CEQA
California can help meet its climate goals by removing SERP’s sunset date
By Molly Bruce, Dave Smith, Michael Kiparsky, Derek Hitchcock, Peter Van De Burgt, Sydney Chamberlin, Megan Cleveland
Many regulatory clearances like permits aim to guard against projects that pose harm to the environment. However, permitting can also undercut environmental restoration efforts. While restoration is designed to remedy environmental harms and improve resilience to climate change, permitting can substantially increase project costs and slow or altogether impede environmentally beneficial projects. Striking an effective …
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CONTINUE READINGLittle Hoover Commission Releases Flawed CEQA Report
The long-awaited report proposes sweeping exemptions and process changes—even though its own reasoning points in the opposite direction.
More than a year ago, California’s Little Hoover Commission convened the first in a series of public hearings designed to interrogate the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) as well as Californians’ often tense relationship with that landmark legislation. In recent years, some pro-housing advocates have pointed to CEQA as the bogeyman driving the state’s affordable …
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CONTINUE READINGUCLA Clinic Submits Amicus Brief in Kern Oil Ordinance Case
Kern County’s efforts to increase drilling could jeopardize the survival of the Temblor legless lizard. The case demonstrates why environmental review must keep pace with emerging science and new information.
The UCLA Environmental Law Clinic has submitted an amicus brief in a case that challenges Kern County’s (the “County”) repeated efforts to streamline oil and gas development without proper regard for myriad environmental harms. The Clinic filed its amicus brief on behalf of Professor H. Bradley Shaffer, Ph. D., one of California’s leading experts on …
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CONTINUE READINGCEQA, California’s Housing Crisis & the Little Hoover Commission
State Watchdog Agency’s Scheduled CEQA Hearings Could Prompt Major Changes to California’s Most Important Environmental Law
Beginning today, California’s “Little Hoover Commission” will convene a series of three public hearings to consider how well–or poorly–the state’s California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is currently working. A special focus of the Commission’s deliberations will be whether and to what extent California’s most important and overarching environmental law is impeding efforts by the Legislature …
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CONTINUE READINGCEQA and UC Berkeley Housing: Don’t Panic
The decision blocking student housing hardly represents new NIMBY weaponization.
Lots of screaming and yelling about last week’s Court of Appeal CEQA decision concerning student housing at UC Berkeley. The Court struck down the university’s plan for more student housing on the grounds that the final Environmental Impact Report did not adequately assess noise impacts from students. “The campus is dismayed by this unprecedented …
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CONTINUE READINGTwo Cheers For CEQA
A recent case shows why the law is so important – and how it can be abused
Even the best and conscientious developers gnash their teeth at CEQA, California’s environmental review law, and one can see why: it can allow NIMBYs to block useful housing and supercharge exclusion. But there’s a reason why the law was passed and why it has persisted, and we saw it three days ago: Trees of Los …
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CONTINUE READINGBalancing fire risk and housing
How can California reconcile the dual needs of managing for fire risk and producing more housing?
This is the last in a series of four blog posts discussing the issue of development in the wildland-urban interface in California, the current legal structures addressing the issue, and our research on how those legal frameworks are being applied on the ground in key counties in the state. In this blog post, we’ll discuss …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat is being built in the WUI?
What our data says about development in the WUI in California
This is the third in a series of four blog posts discussing the issue of development in the wildland-urban interface in California, the current legal structures addressing the issue, and our research on how those legal frameworks are being applied on the ground in key counties in the state. In this blog post, we summarize …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Law in the WUI
California’s legal framework for development in the wildland-urban interface
This is the second in a series of four blog posts discussing the issue of development in the wildland-urban interface in California, the current legal structures addressing the issue, and our research on how those legal frameworks are being applied on the ground in key counties in the state. These blog posts summarize our recent …
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CONTINUE READINGBuilding to Burn
Examining whether California law facilitates development in fire-prone areas
All too many Californians have lost their homes, and even their lives, as fires have raced through exurbs, suburbs, and even portions of towns and cities over the past several years. A key issue that policymakers are wrestling with is the extent to which new development has increased the risk to people and property from …
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