UC Davis CEQA Tiering Process

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) concept of "tiering" refers to the coverage of general environmental matters in broad program-level Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs), with subsequent focused environmental documents for individual projects that implement the program.

CEQA and the CEQA Guidelines encourage the use of tiered environmental documents to reduce delays and excessive paperwork in the environmental review process.  This is accomplished in tiered documents by eliminating repetitive analyses of issues that were adequately addressed in the Program EIR and by incorporating those analyses by reference.

The 2003 UC Davis Long Range Development Plan (2003 LRDP) is a comprehensive land use plan that will guide physical development on campus to accommodate projected enrollment increases and expanded and new program initiatives through the 2015-16 academic year. The 2003 LRDP EIR (the Program EIR for the campus) analyzes full implementation of uses and physical development proposed under the 2003 LRDP, and it identifies measures to mitigate the significant adverse project-level and cumulative impacts associated with that growth.

The 2003 LRDP and its EIR were approved by the Board of Regents of the University of California on November 20, 2003. Environmental documents for subsequent campus projects that are within the scope of the 2003 LRDP can be tiered from the 2003 LRDP EIR in accordance with CEQA and the CEQA Guidelines. Environmental documents for campus projects approved before certification of the 2003 LRDP EIR in November 2003 were tiered from the previous 1994 LRDP EIR.