California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)

District Guidelines

Under state law the San Diego County Air Pollution Control District (SDAPCD) is required to evaluate the environmental impacts of proposed projects before taking actions. The SDAPCD Environmental Review Guidelines provides direction to project applicants, lead and responsible agencies, and the public on air quality requirements and review standards. These guidelines ensure transparency and consistency in assessing and addressing potential air quality effects.

Download SDAPCD Environmental Review Guidelines

District Actions on CEQA Projects

The following section provides SDAPCD's CEQA related documents based on the agency's role in CEQA.

A lead agency is the public agency that has the principal responsibility for carrying out or approving a discretionary project that is subject to CEQA. The SDAPCD acts as lead agency for its own projects. The SDAPCD also acts as lead agency for projects that require an SDAPCD permit and where the SDAPCD has greater approval authority over the proposed project compared to other public agencies.

Below are documents for projects in which SDAPCD is the lead agency:

2025

San Diego Air Pollution Control District Rule 67.26- Commercial Charbroiling Operations (3/7/25)

Notice of Intent

Initial Study

Eternal Hills Cemetery Association (1/14/25)

Notice of Intent

Initial Study    

2024:

Austal USA Floating Dry Dock 9/3/24

Period of Public Review: The review period for the Notice Of Preparation begins on Tuesday, September 3, 2024, and ends on Thursday October 3, 2024.

Project Presentation: A public presentation is scheduled for Tuesday, September 17, 2024, at 6:00 PM. The event will take place at the National City Public Library, located at 1401 National City Blvd., National City, CA 91950. A Spanish translator will be available to assist attendees.

Send written comments to: Eric Luther at 10124 Old Grove Road, San Diego, CA 92131, or email at Eric.Luther@sdapcd.org by 5:00 p.m. on Thursday October 3, 2024.

Notice of Preparation  -  Aviso de Preparacion

Initial Study


Silver Lining Cremations 1/9/24

Negative Declaration    

2022:

Silver Lining Cremations 3/1/22

Negative Declaration

A responsible agency is a public agency with discretionary approval authority over a portion of a project for which a lead agency is preparing or has prepared a CEQA document. The SDAPCD acts as a responsible agency for projects that include equipment requiring an SDAPCD permit, but where another public agency, such as a city or county land use agency, is the lead agency. The SDAPCD must consider the adequacy of an environmental document prepared by the Lead Agency prior to approving certain permits.

The SDAPCD may comment on the air quality impacts of projects where another public agency is the Lead Agency, but for which the SDAPCD has no discretionary authority. CEQA requires lead agencies to consult with agencies that exercise authority over resources that may be affected by the project.

Below are comment letters submitted by the District to Lead Agencies.

2025

2024

2023:

2022:

Additional Resources

As the local agency responsible for enforcing air pollution control laws, the SDAPCD prepares and/or reviews CEQA documents for projects that may impact air quality. The resources below outline how the SDAPCD evaluates potential air quality impacts to ensure compliance with CEQA requirements. For more detailed information about CEQA requirements visit the Governor's Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation.

Our Permits and Engineering Division evaluates and issues air quality permits to ensure that proposed new and modified commercial and industrial equipment and operations comply with air pollution control laws.  All permits issued by the SDAPCD must have been evaluated for CEQA unless demonstrated to be exempt from CEQA.

SDAPCD has developed the CEQA Supplemental Form to help streamline the CEQA review process for permit applications.

Visit our Permits page for more information about applying for permits.

It is recommended that the Lead Agency use the calculation methods and emission factors published by the SDAPCD for equipment, processes and operations used at stationary sources, found at the SDAPCD’s Calculation Procedures page . Other calculation methods can be used if documentation is provided regarding the validity, appropriateness and applicability to the project.

Emissions associated with mobile sources should utilize the most recent EMFAC(on-road) and OFFROAD (off-road) emission factors published by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) found at www.arb.ca.gov .The District recommends using only approved and up to date models for calculating emissions from land use projects, such as the CalEEMod model.

 

To complete an air quality impact assessment (AQIA) and health risk assessment (HRA) for the CEQA process, modeling is usually required.  The SDAPCD requires that AERMOD, the EPA approved regulatory air dispersion model, be used to perform the air dispersion modeling for AQIAs and HRAs.  The AERMOD executable is available for free from EPA at:

https://gaftp.epa.gov/Air/aqmg/SCRAM/models/preferred/aermod/aermod_exe.zip. 

The AERMOD user’s guide is at:

 https://gaftp.epa.gov/Air/aqmg/SCRAM/models/preferred/aermod/aermod_userguide.pdf

There are also fee-based software options available that incorporate a user-friendly interface. The SDAPCD does not endorse any specific interface, but one such product is Lakes Environmental AERMOD View software, which is used by SDAPCD modeling staff for all modeling projects using AERMOD.  Lakes AERMOD View software can be obtained at the Lakes website at:

https://www.weblakes.com/

The use of Lakes AERMOD view by the Lead Agency may help with the ease of review and sharing of files.  AERMOD contains several regulatory options, include default options, and non-regulatory options.  For most modeling projects, the regulatory default options should be used in the modeling.

Emission Sources

AERMOD requires the input of emission source information.  There are four different types of sources - point, area, volume, and line. 

  1. Point Sources – A point source is the most common type of release and is characterized by a stack or vent.  Examples of point sources are exhausts from emergency engines, stacks coming off combustion equipment, and roof vents.  There are different types of point sources that can be modeled in AERMOD including non-capped vertical stacks, a stack with a flapper valve, and stacks with a fixed rain cap.  Point sources can also be modeled as having a horizontal orientation.  Point sources have stack parameters associated with them including exhaust temperature, stack diameter, flow rate, and stack height.
  2. Area Sources – Area sources are used to model releases that occur over an area.  Examples of area sources include landfills and open tanks and stockpiles.  Different types of area sources are rectangular, circular, and polygonal (to represent an area that is irregularly shaped and has up to 20 sides).  For an area source, you must determine the release height above ground.  For example, a tank open to the atmosphere would have a release height equal to the tank height.  For a landfill surface, the release height would be zero.
  3. Volume Sources – Volume sources are used to model releases that occur over a three-dimensional volume.  Examples of volume sources include fugitive leaks, multiple vents, gas stations, wipe cleaning and solvent use.  Volume sources require a release height which is the height above ground at the center of the volume.  An irregularly shaped volume can be represented by dividing the volume source into multiple smaller volume sources.
  4. Line Sources – Line sources are used to model releases from a variety of sources including roads, rail lines, and conveyor belts.  AERMOD also allows line volume sources, which are volume sources arranged in a line.  The SDAPCD typically uses this source type to represent heavy duty truck travel on unpaved haul roads as they are good at simulating the kicking up of dust by the trucks’ wheels.

Meteorological Data

SDAPCD-processed meteorological data should be used.  The SDAPCD has processed meteorological data with the latest version of the EPA AERMET preprocessor that converts the raw data into an AERMOD-ready meteorological data input file.  For more information on AERMET the user’s guide is at:

https://gaftp.epa.gov/Air/aqmg/SCRAM/models/met/aermet/aermet_userguide.pdf

Please Contact the Monitoring and Technical Services Division at APCDWX.LUEG@sdapcd.org or 858-586-2769 to get the meteorological data for the site most appropriate for a modeling project.

Receptors

The receptor network must include adequate coverage to capture the maximum ground level concentration.  The receptor network should include a regularly spaced grid and include property boundary receptors.  To limit the total number of receptors in a modeling, there is the option to have a denser grid of receptors closer to the source, and a coarser grid further away from the source.

A Health Risk Assessment (HRA) takes the expected airborne concentrations of toxic air contaminants from the project being evaluated and calculates the potential health risk to the surrounding population due to the project.  The California Air Resourced Board (CARB) has developed the HARP program to take the concentrations from the air dispersion modeling software and calculate the health risks.  This program incorporates the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment’s (OEHHA’s)  Risk Assessment Guidelines for determining the risks.  In addition to the OEHHA Guidelines, the SDAPCD has published Supplemental Guidelines for how dispersion modeling and risk assessments should be conducted for projects within San Diego County.

The types of health risk that must be calculated include the residential 30-year cancer risk, the occupational 25-year cancer risk, the non-cancer chronic health hazard index (HHI), the non-cancer 8-hour chronic HHI, the non-cancer acute HHI and the cancer burden (70-year exposure).  These risks shall each be made for the maximally exposed individual resident (MEIR), the maximally exposed individual worker (MEIW), the maximally exposed short-term receptor (if different than the MEIR or MEIW), as well as at nearby sensitive receptors.  If the project will have lead (Pb) emissions, the non-cancer sub-chronic (30-day average) lead risk must also be determined, following the CARB Lead Risk Management Guidelines (available at: https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/documents/lead-risk-management-guidelines).

Governor's Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation - CEQA Guidelines and Training Materials

CEQAnet Web Portal - State Clearinghouse for CEQA documents

Association of Environmental Professionals - Non-profit association for CEQA Policy

County of San Diego - CEQA Consultant Resources including guidelines and thresholds

City of San Diego - CEQA Policy and Review

City of Chula Vista - Environmental Review

Contact APCD

Phone: (858) 586-2600

10124 Old Grove Road
San Diego, CA 92131

Email: airinfo@sdapcd.org

 

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