The California Environmental Quality Act requires a lead agency, as defined, to prepare, or cause to be prepared by contract, and certify the completion of, an environmental impact report on a project, as defined, that it proposes to carry out or approve that may have a significant effect on the environment, or to adopt a negative declaration if it finds that the project will not have that effect. The act exempts from its provisions, among other things, certain types of ministerial projects proposed to be carried out or approved by public agencies, and emergency repairs to public service facilities necessary to maintain service.

Existing law prohibits the use of any vacuum or suction dredge equipment by any person in any river, stream, or lake of this state without a permit issued by the Department of Fish and Game. Existing law designates the issuance of permits to operate vacuum or suction dredge equipment to be a project under the California Environmental Quality Act, and suspends the issuance of permits, and mining pursuant to a permit, until the department has completed an environmental impact report for the project as ordered by the court in a specified court action. Existing law prohibits the use of any vacuum or suction dredge equipment in any river, stream, or lake, for instream mining purposes, until the director of the department certifies to the Secretary of State that (1) the department has completed the environmental review of its existing vacuum or suction dredge equipment regulations as ordered by the court, (2) the department has transmitted for filing with the Secretary of State a certified copy of new regulations, as necessary, and (3) the new regulations are operative.

This bill would repeal the prohibition on the use of vacuum or suction dredge equipment, and would exempt the issuance of permits to operate vacuum or suction dredge equipment from the California Environmental Quality Act until January 1, 2014. The bill would require the department to refund a specified portion of the permit fee paid by a person issued a vacuum or suction dredge equipment permit and subject to the prohibition on the use of vacuum or suction dredge equipment. The bill would require the department, on or before January 1, 2014, to complete an economic impact report on the prohibition on the use of vacuum and suction dredge equipment.

This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.