California is at once a beacon of environmental hope – electric cars! unsmogged air! a plastic bag ban, for real this time! – and a cautionary tale for good environmental intentions gone wrong. And there’s no better poster child for the latter than the state’s 1970 law, the California Environmental Quality Act.
The statute requires developers and permitting agencies to study and disclose the environmental impacts of a proposed construction project before it begins. CEQA, as it is known, has improved countless projects over the years, among them Valencia by FivePoint, a large residential development outside Los Angeles that was halted until it incorporated greenhouse gas mitigation.
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But it has also been prone to abuse by NIMBYs and bad-faith actors to hound projects to death by citing questionable environmental impacts. One recent example: the delay of needed UC Berkeley student housing due to allegations by neighbors that “social noise” was an environmental impact akin to air pollution or water contamination.
State legislators have finally begun to meaningfully rein in abuses of CEQA. Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two CEQA changes into law that, among other things, exempt most new housing in already built-up urban areas from environmental review, blocking residents from obstructing density in their neighborhoods. These came on top of bills similarly exempting transit and bike infrastructure projects.
Proposition 45, a complex, 17-page initiative put on the Nov. 3 ballot by the California Chamber of Commerce, takes CEQA reform a giant leap further. Much as I’d love to turn the screws on NIMBYs, I’m voting no.
Here’s why: Proposition 45 uses the initiative process to blow a massive hole in CEQA. It seeks explicitly to turn a process meant to determine environmental impact into one that prioritizes project completion.
Proposition 45 would create a limited and faster review process for nine categories of “essential” projects, including water infrastructure, transportation (but specifically not high-speed rail, curiously), clean energy and housing. The current CEQA statute has a one-year target for finishing environmental impact reports, but that can be (and often is) extended. Proposition 45 changes the time frame to 365 business days – more than a year – but sets it as a hard, court-enforceable deadline. And while the current CEQA statute sets minimum times for public comment on EIRs, Proposition 45 sets a cap of 45 days.
Golden State staff
Because CEQA’s more open-ended process can be abused to delay projects to death, such deadlines sound reasonable. The problem is they would apply to a project of any size and complexity, as long as it fits into one of its categories.
A water infrastructure project could be a new dam and reservoir that irreversibly disrupts animal habitats in ways that might take longer than 365 business days to establish. A transportation project could include road or freeway widening near residents who may need more than 45 days to understand and comment on the potential harms to their neighborhood. And under Proposition 45, an exurban subdivision generating dangerously polluting car commutes could qualify for faster approval.
Supporters insist Proposition 45’s changes align with CEQA’s mission. Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), who wrote the 2025 housing exemption law, told me that CEQA has been “bastardized six ways to Sunday.” She sees the measure as a way to restore a valuable tool to its “intended purpose.” Jason Elliott, Newsom’s former housing and homelessness advisor who spoke to me on behalf of the “Yes on 45” campaign, said the measure is about “returning CEQA back to what it was meant to be before anti-housing activists started abusing it.”
And yet it’s hard to square their assurances with what’s actually in the measure.
For starters, Proposition 45 states that it “should be interpreted and implemented to afford the fullest possible weight to the interest of, and the approval and realization of, essential projects” – in other words, when in doubt, approve the project. This is a stark departure from the existing CEQA statute’s declaration to “take all action necessary to protect, rehabilitate, and enhance the environmental quality of the state.”
Adam Henig
Proposition 45’s environmental review deadlines can only be extended by the builder, regardless of project size. The measure also cuts the scope of the reviews by, among other things, limiting the consideration of feasible project alternatives that would reduce impact.
“Prop. 45 is probably the beginning of the end of CEQA as we know it,” said William Fulton, an urban planner and former mayor of Ventura who co-directs the Center for Housing Policy and Design at UC San Diego. An advocate for CEQA reform who has criticized the Legislature’s whack-a-mole approach to addressing the law’s flaws, Fulton told me he’s undecided on the measure. He predicted that if Proposition 45 passes, businesses whose projects are not covered by the initiative will beg Sacramento for inclusion in the “essential” categories, further weakening CEQA.
“I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing. I'm just saying that's what's going to happen,” he said.
In the fine print, Proposition 45 asks voters to enact sweeping, technical changes to the state’s environmental review process. Unlike a bill in the Legislature, if it passes, the rules it puts into place cannot be substantially changed or repealed without going to voters. Proposition 45 would allow legislative amendments, but only if they “further the purposes” of the measure and pass by a two-thirds vote.
CEQA needs reform. But Proposition 45 is a take-it-or-leave-it gambit, and there’s enough about it that makes me want to leave it.
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