Ring: Here's how we shut down fruitless CEQA lawsuits
The Globe's environmental analyst Edward Ring fixes his gaze on CEQA reform. Though well-meaning, the oft-abused California Environmental Quality Act makes housing development extra risky, and costly, for local developers. Ring boldly lays out solutions for CEQA (starting with giving exemptions and anonymous lawsuits the boot) below.
Here then, are some incremental, and not so incremental, solutions proposed for CEQA:
1 – Eliminate all exemptions. Anyone wanting an exemption is speaking just for their special interest.
2 – End anonymous lawsuits; require environmental standing to sue. Accept only environmental criteria for litigation. Only allow standing to people directly impacted on environmental grounds. For example, NEPA does not give standing to labor.
3 – Clarify the conditions under which if a development conforms to a county’s standing environmental impact report for that category of project, then it is not subject to further CEQA review.
4 – Allow applicants to rely on previously approved EIR. If a proposed project is consistent with the county’s specific general plan, community plan. and zoning, eliminate the requirement for additional environmental review.
5 – Make reviews of housing projects ministerial, or, make review of any project – including energy development – ministerial.
6 – Require the loser in CEQA lawsuits to pay the prevailing party’s legal fees.
7 – End duplicative lawsuits; once a plan or project is approved with CEQA it can be challenged in a lawsuit once but not multiple times for each subsequent agency approval.
8 – Do the CEQA process just once, with all involved agencies operating together, not sequentially.
This article originally appeared in the California Globe. Read the whole thing here.
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