California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Process

CEQA Process 

Through implementation of California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), UC Davis seeks to inform decision-making and incorporate environmental review into UC Davis project planning. 

UC Davis makes publicly available descriptions of proposed projects, significant environmental effects of proposed activities, mitigation measures for these effects and reasons for approving projects with significant environmental effects. 

The public is invited to participate through public notices, review of environmental documents, and public comments and responses. To contact UC Davis environmental planners, e-mail questions to environreview@ucdavis.edu.


CEQA tiering process

The concept of "tiering" refers to the coverage of general environmental matters in broad program-level environmental impact reports (EIRs), with focused environmental documents for individual projects that carry out the broader program.

CEQA guidelines encourage the use of tiered environmental documents to reduce delays and excessive paperwork. This eliminates repetitive analyses of issues adequately addressed in the program EIR, by simply referencing those analyses.

The 2018 Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) and its EIR were approved by the University of California Board of Regents in November 2018. CEQA allows that environmental documents for later campus projects within the scope of the 2018 LRDP can be tiered from its EIR. Environmental documents for campus projects approved before certification of the 2018 LRDP EIR were tiered from the 2003 LRDP EIR.


Mitigation monitoring

Included in the 2018 LRDP EIR is a program to monitor actions that mitigate or avoid significant effects on the environment. This Mitigation Monitoring Program includes procedures, responsibilities and schedules for all mitigation measures that were adopted in the environmental review process.

The Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program document is included as a table in Volumes 1 & 4  of the LRDP EIR. The table includes verbatim descriptions of the mitigation measures as they are described in the LRDP EIR, procedures required for monitoring and reporting, and schedules of the mitigation measure in relation to a project's timeline.


Specific projects

Environmental documents, summaries and timelines are available for specific UC Davis projects.

  • Current projects are currently either under environmental review, approved and in final design, or under construction.
  • Archived projects include information about completed projects, including approval timelines.

During the public comment periods for environmental documents you may submit comments by e-mail to environreview@ucdavis.edu or by mail to:

Heather Davis
Director of Campus Planning and Environmental Stewardship
University of California One Shields Avenue 
255 Cousteau Place
Davis, CA 95618