Prop 45: Will California Vote to Trade Environmental Regulation for Quicker Housing Development?

SPEAKER_2 (0:03)

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Laura Clivens (0:23)

Welcome to Forum, I'm Laura Clivens in for Mina Kim.

When then-Governor Ronald Reagan signed the California Environmental Quality Act in 1970, it was meant to keep bulldozers from tearing up sensitive ecosystems. Fifty-six years later, CEQA is one of the most fiercely debated laws in the state. Its champions say it gives marginalized communities a means to stop harmful development. Critics say it's been weaponized to block housing and drive up costs. For decades, politicians wouldn't go near CEQA reform. But as California's housing crisis has deepened and clean energy projects must roll out at a faster pace, the calculation has shifted. Legislation passed last year made huge changes to the law, and this year potentially more could come in the form of Proposition 45

We're going to hear from the people who've brought this initiative and those who oppose it, and we'll talk about how unexpected players, data centers, have entered the conversation. But first, we're joined by Ethan Elkind, Director of the Climate Program at UC Berkeley Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment. Welcome, Ethan.

Ethan Elkind (1:31)

Thank you, Laura. Good to be with you.

Laura Clivens (1:33)

Well, thanks for joining us. Ethan, I've spoken to you a lot. I'm a climate reporter here at KQED. Today, we are talking about CEQA, which is, of course, the California Environmental Quality Act.

Tell us, what is actually in this? What does it mean?

Ethan Elkind (1:47)

Yes. Well, as you mentioned, it was signed by Ronald Reagan, it was originally just proposed to apply to major public infrastructure projects. And the point of the law was to require decision makers in advance of deciding on a big project to figure out what are the likely environmental impacts of that project. And if there are significant negative environmental impacts, then decision makers would have to mitigate those impacts if it's feasible to do so. Now, if it's not feasible, the project's just gonna have a lot of impacts and there's nothing you can really do, then the project could proceed. But basically, it was a way to inform decision makers and inform the public about the project's scope of impacts and also potential alternatives to the project. Now, the courts have dramatically expanded it and there was a big decision in 1972 that basically said, now all projects that require some sort of public approval, which is basically all projects, now have to go through the CEQA process. So it has been greatly expanded by the courts based on what Ronald Reagan thought he was signing. I'm assuming what he thought he was signing in 1970

Laura Clivens (2:53)

So it started out as something that's like, this is about dams, and then now it's like, this is about your neighbor's house.

Ethan Elkind (2:59)

Yes, although many projects are exempt or face very streamlined review. Now, the biggest projects have to undergo what's called an environmental impact report. And these can be like multiple phone book size documents that look at all types of impacts, but that's really just a very small percentage of projects. And then, once those environmental impact reports come out and really almost all steps in the process of CEQA, there's opportunities for the public to sue if they feel like decision makers have done an inadequate job in analyzing those impacts. And that's really where a lot of the controversy around CEQA has come into play, that it provides members of the public with opportunities to have pretty extreme leverage in some cases over particularly large projects.

Laura Clivens (3:42)

Yeah. And so talk me through that. CEQA has been criticized for stunting development. So take us through the process of what a developer actually must do to comply with it.

Ethan Elkind (3:53)

Well, like I say, it really depends on how big the project is. Many projects are completely exempt. If a project just has a very narrow set of likely impacts, then often it's very easy to just come up with some simple mitigation measures, and then the developer can move forward. But for big projects that have a lot of impacts, think of like a big industrial project, maybe a large subdivision out on green space, farmland, maybe transmission lines, logging projects, et cetera. Those kinds of projects have multiple types of impacts. They'll impact the air quality, they'll impact endangered species habitat, they'll impact noise, visual aesthetics, archaeological resources, historical resources. All of these types of impacts have to be analyzed for these large projects and mitigated where feasible. And at that point, the public, if there's maybe an economic competitor, if there's neighbors, if there's environmental groups, they have the ability to sue if those impacts are not analyzed properly, if the mitigation measures aren't adequate.