Environmentalists Urge Senate To Scrap Bill Seeking To Speed CEQA Reviews

CALEPA

April 3, 2025

More than 120 environmental and equity groups are urging California state senators to reject proposed legislation to speed development project approvals under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), with one critic claiming it represents the “broadest rollback” of the environmental protection law ever sought.

The bill — SB 607 by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) — “weakens environmental protections for nearly all private and government projects,” the groups assert in a March 28 letter to Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-North Coast) and members of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee.

“And the replacement of provisions that have existed in the law for over 50 years with a broad, new legal framework is certain to lead to more, rather than less, litigation as well as confusion over compliance and legal standards of review,” they add.

SB 607, which was amended March 24 to further define and clarify multiple provisions, was previously scheduled to be considered by the Senate Environmental Quality Committee on April 2. However, the panel postponed consideration to address outstanding concerns. The bill has not yet been rescheduled for consideration by the committee.

Wiener’s spokesman did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

When Wiener introduced the bill in February, he called it a “good government measure that makes several key changes to improve the clarity and efficiency of” CEQA, including by “speeding reviews for a wide range of projects, including infill housing,” according to a Feb. 21 press release.

He also said SB 607 does not relax any of CEQA’s standards of environmental review, and it focuses on “speeding approvals for environmentally friendly and environmentally neutral projects while maintaining existing processes for potentially environmentally destructive projects like fossil fuel facilities.”

For example, while housing projects in urban areas, known as “infill” housing projects, are currently exempt from CEQA, “a lack of clarity has prevented the exemption from being used,” Wiener says. SB 607 would “direct the Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation (LUCI) to issue guidance clarifying key details about the existing exemption (Class 32), removing a major process barrier to housing production across California.”

SB 607 is sponsored by the Rural County Representatives of California, Prosperity California, the Housing Action Coalition, and the Bay Area Council, the release adds.

But the environmental and equity groups argue in their letter that SB 607 “would undermine CEQA across the board. While the bill makes a narrow exception for distribution centers and oil and gas infrastructure, it weakens CEQA for all other projects. These include, for example, freeways, airports, railyards, shipping terminals, office buildings, shopping malls, sports complexes, dams, sewage plants, mining, incinerators, power plants, prisons, and massive mixed-use developments on farmland, sensitive habitat, or in high wildfire danger zones.”

Further, they note that the changes proposed by SB 607 “have been characterized as ‘monumental’ and ‘disruptive’ by a ‘pro-development CEQA watcher,’” citing a recent blog post by a law firm specializing in CEQA litigation.

‘Significant Impacts’

One of the groups’ highest-level concerns is SB 607’s proposed amendments to existing law that would “radically alter the long-standing presumption favoring preparation of environmental impact reports (EIRs) where a project may have significant environmental impacts.”

While CEQA currently requires an EIR “whenever there is a fair argument, based on substantial evidence, of a potentially significant impact,” SB 607 would “reverse the presumption favoring EIRs by requiring that an agency . . . prepare a negative declaration, rather than an EIR, as long as there is ‘substantial evidence, in light of the whole record before the lead agency, that the project will not have a significant impact on the environment,’” the groups stress.

The measure also specifies that an EIR “shall be prepared ‘[i]f there is no substantial evidence, in light of the whole record before the lead agency, that the project will not have a significant effect on the environment.’ This change would eliminate the current ‘fair argument’ test and replace it with a ‘substantial evidence’ standard requiring deference to an agency’s determination that no EIR is required.”

Practically speaking, “even if there is solid, credible evidence that a project would cause significant public health impacts from air pollution or harm protected wildlife, the agency could avoid preparing an EIR by pointing to other evidence in the record tending to show that these impacts would not be significant,” the environmentalists fear.

“Because a formal administrative record is prepared only if there is CEQA litigation, the public would have no opportunity during the CEQA process to assess the evidence the agency is relying upon to conclude that impacts are insignificant and have been mitigated effectively,” they say.

The groups’ other specific objections to SB 607 include that it expands the scope of CEQA exemptions in ways that were never envisioned when the exemptions were adopted; attempts to make rezoning exempt from CEQA, without a limiting principle; and allows public agencies to exclude key documents from the administrative record, according to the letter. — Curt Barry ([email protected])