ABSTRACT
This Chapter discusses ways of evaluating the environmental effects of local comprehensive planning and the problems of integrating state environmental policy acts, where they exist, into local planning. It provides three statutory alternatives. Alternative 1 requires the local planning agency to prepare a written environmental evaluation of several elements of its local comprehensive plan in order to understand the significant effects of the plan on the natural environment. In contrast to Alternatives 2 and 3, which follow, this Alternative is not binding on the local government in a regulatory sense and does not involve a state environmental policy act that applies to specific projects or land-use actions, such as single-tract rezonings or conditional use permits. Alternative 2 presumes the existence of a state environmental policy act. The purpose of this alternative is to authorize the preparation of an environmental impact statement on a local comprehensive plan so that public agencies can avoid or carry out a more limited environmental review of land-use approvals that are based on that plan. By contrast to Alternative 1, this Alternative is more complex in that it goes beyond being a mere environmental evaluation with no regulatory implications. Finally, Alternative 3 integrates the consideration of environmental impacts under the state environmental policy act with the review and approval of land-use actions by a public agency. The focus here is on the decision to rezone or on the approval decision, and not on the project itself. An application for approval may, of course, include site-specific plans, as in the case of a special exception or a planned unit development. In these cases, the public agency will necessarily review the site-specific project plans as well as the approval request.
