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The Golden State tug-of-war between environmental advocacy and the worsening housing crisis came to mind Monday evening when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two bills overhauling the Landmark California Environmental Quality Act to ease new construction in the state.
Two laws, Congressional Bill 130 and Senate Bill 131, were lynching pins in approval of the proposed $3200 billion state budget deal. The governor’s signature was conditional on their passage. Together they exempt a wide range of housing development and infrastructure projects from CEQA. This is a law that dates back to 1970, requiring government agencies to identify and mitigate the environmental impact of actions.
Newsom said the bill would break down long-standing barriers to development, speeding up production, lower costs and help the state deal with housing shortages.
“Today’s bill is a game changer and this will feel to generations ahead,” the governor said in a statement. Development experts agreed, saying it was one of the most important reforms to CEQA in its 55-year history.
But its passage sparked a fierce backlash from environmental groups that showed a fundamental reversal of the state’s most vulnerable landscape, wildlife and essential conservation of the community.
“This bill is California’s worst anti-environmental bill in recent memory,” a coalition of over 100 organizations wrote to the governor ahead of Monday’s decision. “It represents an unprecedented rollback to protecting California’s basic environment and communities at a time when Californians are tackling an unprecedented federal attack on their lives and livelihoods.”
CEQA was designed to provide more powerful transparency and public engagement in land use decisions across California. Third-party experts have acknowledged the bill that requires public agencies to consider and address the environmental impact of the project, protect ecosystems, preserve scenic landscapes and waterways, and protect the health of communities across the state.
However, CEQA has faced considerable criticism over the years. That part is because its troublesome environmental impact reports have been delayed and projects such as housing and high-speed rail development have even been suspended.
The AB 130 and SB 131 address some of these concerns. Specifically, the Parliamentary bill exempts most urban infill housing from CEQA. This means that most residential projects built in already developed areas are no longer needed to receive environmental reviews.
According to Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who led the bill, the Senate bill exempts a wider range of projects from the CEQA review, including projects targeting high-speed rail segments and wildfire mitigation, water infrastructure and electric vehicle production.
“These invoices will keep the deficits and key process hurdles out of the way, and ultimately address these shortages, ensuring an affordable California and a brighter future,” Wiener said in a statement.
Jacob Evans, a senior policy strategist at Sierra Club California, was one of those who oppose the law. He said it will come when the federal government rolls back some aspects of NEPA, environmental protection, including the National Environmental Policy Act, which is modelled.
“This is California, which regulates strong transparency laws with a completely opaque process at a time when protections are lost nationwide,” Evans said.
Among the main concerns of opponents is the exemption from advanced manufacturing facilities that can allow semiconductor factories, nuclear facilities, industrial factories and other entities to deal with high-risk hazardous materials in vulnerable communities without environmental reviews.
Semiconductor facilities in particular are associated with groundwater contamination from chemical solvents, with Santa Clara County in Silicon Valley located on 23 active super fund sites. According to opponents of AB 130 and SB 131, facilities are already exempt from NEPA, so waiver of them from CEQA means they receive little environmental reviews.
“SB 131 will revoke decades of environmental protection in the name of promoting industrial development at a significant cost to public health and the environment,” read a statement from Asha Sharma, state policy manager for leadership advisors in justice and accountability. “It’s not a question of when a public health disaster will occur.”
Opponents were also concerned about the provisions of the law that would allow government agencies to exclude some staff memos and internal agency communications from requests for public records. This would make it easier for government employees to “cherry” publicly available information, obscuring concerns and risks about the project.
They pointed out that the law does not include protection of sensitive and endangered species that could expose hundreds of thousands of acres of forests, chaparrals, deserts and coastal areas to relatively unidentified construction.
“Exemptions from wide development without considering the habitats of at-risk species will destroy the state’s natural heritage and unique biodiversity,” said Francis Tinney, a lawyer for the Biodiversity Nonprofit Center.
Raquel Mason, senior legislator of the California Environmental Justice Alliance, said that not only threatened species are the species that could potentially suffer under the new rules, but also low-income communities, communities of color, and other groups that have historically been disproportionately burdened by pollution and other environmental harms.
“By moving forward with this bill, Congress has sent a clear message. The right to participate in decisions that affect our health, safety and our lives is disposable,” Mason said in a statement. “This bill is coming [in] Industrial development without the opportunity for our community to advocate for the mitigation necessary to protect ourselves. And all this happened in a closed room that was not publicly disclosed. ”
In fact, several opponents were interested in the source of the bill. The law was in a hurry – SB 131 was introduced on Friday and then passed on Monday, with little time for input or correction.
Moreover, the governor’s strategy to request a state budget transaction for the bill was rare. This move – a political tactic called “Poison” that overturned the entire spending plan if the Senate bill was not approved, allowing Newsom to promote prioritization of accelerated development.
At a press conference he signed the bill Monday evening, Newsom said he hopes that the fate of the state budget doesn’t need to be tied back to the law.
“I’m not trying to create precedents here,” Newsom said. “I think we’re having an unprecedented crisis of affordability in the state, but it’s just growing.”
The governor was supported by housing advocates who defended the bill as an essential reform to address the state’s housing crisis.
“AB 130 and SB 131 ensure that the state’s environmental review process works better not only for housing, but also for climate action and equity,” Corey Smith, executive director of the Housing Action Coalition, said in a statement. “The current CEQA framework in California is too misused to accurately block the types of affordable, sustainable housing that our community desperately needs.”
Assembly member Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), who led AB 130, said, “This is something we all had been waiting for. It’s a long and short step to stop CEQA from being weaponized against housing.”
“In AB 130, we took a big step towards building a home that we desperately need faster, fairer and more reliable. This is how working-class families deserve and move California’s housing goals from promise to reality,” Wicks said.
However, environmental groups said the fight was not over. They urged lawmakers to enact “cleanup laws” or follow-up laws to clarify, correct and address countless concerns over the coming weeks.
Times staff writers Taryn Luna and Liam Dillon contributed to this report.
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