.
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ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINATION: The proposed action is not a project as defined by 14 California
Code of Regulations 15378 (State CEQA Guidelines) and therefore CEQA is not applicable.
BACKGROUND AND DISCUSSION
Ascent Environmental has prepared a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Approach Memorandum (Memo) for the Regional Climate Action and Adaptation Plan (RCAAP). The Memo provides summaries of several types of environmental review and analysis documents and describes why a CEQA environmental review document is recommended for a project such as the RCAAP and various options to accomplish this task.
Staff requests that the CAC review, discuss, and take the memo back to their respective jurisdictions for in-depth discussion with staff, counsel, and agency leadership. A subsequent item will be added to the March 28, 2025, CAC meeting agenda for further discussion and possible action.
Since 2019, all CAC member jurisdictions have demonstrated a commitment to address climate change through regional action and coordination. In the Spring of 2020, Napa County and the local incorporated jurisdictions entered into a Joint Powers Agreement (JPA) with a goal of developing a regional plan to address climate change, reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, and strengthen community, economic, and environmental resilience in the face of changing climate. Moving the RCAAP forward successfully will require a continued commitment, effort, and participation of all CAC member jurisdictions, including agency leadership and staff.
At the January 24, 2025, CAC meeting, the CAC discussed and agreed to make the continued development and future implementation framework of the RCAAP the priority for Fiscal Year 2025-2026. The RCAAP administrative draft document is expected to be complete and available for public review in Spring or early Summer 2025. The next phase of developing a CEQA compliant GHG emissions reduction and climate adaptation plan will be to conduct an environmental review and analysis of the entire RCAAP program. Following the environmental review, the RCAAP and the environmental review document will need to be adopted by each of the CAC member jurisdictions.
There has been significant progress made on the RCAAP to date. Milestones include the prospective convening of a Regional Interagency Working Group comprised of agency staff and leadership from across the six jurisdictions, the creation of an RCAAP project website, several intermediary technical documents produced, and significant community engagement early in the project process. Ascent Environmental has prepared and delivered several technical studies and memoranda which provide the data and background that form the basis for creation of the GHG emissions reduction measures and the adaption measures for the RCAAP. The benefits of the RCAAP are many and include the ability to share resources, coordinate on grant and funding opportunities, leverage local and regional expertise, and work together to implement GHG emission reduction measures and climate adaptation actions that strengthen the region and produce a compounded reduction in climate impacts.
Why does the RCAAP need an environmental review?
The CEQA Memo outlines and details CEQA requirements for projects such as the RCAAP and the key benefits and key challenges of several types of environmental review documents. As mentioned above, an environmental review is the next step in the development of a CEQA compliant GHG emissions reduction and climate adaptation plan.
The CEQA Memo states that adoption of the RCAAP by local jurisdictions in the JPA could result in actions that would cause a “direct, or reasonably foreseeable indirect, physical change in the environment.” It is a requirement under CEQA that public agency decisions, such as adopting and implementing the RCAAP, be informed by analyzing the “project’s” potential environmental impacts, including actions related to reducing GHG emissions and adapting to climate change. The types of actions found in the RCAAP that could potentially have impacts and consequences to environmental factors reviewed through CEQA are, for example, impacts from construction of detention basins, fire breaks, resilience hubs, upgrade or relocation of infrastructure subject to flooding, installation of erosion control measures, and the construction of floodgates and barriers.
The CEQA Approach Memo describes the RCAAP as a “project” under CEQA. Under CEQA, a “project” is defined as “the whole of an action.” For the RCAAP, the whole of an action would mean implementing all 46 proposed GHG reduction measures and all 40 proposed climate adaptation measures outlined in the plan. As stated in the Memo, “Although the RCAAP will include ongoing monitoring and adaptive management, failure to adopt and implement the GHG measures included in the RCAAP by any jurisdiction could jeopardize the success of the RCAAP for the whole region. Therefore, it is assumed that all JPA members will continue to engage in preparing an RCAAP that includes the comprehensive suite of GHG and adaptation measures.”
The environmental review document would demonstrate the trade-offs between the benefits and the impacts of implementing RCAAP measures. The review and analysis of the plan would also document any mitigation required to address potentially significant effects of implementing the program. Also, “under CEQA, projects requiring discretionary approval and environmental review must disclose whether they would generate GHG emissions that would significantly impact the environment or conflict with a plan or regulation adopted to reduce emissions.”
What are the benefits to the RCAAP of having a CEQA review document?
A CEQA compliant RCAAP provides a tool for member agencies and jurisdictions to streamline the environmental analysis and mitigation of GHG emissions for future projects that demonstrate consistency with the RCAAP and that are subject to CEQA.
Streamlining is available because it is presumed that GHG reduction plans, such as the RCAAP, have completely “evaluated and mitigated the GHG emissions of the jurisdiction at the program level.” The environmental review of the RCAAP will evaluate the effects of implementing the measures in the RCAAP that are necessary to achieve GHG reductions and climate adaptation.
These streamlining benefits would be applied to the review of all GHG emissions reduction measures and climate adaptation actions reviewed in the RCAAP via the environmental document. CEQA coverage applies to the 86 total measures necessary for implementation in the RCAAP.
The measures found within the RCAAP are parts of a whole and it is assumed that “the implementation of the RCAAP would require full participation by the six member jurisdictions in the JPA, and to be CEQA compliant, each jurisdiction’s measures would require an environmental review that addresses the full scope of the RCAAP project. Only one jurisdiction undertaking its independent portion of the RCAAP would not result in implementation of the project and the “whole of an action.”
Choosing an approach for CEQA analysis and environmental review.
The CEQA Memo states “For the purposes of this evaluation, it is assumed that the JPA member jurisdictions will collaborate on the preparation of the selected CEQA approach, and that each member agency will adopt the RCAAP and certify the environmental document as prepared. Deviation from this assumption could substantially impair the success of the RCAAP, resulting in a program that may not achieve reduction targets and, therefore, does not confer CEQA streamlining benefits under Section 15183.5 of the CEQA Guidelines.”
The CEQA Memo describes several types of environmental documents that meet the specifications for an environmental review and analysis under CEQA Guidelines Section 15183.5(b)(1)(F). The Memo provides brief summaries of the following “CEQA compliance pathways” for the CAC to consider. For quick reference please refer below to Table 1: Summary of Benefits and Challenges associated with the Alternative Approaches to Environmental Review. For in-depth summaries of the Key Benefits and Key Challenges of the Alternative Approaches for Environmental Review please refer to the CEQA Approach Memorandum.
Table 1 Summary of Benefits and Challenges associated with the Alternative Approaches to Environmental Review
|
Analysis Option |
Key Benefits |
Key Challenges |
|
No CEQA Review |
• Minimal time and cost investment |
• The RCAAP will not meet the minimum criteria specified in CEQA Guidelines Section 15183.5, and no GHG analysis streamlining will be provided to future projects |
|
Categorical Exemption |
• Not applicable |
• No exemption applies |
|
Initial Study and Mitigated Negative Declaration (IS/MND) |
• Relatively quick; lower standards for review and public participation • Relatively lower cost |
• Legal defensibility and uncertainty |
|
Initial Study and Focused Program-level EIR (IS/PEIR) |
• Focuses PEIR preparation on areas with potential for significant impacts, in particular GHG/Air Quality, biological resources, and cultural resources. • Highly defensible |
• Two-step review process may take longer than PEIR preparation alone • More costly and labor-intensive than an IS/MND |
|
Program-level Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) |
• Provides a complete and thorough analysis of potential impacts • Highly defensible |
• More costly and labor-intensive than an IS/MND |
|
Program-Level Environmental Impact Report + Jurisdiction-specific analysis (PEIR +) |
• Most supportive of jurisdiction-specific implementation • Highly defensible |
• Most costly and labor-intensive • Can result in long, duplicative documents |
Based on their understanding of the project and the JPA member agencies CEQA needs, Ascent recommends preparation of a PEIR without supplemental jurisdiction-specific analyses. The PEIR is estimated to take approximately 1 year to prepare, at an estimated cost of $400,000.
Once the plan and accompanying environmental review are adopted by each of the jurisdictions in the JPA, a multi-jurisdictional implementation framework and RCAAP consistency checklist should be created for the coordinated implementation of the measures and actions in the RCAAP.