Press Release

Senator Wiener Landmark CEQA Modernization Bill to Slash Costs, Delays, and Frivolous Lawsuits Passes Its First Committee

SAN FRANCISCO – The Senate Environmental Quality Committee passed Senator Scott Wiener’s (D-San Francisco) SB 607, the Fast & Focused CEQA Act, 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 years to complete, creating a major barrier to building or altering housing, infrastructure, child care centers, and most other building projects in California. 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. The bill passed 6-0 and heads next to the Senate Local Government Committee.

“For California to succeed as a state, we need to build more of the things that make people’s lives better and more affordable: housing, child care centers, transportation, clean energy, and so much more,” said Senator Wiener. “SB 607 allows communities to challenge significant environmental threats while dramatically reducing the delays, legal uncertainties, and costs that CEQA currently imposes on even the most worthy projects. I thank my colleagues for supporting the bill, and I look forward to continuing to work to advance thoughtful improvements to CEQA.”

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 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), making the exemption usable and 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.

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. CEQA has helped communities in Riverside negotiate a settlement to protect air quality from a major warehouse, allowed Kern County residents to fight thousands of new oil wells, and helped protect Long Beach residents from the air quality impacts of a nearby railyard.

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:

  • Two residents recently filed a CEQA lawsuit to halt construction on the Alameda Food Bank (AFB). AFB’s Executive Director said she was afraid lengthy litigation would result in the Food Bank’s “inability” to provide services for 1,200 families, school lunches, and food donations to unhoused people.
  • In South San Francisco, opponents of a new Planned Parenthood filed a CEQA lawsuit. Even though the project fit cleanly into several categorical exemptions, opponents argued that they had failed to account for the environmental impact of protests at the proposed new facility.  The final decision by the Court of Appeal was issued more than four years after the initial project approval.
  • Disgruntled neighbors filed a CEQA lawsuit to stop the construction of Liberty Lane Apartments in Redlands, a 98 percent affordable housing project primarily for veterans who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, as well as for individuals with special needs and other low-income households.
  • Susanville filed a CEQA lawsuit to stop the closure of a state prison because the state hadn’t considered the economic impact of the prison’s closure on the town.
  • Local businesses sued to stop 200 tiny homes to shelter the unhoused in downtown Sacramento. Their justification was that the city of Sacramento “didn’t take into account the environmental impact or health implications of placing the homeless under the W/X freeway” when the homeless people would otherwise be living unhoused, likely near these same freeways.
  • The San Francisco Board of Supervisors used a CEQA appeal to block 494 units of housing proposed on a transit-adjacent Nordstroms valet parking lot at 469 Stevenson St. in downtown San Francisco on the premise that the $750,000 CEQA review completed by the city didn’t adequately address the gentrification impacts of the project. The project will likely not move forward even if it gets approval, now as construction costs have risen too high after the years of delay and attendant costs.

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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