The lack of early integration with the planning and decision-making process hasbeen a major problem in environmental assessment. Traditional project-basedenvironmental impact assessment has inadequate incentives and capacities to incorporatecritical environmental impacts at a broader temporal or spatial scale. While manyapplications have been geared towards implementing project-level environmentalassessments, comparatively little research has been done to determine how toincorporate strategically critical environmental impacts into local planning. Although theprinciples of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) are not yet required in localplanning in the United States, these principles create a theoretical framework for localenvironmental assessment.The objective of this study is to examine the ability of local plans to integrate andimplement the key SEA principles. This study focuses on increasing the understandingof how and where to integrate environmental impacts into the local planning anddecision-making process by converting the principles of SEA into specific planning tools, policies, and implementation strategies. This study develops a protocol with 112indicators to measure the strengths and weaknesses of integrating strategicenvironmental assessment into local comprehensive land use plans. A random sample of40 California local comprehensive land use plans and associated planning processes isevaluated based on this plan quality evaluation protocol. Statistical analysis and multipleregression models identify the factors affecting the quality of plans with respect to theirability to assess environmental impacts.The results identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the ability of localjurisdictions to integrate the SEA principles. The results show that many strategicallyimportant environmental issues and tools are rarely adopted by current local plans. Theregression analysis results further identify the effects of planning capacity,environmental assessment capacity, public participation and contextual variables onenvironmental assessment plan quality. The findings extend established planning theoryand practice by incorporating strategic environmental considerations into the existingframework of what constitutes a high quality local land use comprehensive plan andsuggest ways to improve plan quality.
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