The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has evolved from a mini-NEPA, first enacted in 1970, into a procedural act
that affects the approval process of all large developments in California. In 1990, California local governments produced
over 1600 environmental impact reports and 30,000 initial studies under CEQA. Because of its widespread use, CEQA has periodically
drawn the attention of the state legislature, most recently in 1993, when over 60 CEQA reform bills were introduced. This
paper describes the CEQA process and evaluates its success at meeting its explicit and implicit goals. The research includes
a statewide survey of CEQA practice, sent to the planning departments of all 513 local governments in California in 1991.
Survey respondents agreed that CEQA helps in evaluating environmental impacts, reducing impacts, informing the public, and
coordinating public agency review. It is effective in reducing the environmental impacts of individual projects, but is not
as effective in improving environmental quality on an areawide scale. This research concludes that CEQA has led to positive
outcomes and is not as deeply flawed as many of its critics claim. Still, CEQA as currently designed may not be the optimal
vehicle for ensuring environmental quality. 相似文献
A programme of large-scale experiments for atmospheric dispersion was carried out by INERIS over a period extending from December 1996 to April 1997. The objectives of the test campaign were to measure anhydrous ammonia concentrations in a range of few meters to 2 km from the release, in order to generate data to be used to improve 2-phase discharge and dispersion modelling.
The discharges were released from a 6-tonne storage tank of pressurised liquid ammonia and through a discharge device with an outlet diameter of 2 in. Fifteen trials were carried out with various release configurations corresponding to industrial situations (impinging jets on the ground and on a wall at various distances, release through a flange without seal…). The quantity of ammonia discharged from the liquid phase varied according to the tests, from 1.4 to 3.5 tons for durations between 7 and 14 min and, therefore, at flow rates between 2 and 4.5 kg/s. Approximately 200 sensors were settled downwind to measure ammonia concentrations and temperature in the plume. These tests showed that for discharges with identical flow rates the distances corresponding to the same concentration vary a lot according to the configurations. These distances tend to be reduced by the presence of obstacles or retention dikes that collected liquid ammonia. In the paper, the main experimental results are presented. In order to enable the comparisons with numerical predictions, more detailed information are given in [Bouet R. (1999). Ammoniac—Essais de dispersion atmosphérique à grande échelle. INERIS rapport, ref INERIS-DRA-RBo-1999-20410 (available at http://www.ineris.fr/recherches/recherches.htm). 相似文献