Land Use Flashcards
What is the California subdivision map act?
Subdivision Map Act – Provides for regulation of land divisions by a city; – Interpreted and enforced by the city.
What is the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)?
CEQA is intended to inform government decisionmakers and the public about the potential environmental effects of proposed activities and to prevent significant, avoidable environmental damage.
How does land use affect the drinking water quality and quantity standards?
A higher proportion of stream miles are impaired in agricultural and urban landscapes.
What does the State Water Quality Control Board do in regards to land use?
The State Water Quality Board regulates various land use activities such as: Biosolids (disposal of sewage sludge), Cannabis cultivation, irrigated lands, landfills, and wetlands.
Basically runoff, flows from tile drains, and storm water runoff. These discharges within these land use activities can affect water quality by transporting pollutants. SWQCB protects the Basin Plan is designed to preserve and enhance water quality and protect the beneficial uses of all regional waters
What is considered to determine a zoning category?
Density
Parking requirements
Lot coverage
height limits
lot size requirements
unit size requirements
Floor area ratios
setbacks
open space requirements
growth controls (multifamily buildings)
Land planning rules for conditional use permits?
A conditional use permit allows a city or county to consider special uses which may be essential or desirable to a particular community, but which are not allowed as a matter of right within a zoning district, through a public hearing process.
What are the land planning rules for general plans?
To provide physical development, expresses the goals and embodies public policy relative to the distribution of future land uses, both public and private.
What are floodplain maps?
maps land area subject to inundation by floodwaters from any source.
Instructions for determining whether the project construction area is located with a regulatory floodway or within the base floodplain (100-year) elevation of a watercourse or lake are provided in the maps
Name toxicological contaminants in land use
Lead, Arsenic, Asbestos, perchlorate
Name some historical land use activities that can affect current potential land uses
Mining activities
underground storage of liquids (gasoline)
drug labs
military bases
cemeteries
archeological sites
dumpsite/landfills
What are some minimum water quantity requirements ?
Source, storage, and distribution
Safe drinking water act set what primary standards:
The primary drinking water quality standards
radioacttivity, organic, synthetic, volatile, inorganic (nitrites/ Nitrates and heavy metals), biological (total and fecal coliform bacteria)
Safe drinking water act set what secondary standards:
Secondary standards for safe drinking water act include: Taste, Odor, and Appearance
define geology
study of mineralogical composition of rocks in order to get insight into their history of formation.
Define watershed management
Practices of water and land to protect and improve the quality of the water and other natural resources within a watershed by managing the use of those land and water resources in a comprehensive manner.
Hydrology
The branch of science concerned with the properties of the earth’s water, and especially its movement in relation to land.
wetlands
Areas where water covers the soil or is near the surface of the soil for all year or for varying periods of time.
Topography
Study of the forms and features of land surfaces
Soil Morphology
the branch of soil science dedicated to the technical description of soil; physical properties studied include texture, color, size, etc.
Artesian spring
Source of ground water that is forced to the earth’s surface by the pressure caused by underground layers of rock, without the air of a pump.
Flood plain
Area of land next to a river or stream that flood during a storm. Helps reduce pollution and lessen impact heavy storms.
Aquifier
Is an underground body of rock or sediment that serves as a storage reservoir for large volumes of groundwater. Unconfined (open) or confined (closed) aquifers
Aquitard
Confining unit, is a low-permeability unit that can store groundwater and transmit it slowly from one aquifer to another.
Porosity
The quality or degree of having minute spaces or holes through which liquid or air may pass.