CEQA attacks come as our planet most needs the law
If the recent attacks on California’s landmark environmental law sound tired, that’s because they are. Ever since the California Environmental Quality Act went into effect in 1970, there have been calls to tweak, reform or completely throw it out.
The regulations stifle the economy, developers say. The environmental review is too cumbersome, politicians argue. As a longtime environmental attorney, I’ve heard them all. But as the climate crisis intensifies, opponents of the state’s premier environmental law are starting to sound tone deaf.
CEQA requires developers and decisionmakers to analyze and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts of a project before approval. The law is effective at protecting public health, saving wildlife habitat and advancing environmental justice.
The latest U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report tells us we’re quickly approaching a climate warming threshold that will cause devastating and irreversible harm to people and wildlife — and the natural systems that sustain us all. In light of this dire news, it’s an utterly inappropriate time to call for CEQA’s demise.
At the center of the latest round of CEQA bashing is a housing issue at UC Berkeley. A judge had blocked the admissions of thousands of incoming students in a lawsuit filed by a neighborhood group over the university’s expansion. The city of Berkeley also sued for related reasons but ultimately settled with the school. Lawmakers blaming CEQA quickly responded with legislation to let the students enroll.
A CEQA lawsuit might not be the best way to address Berkeley’s housing woes. But when the UC Regents bring thousands of new students every year to a city with an affordable housing crisis, they have a responsibility to provide housing for them and help cover the additional public services costs.
Let’s entertain the faulty notion that by eliminating CEQA, or watering down its strongest provisions, we can somehow improve communities by removing barriers to development. In a world without CEQA, this university town still wouldn’t get a single additional residential unit and the community would lose its chance to participate in public decision-making.
CEQA can’t fix the state’s housing problems, but it certainly didn’t cause or exacerbate the crisis. As a living law, CEQA has already been modified to streamline the process for certain projects, including affordable housing.
If policymakers truly want to build more housing, they should lift restrictive zoning laws and allow denser development near jobs and transit centers. A report published last year by the Housing Workshop concluded that rising costs of land, materials and labor, coupled with local zoning laws, contribute to the housing crunch, while CEQA does not impede development.
A strong environmental review law like CEQA compels decisionmakers to look before they leap. And by protecting CEQA, we protect our communities, our climate and our health.
CEQA forces government agencies to consider evacuation routes before greenlighting a planned community on fireprone hillsides. It forces a city council to analyze and mitigate greenhouse gas pollution before approving a warehouse that brings in diesel truck traffic.
In Napa, where hillside forests are being razed for vineyards, CEQA was used to limit the size of a massive winery conversion project to save as many carbon-sequestering trees as possible.
Near Joshua Tree National Park, an environmental review for a housing development allowed community members to raise serious concerns about destroying rare desert habitat and drawing resources away from low-income and communities of color. The CEQA process worked without litigation when the Riverside Board of Supervisors rejected the harmful project.
Oftentimes, CEQA works to improve communities away from the spotlight. Unfortunately, detractors ignore all the ways CEQA has turned California into an environmental leader and dwell on exceptional examples like the Berkeley case.
Even the most effective laws can occasionally have unintended consequences.