Draft Environmental Impact Report - East Bay Municipal Utility District

Estates Reservoir Replacement Draft Environmental Impact ReportBiological ResourcesThe candidate species are taxa for which the USFWS has sufficient biologicalinformation to support a proposal to list as endangered or threatened. Project impacts tosuch species would be considered significant in this EIR.California Endangered Species ActUnder the California Endangered Species Act (CESA), the CDFG has theresponsibility for maintaining a list of threatened species and endangered species (CDFGSection 2070). The CDFG also maintains a list of candidate species, which are speciesthat the CDFG has formally noticed as under review for addition to the threatened orendangered species lists. The CDFG also maintains lists of species of special concernthat serve as watch lists. Pursuant to the requirements of CESA, an agency reviewing aproposed project within its jurisdiction must determine whether any state-listedendangered or threatened species may be present in the project area and determinewhether the proposed project will have a potentially significant impact on such species.In addition, the CDFG encourages informal consultation on any proposed project thatmay affect a candidate species. Project-related impacts to species on the CESAendangered list and threatened list would be considered significant in this EIR. Impactsto species of concern would be considered significant under certain circumstances.CEQA Guidelines Section 15380Although threatened and endangered species are protected by specific federal and statestatutes, CEQA Guidelines Section 15380(b) provides that a species not listed on thefederal or state list of protected species may be considered rare or endangered if thespecies can be shown to meet certain specified criteria. These criteria have been modeledafter the definition in FESA and the section of the CDFG Code dealing with rare orendangered plants or animals. This section was included in the CEQA Guidelinesprimarily to deal with a situation in which a project may have a significant effect on aspecies that has not yet been listed by either the USFWS or CDFG. Thus, CEQAprovides the ability to protect a species from potential project impacts until the respectivegovernment agencies have an opportunity to designate the species as protected, ifwarranted.CEQA also calls for the protection of other locally or regionally significant resources,including natural communities. Although natural communities do not at present havelegal protection, CEQA calls for an assessment of whether any such resources would beaffected, and requires a finding of significance if there would be substantial losses.Natural communities listed in the CNDD as “high priority for inventory” are consideredby CDFG to be significant resources and fall under the CEQA Guidelines for addressingimpacts. Local planning documents such as General Plans often identify these resourcesas well.sb09_001.doc 3-4.3 7/22/2009