Pub. Resources Code, § 21178

The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(a) The California Environmental Quality Act (Division 13 (commencing with Section 21000)) requires that the environmental impacts of development projects be identified and mitigated.

(b) The California Environmental Quality Act also guarantees the public an opportunity to review and comment on the environmental impacts of a project and to participate meaningfully in the development of mitigation measures for potentially significant environmental impacts.

(c) There are large projects under consideration in various regions of the state that would replace old and outmoded facilities with new job-creating facilities to meet those regions’ needs while also establishing new, cutting-edge environmental benefits in those regions.

(d) These projects are privately financed or financed from revenues generated from the projects themselves and do not require taxpayer financing.

(e) These projects will further generate thousands of full-time jobs during construction and thousands of additional, permanent jobs once the projects are constructed and operating.

(f) These projects also present an unprecedented opportunity to implement nation-leading innovative measures that will significantly reduce traffic, air quality, and other significant environmental impacts, and fully mitigate the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from passenger vehicle trips attributed to the projects.

(g) These pollution reductions will be the best in the nation compared to other comparable projects in the United States.

(h) The purpose of this chapter is to provide, for a limited time, unique and unprecedented streamlining benefits under the California Environmental Quality Act for projects that provide the benefits described above to put people to work as soon as possible.