Signed into law by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1970, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has required that state and local governments assess and then make public the likely environmental effects of their decisions. In particular, that requirement has impacted the speed of approvals for residential and commercial development—which is to say that CEQA has frequently been blamed for the slow pace of approvals and, at times, preventing those approvals from coming through.
Partly that’s because, as CalMatters reported, CEQA has allowed individuals or groups to sue if they believe that an environmental review isn’t accurate, expansive or detailed enough. “The state has recognized for several years that California is facing a significant housing crisis,” Andrew Fogg, partner with law firm Cox Castle & Nicholson, told Connect CRE. “CEQA has been identified as a major contributor to that issue – both in terms of time it takes to process project approvals and the threat of what some deemed as frivolous litigation.”
As a case in point, state Sen. Scott Weiner (D-San Francisco) on Monday cited lawsuits against a food bank in Alameda and a housing development in San Francisco that were both blocked because people sued under CEQA to preserve parking lots. Weiner told the San Francisco Chronicle that the bills signed Monday by Gov. Gavin Newsom, including a rollback of CEQA, will make it “easier and faster to build new housing.”
Speed wasn’t exactly a factor in the push to carve out CEQA exemptions: lawmakers had waged that campaign for more than a decade. “Enacting public policy is always an exercise in balancing competing interests,” Fogg told Connect CRE. “There are very strong interest groups on both sides of this issue. There was a lot of pressure from environmental organizations and organized labor to limit reform significantly or impose conditions that made it challenging to use past streamlining efforts.”
As to what finally turned the tide, Fogg said, “The scales balancing the competing interests noted above finally tipped. The legislature elected to craft an exemption that provides significant protections for sites that have sensitive resources – such as where there are tribal, historic, or habitat resources or is located in certain defined areas such as portions of the coastal zone, prime farmland, wetlands, high fire severity zone, designated earthquake zone, special flood hazard areas, or designated conservation area.
“However, for sites that are within urbanized areas, are consistent with applicable planning laws, and are less than 20 acres in size, the legislature has allowed those to proceed without project-level CEQA. It also incorporates the applicable regulatory clean-up standards for any prior hazardous materials that may be present on a particular site, both to protect existing surrounding users and for future project residents.”
It’s important to remember that “the local agency will have already undertaken CEQA review for its prior adoption of the applicable General Plan and Zoning. So, as long as the project is consistent with that and will not impact the sensitive resources noted above, then the project can move forward without additional CEQA review.”
Fogg noted that the bill signed by Newsom represents “the first meaningful CEQA exemption that will give local agencies [authority] to approve those projects on a streamlined basis without the need for costly redundant environmental review or the threat of CEQA litigation. I anticipate that this will be used widely in urban areas across the state.”
The CEQA reform measure isn’t likely to accelerate residential development on its own. Bill Fulton, a planning expert and former Ventura mayor who has advocated for CEQA reform, told the Chronicle that the changes passed Monday are significant but are not a panacea.
“I don’t think this alone is going to create a housing boom,” he said. “I think this, together with other things, will gradually increase the amount of housing approved.”
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