A little over 50 years ago, riding the high of the brand-new Environmental Protection Act, then-Governor Reagan signed into law the California Environmental Quality Act - CEQA (pronounced “see-kuah”) - which has played a major role in how developments proceed in the state. Not every project is subject to CEQA review, but those that are must go through a checklist to determine the environmental impact of the proposal. (Graphic courtesy of co.mendocino.ca.us/aqmd)

Let’s start at the beginning: what happens when a development is proposed, and how does CEQA play a role? First, the local governing body (for instance, the planning commission), must determine whether the project might “cause a direct physical change in the environment or…cause a reasonably foreseeable indirect physical change in the environment.”[1] If the answer is yes, this is a CEQA project. “Environmental impact” can mean many things. It can, for example, mean that a tree slated to be cut down is home to a protected species, and therefore ineligible for removal. It can also mean that the project will cause increased traffic to and from the neighborhood in which it is located and that the subsequent rise in greenhouse gas emissions could potentially affect the people who live and work there.

Next a preliminary analysis is prepared by the agency to determine whether an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) is necessary. When the project may have a substantial effect on the environment, an EIR must be created. However, an agency may make a negative declaration (ND), when no substantial effect is predicted. They can also produce a mitigated negative declaration, which allows the developers to move forward with the project yet obligates them to do so only with alterations to ensure that the environmental impact is lessened.[2]

(Photo: the Wetlands near the Napa Airport, by Nick Cheranich)

When a project is expected to have a high environmental impact, a draft EIR must be prepared to explain what that impact would be. Draft EIRs can be prepared by a consultant or by the agency in charge of the project, and they must be open to public comment for 30-60 days. An EIR must contain:

• “A project description
• An environmental baseline
• Evaluation of environmental impacts
• Thresholds of significance, which can sometimes be measured in terms of historic and cultural significance
• Evaluation of short-term and long-term water supply needs: climate change; energy; cumulative impacts; mitigation measures
• Project alternatives, which are a meaningful discussion of project alternatives that would reduce adverse environmental impacts.”[3]

A final EIR is produced, including comments and recommendations, and it goes back to the agency conducting the review. If the EIR is adopted with mitigations, or if a mitigated negative declaration is made, the agency must put monitoring into place to make sure those mitigations are completed properly. And now it’s the public’s turn.

What’s so crucial about CEQA, and what makes it such a powerful, is that anyone can sue to halt a development under CEQA objections. This means, for example, that if an outlet mall is proposed in your neighborhood and you’re concerned about the amount of traffic that will bring, and you believe the EIR to be incorrect or obfuscating those effects, you can sue the agency responsible for the project’s oversight. This puts a stop to any work that is being done and a court will decide if more environmental review is required. CEQA gives a voice to the people who are most likely to be affected by a building project in their community.

CEQA does, of course, have its detractors. Some argue that people who don’t care about the environment use it to stop projects they don’t like. The people accused of this tactic are often called NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) who don’t want high-density housing to “degrade” the quality of their neighborhoods. And yes, this does sometimes happen. However, “of more than 54,000 CEQA-reviewed projects from 2013 through 2015, just 0.7 percent faced litigation—an average of less than 100 proposed housing developments per year.”[4] Is it worth losing the voice that CEQA provides to otherwise underprivileged communities just to cut out these very few bad actors who use it to block good projects?

A more concerning issue is that CEQA doesn’t go far enough in protecting against climate change. A case was decided against The Citizens Committee to Complete the Refuge in Newark, here in the Bay Area, because CEQA is intended to protect the environment (and the people in it) from bad development, not to protect the development from the environment. In this instance, the argument against a planned development was made because of predicted sea level rise, and the intense engineering that would eventually have to happen to deal with that. But since that’s the environment affecting the project, rather than the other way around, CEQA could not be cited and an EIR did not have to include any mention of sea level rise.[5]

Certainly, this is concerning as we move into a future very much affected by climate change, and it would behoove the state to either amend the act as it now stands to include the reasonable expectation of climate change and its effects, or to write a new landmark environmental bill that adds an additional layer of oversight to future development. Nonetheless, CEQA is both a strongly democratic institution and an important method of governmental oversight that ensures building projects in California proceed with the environment and the people who live there in mind. When a development is not subject to CEQA, neither the government nor the community can object to practices that harm the environment or the people living in it. CEQA is a powerful democratic tool and is an important part of maintaining healthy communities so that cannot be taken over by corporate interests.