Note: Assemblymember Rick Zbur and Senator Ben Allen, Santa Monica’s representatives to the legislature, both voted to approve this legislation.
California’s biggest environmental law, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), has been on the books for over half a century. Yesterday, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a pair of CEQA reform bills, exempting many projects from full CEQA scrutiny.
The CEQA changes were approved via an unusual process; they were attached to the state budget, circumventing the full legislative process. Newsom claimed that California’s housing supply crisis necessitated signing the bill now.
CEQA requires California public agencies to evaluate and disclose the potential environmental impacts of proposed projects before approving them. That process generally leads to agencies adopting measures to mitigate or avoid significant environmental impacts. CEQA studies can take at least several months, and oftentimes two years or more for complicated projects.
Debate Over Process
Last week, during the debates over the budget, Newsom negotiated two pieces of legislation into the “trailer bills” that accompanied the budget. Senate Bill 131 included language originally included in Senate Bill 607 by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-SF). AB 130 included language originally included in Assembly Bill 609 by Asm. Buffy Wicks (D-Berkeley). When the legislatures passed the budget, they also passed both of these bills.
Read the Governor’s full statement from yesterday’s bill signing.
CEQA reform approval was heralded by leaders in the YIMBY and Abundance movements, and condemned by leaders in the mainstream environmental movement.
Supporters point to examples of how legal challenges to CEQA have held up projects that are clearly in the public good, including a food bank in Alameda and a housing development in San Francisco that were both blocked by legal challenges to preserve existing parking lots.
But opponents argue that the new law goes too far and exempts too many things, undercutting state environmental protections at a time when the federal government is basically wiping its hands of any obligation to preserve and protect the environment.
“We’re in a nature crisis, we’re seeing unprecedented loss of wildlife, and that’s to be made worse with this bill [SB 131],” said Environment California’s Laura Deehan in a statement to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Contrast that with, “SB 131 makes extremely consequential progress on delivering the advanced manufacturing, transportation, housing and so many more projects that Californians need and deserve to reduce the cost of living in this state,” according to Jim Wunderman, CEO of the pro-business Bay Area Council.
Each piece of legislation had already cleared its respective house before the budget negotiations; they still would have had to pass the other house. Further debate was bypassed by approving them in the budget trailers.
“We’re also very concerned about opening the floodgates for new development that could be really polluting,” Deehan continued. “We also think it was ridiculous to do this type of action behind closed doors in a budget bill.”
But what do these new laws actually do to CEQA?
AB 609/130: Big Changes for Infill Housing
The first CEQA bill has three major changes. The first applies only to infill housing, the construction of new residential units on vacant or underutilized land within established urban or suburban areas. These projects are now exempt from CEQA.
That results in a streamlined permitting process for multi-family housing in existing, developed urban areas. In order to qualify projects must be on a previously developed property, or surrounded on almost all sides by existing urban uses. The homes must also be consistent with local zoning, and cannot be located in an environmentally sensitive or hazardous site.
The law also modifies how CEQA legal challenges are handled. The new law reduces the length of CEQA lawsuits by raising the “standard of relevancy” for administrative records that can be used. In his statement announcing the law, Newson simplified this explanation that 131/609 will reduce lawsuit “gotcha” moments.
In layman’s terms, it us now harder to file a CEQA lawsuit against any project, not just infill housing.
The bill also removes a duplicative requirement by exempting from CEQA rezonings that are undertaken to implement a Regional Housing Needs Assessment (i.e. state mandated) compliant housing element that has already gone through the CEQA process.
In addition to making it faster and easier to build housing, supporters argue that by making it easier to build in urban and suburban areas, the measure is good for the environment.
“California’s current CEQA framework is too often misused to block exactly the kinds of infill, affordable, and sustainable housing our communities desperately need,” explains Corey Smith, Executive Director of The Housing Action Coalition.
However, a poll put out in early June by Tulchin Research showed widespread disapproval of AB 609 and strong support for maintaining CEQA as it stood. By a 27-66% margin, those polled disapproved of the legislation.
SB 131/607: A Broad List of Exemptions
The Senate Bill is more expansive than its Assembly counterpart.
SB 131/607 creates nine major new CEQA exemptions:
- Health centers and rural clinics
- Childcare centers
- Advanced manufacturing facilities in industrial areas
- Food banks
- Farm worker housing
- Clean Water projects (except the Delta Conveyance)
- Wildfire risk mitigation projects
- Broadband
- Parks
Taken together with the Assembly legislation, the California Native Plant Society bemoaned the list includes “nearly all private and government projects.”
A report by Bay Area NPR station KQED focuses on the changes to the law concerning “advanced manufacturing facilities.” Wiener hopes this will spur development and investment in electronics and semiconductors in the state at a time when industry is looking to bring these types of jobs back to the United States.
But that type of construction project is exactly what environmental groups are concerned about. Building semiconductors takes a lot of water and has been known to cause air and water pollution. They argue this is the exact type of project that requires significant environmental review.
What’s Next?
The debate is over for these two pieces of legislation, but there’s more CEQA reform in queue. Wiener has another CEQA bill that already passed the Senate and will be considered in the Assembly. Senate Bill 79 barely cleared the Senate, and would:
- Upzone near rail and bus rapid transit stations: allow buildings up to seven stories high within a quarter mile from major transit stops and up to four stories high within a half-mile;
- Allow transit agencies to set their own zoning standards for properties they own near rail and bus rapid transit stations;
- Speed up the permitting process for projects within a half-mile from rail and bus rapid transit stations transit stops.
Supporters warn that just because of these changes, don’t expect to see a lot more housing built in the next couple of years. At the signing event, Wiener noted that it took a half dozen years after the state changed laws to allow building of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU’s) aka Granny Flats before large numbers were constructed.
