AS OF MONDAY, developers will have an easier time building in California.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two bills into law that will provide permit exceptions for urban housing and infrastructure projects.
The California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, requires developers to do environmental studies and provide evidence that their building projects will not negatively impact ecosystems or communities.
Assembly Bill 609, sponsored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, will provide CEQA permit exemptions for housing in urban areas. State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, sponsored Senate Bill 607, which expands CEQA exceptions to certain industrial and infrastructure projects. They were both placed into addendums to the state budget, which was signed by the governor Friday.
CEQA was created in 1970 to protect people and sensitive ecosystems from the environmental impacts of run-away development. That analysis includes the impact of increased traffic, increased smog and noise, impacts on native plants and animals, and areas of archeological importance. Newsom said the new exemptions will help the state with its critical need for housing and boost affordability.
“CEQA is a very permissive law,” said Jim Wunderman, CEO of the Bay Area Council, a regional association of business and industry leaders that address economic and environmental issues related to regional growth.
The Bay Area Council co-sponsored both bills.
“The way it’s been developed and interpreted in the courts over the years has been, basically, anyone can sue,” said Wunderman. “It’s a threat that’s used against developers all the time to get them to stop their projects or change them in ways that aren’t really advantageous for the community.”
Wunderman said the CEQA permitting process requires thousands of pages of analysis and delays that ultimately hurt the environment because it prevents housing that allows people to live closer to where they work.
“The burden is on the developer to prove with great certainty that the result of the development will not have a negative consequence for the community,” he said.”That’s a really hard thing to prove. It is expensive. It takes time. And then once you produce this massive document, any individual anonymously can sue and say that on page 831, there was a mistake or that wasn’t the proper analysis, and we need to go back to the start.”
AB 609 allows the exemption for housing projects on sites up to 20 acres in urban areas. That’s an area equivalent to eight to ten city blocks or 15 football fields. That includes sites adjacent to parks surrounded by urban uses, previous residential or commercial development, and parking lots or structures within an incorporated city of any size.
The bill also exempts housing projects in unincorporated communities with at least 5,000 residents or 2,000 housing units. It stipulates air quality conditions for housing built within 500 feet of a freeway; the outdoor air conditioning and heating unit intakes must face away from the freeway. The exemptions do not apply to skyscrapers.
“Once you start getting nine to ten-story buildings, you’re back to having a bigger review,” said Wunderman.
Critics cite safety blind spots
A legislative analysis said the AB 609 exemptions would apply to large, single-family, market-rate projects at densities as low as five units per acre in or near remote small towns, provided they are bordered on three sides by urban uses, which includes public parks. The analysis includes a few criticisms related to the speed of approvals, including wildfire provisions, toxic substances and tribal cultural resources.
“While cities and counties can and should address fire risk at the planning level, this bill permits reliance on general plans that may be very outdated regarding fire risk, and it allows the exemption even if the project is inconsistent with the general plan,” the analysis said.
On land where hazardous substances are discovered, the analysis said, it’s not clear who determines that the hazard has been removed or mitigated according to federal and state laws. It also noted that the exemption process might not allow enough time for tribes to evaluate the impacts of a development on tribal cultural resources.
“The affected tribe may not find out about the project until a notice of exemption is filed, at which point, it’s too late,” the analysis said.
One major project left out
Senate Bill 607 establishes CEQA to permit streamlining for a broad swath of infrastructure projects, including energy, transportation, water, and semiconductor projects that meet certain environmental and labor criteria. The streamlining certification ends January 1, 2033.
The bill expressly states that no CEQA exemptions will be used for the Delta Conveyance Project, Governor Newsom’s controversial tunnel that would carry water beneath the Sacramento-San Juaquin Delta to Central and Southern California.
California Department of Housing and Community Development has set a statewide goal to build 2.5 million new homes by 2030, with at least one million of those homes designated as affordable for lower-income households.
Wiener wrote in SB 607 that statewide housing production in the past decade has been under 100,000 units per year – including less than 10,000 units of affordable housing per year. In a Tuesday email, Wiener underlined the urgency of the bill’s regulatory changes.
“Governor Newsom signed the bill the second it passed last night, meaning it goes into effect immediately to make California a more affordable place to live,” Wiener said.