By Katherine Howard
On Monday, May 17th, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Land Use and Transportation Committee will vote on legislation that will undermine the effectiveness of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in San Francisco. CEQA serves to identify the potential environmental risks associated with a project, to inform the public and their elected officials, and to provide decision-makers with that identified information prior to approving the decision, so that such risks can be avoided or mitigated.
The proposed legislation would undermine CEQA in San Francisco in two ways. First, by allowing work to proceed on a project during an appeal. This legislation will affect thousands of acres of San Francisco City-owned properties‒our parks, streets, the Port properties, the airport, and SF Public Utilities Commission lands all will be put at risk. Allowing a city department to proceed without a rigorous environmental review may lead to long-lasting environmental damage. Furthermore, once this precedent has been set, it may be used to argue for extending the same practice to private projects.
Second, this legislation raises barriers to the public's participation in environmental review by requiring 50 signatures for certain types of public projects. Forcing residents to find 50 neighbors to sign a CEQA appeal is burdensome to all San Franciscans, especially underserved communities trying to protect their neighborhoods through an accessible CEQA process.
The legislation justifies modifying the CEQA appeals process in San Francisco by claiming that the number of appeals has been a burden to city government, in terms of both time and finances. However, over the last five years, CEQA appeals in San Francisco comprised only 0.5% of all the categorical exemptions. In addition, no supportive figures have been provided that show that this is a financial burden for a city budget of over $13.7 billion. In fact, the impact of environmentally damaging projects can be much more costly in the long run, both in terms of remediation and, even more importantly, in terms of impacts on human and environmental health.
The proponents of this legislation cite a few benevolent current projects that might've experienced fewer delays under the new legislation; however, no one can predict the kinds of projects that will be proposed in the future. Even one harmful project can do severe environmental damage. The best way to protect the city and its residents from environmentally damaging projects is to maintain a consistent and rigorous CEQA process. To do this, the Board of Supervisors should reject this legislation.
Please take action by asking the Board of Supervisors to oppose this legislation! You can find a sample letter with talking points here, but please feel free to add your personalized comments as well. You can also find a detailed analysis of the legislation from our chapter's San Francisco Group here.
Send your email message to Board.of.Supervisors@sfgov.org, and you can also add the individual supervisor email addresses found here. We also invite you to call in to the meeting on Monday at 1:30pm and express your opposition to this legislation, you can find the call in information on their agenda here.
If you have any questions, please email Katherine Howard at kathyhoward@earthlink.net.