California, let's build good things, faster.
We're Endorsing the Building an Affordable California Act
Welcome to Environmentalism That Builds.1 In this series we’ll highlight ideas for a new vision of environmental policy that moves faster while still serving as a check on short-term decision making and greed.
There’s a sea-change underway in the US environmental movement, and EPIC is proud to be part of it. For 50 years, environmentalists have focused mostly on stopping bad things from getting built. We think it’s time to start making it easier to build good things. That’s why we’re endorsing the Building an Affordable California Act, a ballot measure that would modernize how California reviews essential projects under the California Environmental Quality Act, better known as CEQA. With our endorsements we join a broad coalition that includes the California NAACP, California LULAC, America Clean Power California, the California Chamber of Commerce, and many more.
The measure isn’t perfect. Yet, it represents the most significant opportunity in a generation to drive the deployment of clean energy and other projects Californian voters have consistently indicated they want more of. We hope this type of reform passes and can serve as a model for other states in the coming years.
There are better ways to tailor CEQA to conserve and improve the environment, public health, and communities.
Permitting and environmental review can and should be a check on short-term thinking and poor planning, but they shouldn’t be cudgels wealthy Americans wield to block projects they don’t like. CEQA’s pitfalls have been well documented in recent years.
Data from 2010-12 tells a counterintuitive story: transit gets challenged more than highways. Renewable energy gets challenged more than any other industrial or electric utility project. And higher-density housing—the kind that reduces sprawl and emissions—is the most frequently targeted type of private development.
Lawsuits are just part of the problem. When a lengthy CEQA review holds up a wildfire prevention project, that means a community is more at risk during the next fire season. When a new hospital or water treatment plant stalls for years, the most vulnerable are likely to suffer.
To the state’s credit, there has been progress in addressing obstacles for some project types, like housing and ecological restoration.
Yet, CEQA still holds up too many projects that would massively benefit Californians. This includes clean energy, transportation, schools, and more.
In their book Abundance, authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson capture the this cost. On California’s decades-long high-speed rail saga, they write:
“In the time California spent failing to complete its 500-mile high-speed rail system, China has built more than 23,000 miles of high speed rail.”
CEQA isn’t the only obstacle here, and EPIC advocates a holistic approach to permitting reform: better technology, stronger agency staffing, and more. But there’s no doubt California’s environmental review process is a meaningful drag on the development the state needs to combat the climate crisis, advance public health, and bring down costs.
What the ballot amendment would do if voters adopt it
The Building an Affordable California Act doesn’t carve out exemptions from CEQA; every one of the state’s environmental laws stays fully intact. What it does is impose discipline on a review process that currently has none.
The act identifies essential state projects: housing, clean energy, water, public health, public safety, broadband, education facilities, and transportation. For these projects, the ballot question would set clear rules of the road:
A 365-day deadline on agency decisions. Agencies must approve or deny applications within a year. Miss the deadline, and applicants can request a public hearing or workshop where a final decision is required within 60 days.
Reviews grounded in the rules that existed when the application was filed. Agencies have to base their decisions on written standards already on the books—local ordinances, environmental laws, zoning rules—rather than goalposts that move mid-process. (More on this in the next section.)
A 270-day deadline for courts to resolve legal challenges. And when a court finds a flaw in one piece of an environmental review, only that piece has to be redone—no more sending entire projects back to square one over a single defect.
Not Perfect, But Necessary
Legal scholars have raised legitimate concerns about how some parts of the act could be interpreted. The Act’s “objective standards” requirement could interact awkwardly with other environmental laws, including species protections under the California Endangered Species Act, which are often implemented through CEQA review. The vesting-of-rights provisions could complicate mid-project updates to environmental standards. Should the referendum pass, we believe these issues can be addressed through implementation.
A government that can’t deliver what voters ask for has a legitimacy problem. Californians have voted, again and again, for clean energy, housing, and water investments. Through every democratic channel available to them, they’ve said they want these things built, and then watched the permitting system grind those priorities into years of delay, litigation, and cost overruns.
The Building an Affordable California Act is a serious step toward a permitting system that protects the environment and delivers for the people it’s supposed to serve. Californians should support it.
In their book “Abundance,” Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson make the argument for an “Liberalism that Builds.” Their book argues liberalism has been too focused on regulation and litigation, and this has stifled the movement’s ability to build the things that liberals say they want: clean energy, housing, transit and more.
At EPIC our team has spent the last year thinking about what it would mean to have an “Environmentalism that Builds.” That is an environmentalism that continues to conserve and improve the environmental outcomes the vast majority of American’s support while also speeding up the deployment of the critical infrastructure voters want and so much of the environmental movement recognize are needed to combat climate change and bring down costs: clean energy, dense housing, public transit, and more.