A bill, AB 1001, to incorporate Environmental Justice (EJ) principles into the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), is raising questions about the how it would duplicate procedures enacted six years ago with SB 1000, which mandates all municipalities apply their own EJ policies to reduce risks in disadvantaged communities.
AB 1001, authored by Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, would deter housing production amid California’s severe housing shortage, Adam Regele, CalChamber senior policy advocate, said in an email response to the Northern California Record.
“AB 1001 threatens California’s recovery and ability to construct badly needed housing by expanding one of the most powerful laws used to delay and block housing: CEQA,” Regele said. “The last thing California needs is more litigation and more costs that will slow housing, including and especially affordable housing projects.”
The Atlantic reported the 1970 statute has evolved from its original intent and can be used by anti-development advocates who want to stop new residential and commercial projects.
CalChamber and a coalition of concerned groups have designated AB 1001 as job and housing killers.
“It significantly expands the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to further exacerbate known problems with the statute by removing local land use discretion and imposing new unworkable and non-quantifiable legal obligations on lead agencies,” Regele said. “That will further empower groups that want to block housing in California, or any other project they disagree with.”
There is no need to expand CEQA to create new avenues of litigation and make it more difficult and expensive on local governments to build housing, Regele said.
“Environmental justice is incorporated in California’s planning and zoning laws and policies,” Regele said. “The CA Legislature passed SB 1000 (Leyva, 2016) to advance Environmental Justice (EJ) in CA’s planning and zoning law by requiring every city and county to adopt new EJ land use elements in their comprehensive, long-term general plans. The Governor’s Office of Planning & Research recently released 2020 EJ Guidance to cities and counties for implementation of SB 1000. In other words, cities and counties are still going through this process and overlaying additional laws on top is counter-productive.”
AB 1001, which passed the Assembly by a vote of 43-24 on Jan. 31, is now before the Senate.
“Instead of comprehensive CEQA reform that promotes protecting California’s environment while eliminating the exploitation of the statute for non-environmental reasons, AB 1001 worsens CEQA’s most problematic aspects by making it easier to sue to block housing projects, infrastructure projects or any other land use development in the state,” Regele said. “The UC Berkeley admissions debacle where 3,000 accepted California students could be turned away because of a CEQA lawsuit is a prime example of how the statute is already abused in California – AB 1001 makes those types of abuses worse.”