Senator Wiener Introduces The Fast & Focused CEQA Act

SAN FRANCISCO – Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) introduced SB 607, a good government measure that makes several key changes to improve the clarity and efficiency of California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) processes. Environmental review under CEQA frequently takes 3-4 years to complete, creating a major barrier to building or altering housing, infrastructure, child care centers, and any other project that requires government approval. By speeding reviews for a wide range of projects, including infill housing, SB 607 helps to lower costs and restore trust in government efficiency for all Californians.

Without relaxing any of the standards of environmental review, SB 607 focuses on speeding approvals for environmentally friendly and environmentally neutral projects while maintaining existing processes for potentially environmentally destructive projects like fossil fuel facilities. CEQA is broader and more intensive than environmental review laws in other states, and good government groups like the Little Hoover Commission have called for changes to CEQA to reduce abuse and delays. SB 607 enacts several of the Little Hoover Commission’s proposals. SB 607 makes five technical changes to CEQA, which are listed in detail below. 

While housing projects in urban areas, also known as “infill” housing projects, are currently exempt from CEQA, a lack of clarity has prevented the exemption from being used. Among other steps, SB 607 would direct the Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation (LUCI) to issue guidance clarifying key details about the existing exemption (Class 32), removing a major process barrier to housing production across California. 

SB 607 is sponsored by the Rural County Representatives of California, Prosperity California, the Housing Action Coalition, and the Bay Area Council. It is supported by California YIMBY and YIMBY Action.

“For California to succeed as a state, we need to build an abundance of housing, child care centers, transportation, clean energy, and all the things that make life better and more affordable for people,” said Senator Wiener. “CEQA provides communities with important safeguards against projects like fossil fuel plants and warehouses that have caused real harm. But too often it has also been abused as a tool to block and delay projects for reasons that have nothing to do with environmental protections. That includes projects that are absolutely essential to protecting our environment like clean energy, urban housing, and public transportation. This bill makes smart process changes to focus CEQA on the projects that demand additional scrutiny for their environmental impact, while speeding up the things we need to make California cleaner and more affordable for all Californians. In that sense, this bill more closely aligns CEQA with its original intent.”

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) was passed in 1970 to require that government agencies review the environmental impacts of certain projects. This environmental review process is critically important for protecting the environment from projects, such as refineries, that pollute natural resources and jeopardize health, especially for historically marginalized and underserved populations.

However, in the decades since its passage, courts have massively expanded CEQA to apply to every project the government approves, funds, or builds itself. These changes — which the Legislature never approved — extend CEQA review requirements into a huge range of projects, including projects built by private entities that require government permits or approvals.

Each step of the CEQA process is subject to appeals and lawsuits that can increase project costs and time because of the extremely broad scope and standards of relevancy CEQA requires. It’s not unusual for CEQA lawsuits to take three to four years and millions of dollars to resolve, while appeals regularly take six months. Larger and more complex projects go through lengthier and more expensive CEQA reviews. 

The breadth and vagueness of CEQA means that the law has in practice allowed basically anyone who can hire a lawyer to use CEQA to obstruct projects they do not like for reasons that have nothing to do with the environment. In 2023, neighbors in Berkeley filed a lawsuit to block student housing, citing the noise students would hypothetically make in an urban area as an “environmental” harm. Last December, a man used CEQA to block an art installation to illuminate the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge with LED lights, saying the project constituted “discrimination.”

Given the broad applicability of the law and the potential for misapplication or even abuse, the Legislature and the courts have created numerous exemptions and carve outs to CEQA, especially for projects that align with state goals. The Legislature has removed student housing, sustainable transportation projects, and desperately needed supportive housing from the CEQA process with these exemptions in order to speed the production of these critical projects. The resulting framework, where CEQA applies to most projects with a few exceptions, is sometimes referred to as “Swiss Cheese CEQA.”

Despite these numerous legislative interventions, however, comprehensive attempts to restore CEQA to its original intent have been few and far between. 

The need to refocus CEQA has been acknowledged by a wide range of experts. As early as 1994, the Legislature codified that the intent of the Legislature was that courts not interpret CEQA or the CEQA state guidelines in a manner which imposes procedural or substantive requirements beyond those explicitly stated. Last year, the Little Hoover Commission, a good government group, wrote in their report CEQA: Targeted Reforms for California’s Core Environmental Law, “... like any law, CEQA can have damaging, often unintended, consequences. While CEQA remains an essential tool to protect the state’s environment, it can be improved through targeted, limited reforms.” 

“RCRC is pleased to co-sponsor SB 607 because it takes a common-sense approach to harmonize CEQA with its intended objectives without compromising its core environmental safeguards,” said John Kennedy, Senior Policy Advocate for the Rural County Representatives of California. “SB 607 will help prevent CEQA manipulation, focus environmental reviews for projects that would normally be exempt from CEQA, reduce the risk of multi-year litigation delays, and expedite sorely needed housing and infill development projects.” 

"We are excited that Senator Wiener is undertaking the important challenge of ensuring California’s bedrock environmental law does not unintentionally result in barriers to new infill housing in our existing communities, which is imperative for protecting our climate and the environment,” said Jordan Grimes, State & Regional Resilience Manager at the Greenbelt Alliance. “While we have yet to take a position on SB607, we look forward to working with the Senator to better align environmental policy with today’s environmental challenges."

SB 607 makes a number of targeted reforms to strengthen the operational efficiency of CEQA, including:

• For projects falling short of meeting eligibility for a categorical or statutory exemption by a lead agency, SB 607 focuses the scope of the subsequent environmental review to the disqualifying reason and the facts the action or proceeding relied upon that disqualified the project from the exemption. 
• Aligns the standard of review for a lead agency’s determination to adopt a Negative Declaration (ND) or a Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND) to parity with the existing standard of review for Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs). 
• Focuses CEQA review on the most germane administrative records by excluding communications of persons tangential or far removed from project decision-making, with specified exemptions. 

SB 607 also focuses specifically on reducing delays on housing and other urban infill projects by:

• Clarifying the existing Class 32 urban infill exemption to make it usable. 
• Exempting re-zonings that are consistent with an already approved housing element from CEQA, recognizing that local jurisdictions must undergo the CEQA process as a part of the housing element adoption process. 

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