No to SB 607: Protect Environmental Review & the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)

Land UseCEQA
Written By Mithzy Hernandez

SB 607 (Wiener) has been touted as a way to expedite housing and other urban infill projects, but we remain concerned that the bill weakens key environmental and public health protections in a way that disproportionately harms environmental justice communities.

It’s important to note that many infill and affordable housing projects already benefit from significant CEQA streamlining. In recent years, CEQA has been amended to fast-track or even exempt such projects from full environmental review.

Our biggest concern with SB 607 is its proposed shift in the legal standard for environmental review. Currently, if there’s a fair argument that a project may have significant environmental impacts, a full Environmental Impact Report is required. SB 607 would replace this with a weaker standard, allowing agencies to bypass full review if there’s any evidence suggesting no harm, even if stronger, credible data suggests otherwise. 

Compounding this issue, the bill does not require that projects benefiting from this weakened review process include affordable housing. As written, SB 607 is more likely to accelerate market-rate and luxury development than deliver deeply affordable homes for those most in need. Without affordability guarantees, it risks driving displacement and deepening existing inequities.

PSR-LA and allies are also particularly concerned about the environmental health implications of building housing without rigorous site review. In Los Angeles County alone, thousands of brownfield sites contain toxic contaminants—from petroleum and industrial chemicals to heavy metals. Weakening CEQA oversight increases the chances that new housing will be built on or near these sites without proper remediation, posing serious risks to residents, including children, seniors, and those with preexisting health conditions.

Rather than dismantling CEQA’s core protections, policy solutions should target the root causes of the housing crisis, such as high land and construction costs, vacancy rates, corporate land speculation, and lack of subsidies. We advocate for reforms that strengthen, not sideline, transparency, public participation, and health-based decision-making.

ABOUT THE CALIFORNIA ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY ACT (CEQA)

CEQA is a longstanding environmental and public health bill of rights that follows the precautionary principle, meaning that if there is evidence that a project may cause significant environmental harm, the reviewing agency should study potential impacts, allow for public participation and input, consider alternatives, and adopt appropriate measures to lessen environmental harm. This sounds good because it is!

 CEQA is often the only tool available to vulnerable communities in California to ensure consideration of alternative solutions and mitigation measures to limit harm and protect public health. However, with SB 607, the long-standing precedent in favor of requiring in-depth environmental review would be reversed. Instead, it would be easier for an agency to simply refuse to prepare an environmental impact report (EIR) if they provide evidence that a project won’t have a significant impact, regardless of frontline community concerns about a project's environmental and health impacts.

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Factsheet for Health Professionals

  • SB 607 dismantles critical health protections by weakening environmental review for harmful industrial projects. 

    It significantly erodes CEQA’s environmental review process, limiting when and how reviews are conducted for major polluting projects. This includes shipping terminals, railyards, highways, mines, manufacturing plants, sewage plants, sports complexes, dams, mixed-use developments, and developments in high-risk wildfire zones.

    The bill limits opportunities for impacted communities to meaningfully engage in decisions that affect their health and well-being, making it harder to mitigate the harms caused by these projects. As health professionals and environmental justice advocates, we strongly support ensuring that frontline communities are heard and are part of the decision-making process for addressing and preventing pollution burdens in their communities. 

    TL:DR: PSR-LA and partner’s biggest concern with SB 607 is its proposed shift in the legal standard for environmental review. Currently, if there’s a fair argument that a project may have significant environmental impacts, a full Environmental Impact Report is required. SB 607 would replace this with a weaker standard, allowing agencies to bypass full review if there’s any evidence suggesting no harm, even if stronger, credible data suggests otherwise. 

  • SB 607 dismantles critical health protections by weakening environmental review for harmful industrial projects. 

    It significantly erodes CEQA’s environmental review process, limiting when and how reviews are conducted for major polluting projects. This includes shipping terminals, railyards, highways, mines, manufacturing plants, sewage plants, sports complexes, dams, mixed-use developments, and developments in high-risk wildfire zones.

    The bill limits opportunities for impacted communities to meaningfully engage in decisions that affect their health and well-being, making it harder to mitigate the harms caused by these projects. As health professionals and environmental justice advocates, we strongly support ensuring that frontline communities are heard and are part of the decision-making process for addressing and preventing pollution burdens in their communities. 

    TL:DR: PSR-LA and partner’s biggest concern with SB 607 is its proposed shift in the legal standard for environmental review. Currently, if there’s a fair argument that a project may have significant environmental impacts, a full Environmental Impact Report is required. SB 607 would replace this with a weaker standard, allowing agencies to bypass full review if there’s any evidence suggesting no harm, even if stronger, credible data suggests otherwise. 

  • No. The latest empirical study on CEQA found that only 1.9% of all projects requiring an environmental review face legal challenge.

    It’s important to note that many infill and affordable housing projects already benefit from significant CEQA streamlining. CEQA has been amended many times to exempt or streamline a wide range of housing projects or to allow ministerial approval of housing developments. The majority of these amendments have been passed over the last five years. 

    However, because CEQA did not cause the affordable housing crisis, these amendments have not solved the problem, and further amendments to the law would be pointless. Rather than amending CEQA, policy leaders should focus on the actual causes of the state’s shortage in affordable housing, such as high land and construction costs, high vacancy rates, corporate land speculation, and lack of subsidies for affordable housing.

  • No. SB 607 does not require that projects benefiting from this weakened review process include affordable housing. As written, SB 607 is more likely to accelerate market-rate and luxury development than deliver deeply affordable homes for those most in need. Without affordability guarantees, it risks driving displacement and deepening existing inequities.

  • Yes, but unfortunately, the May Amendments to SB 607 do not reduce our opposition to the bill. 

    Summary of May Amendments to SB 607

    • General:  The May Amendments to SB 607 exclude from some of the bill’s provisions certain “natural and protected lands.”

      • Comment: This change does not reduce our opposition to the bill. Many of the areas the bill purports to exclude are already protected from most harmful development (e.g., wilderness, marine and ecological reserves, national parks). Further, CEQA’s full protections should extend to all parts of California, including rural and urban areas where harmful industrial projects are routinely sited near already disadvantaged communities.

    • Fair argument test: The original bill eliminated the “fair argument” standard for requiring in-depth environmental review (in an EIR); an agency’s decision to prepare a negative declaration will be upheld if supported by substantial evidence. The bill, as amended, retains those same features. But the May Amendments would add an unprecedent new standard of review for requiring an EIR: whether it is “more likely than not” that a project will have a significant effect on the environment.

      • Comment:  The May Amendments do not alleviate our concerns. The Amendments still eliminate the fair argument test (with very narrow exceptions). The new “more likely than not” standard appears nowhere in CEQA — or anywhere in California administrative law — and will result in chaos and confusion as agencies and the courts struggle to interpret it. Tellingly, neither the Senate Environmental Quality Committee nor the Senate Local Government Committee considered or approved this new standard.

    • “Near miss” of categorical or statutory exemption: SB 607 creates a new environmental review process for projects that would qualify for a categorical or statutory exemption but for a “single condition.” The May Amendments provide that this “near miss” rule would not apply to projects that are “not similar in kind” to the projects listed in the statutory or categorical exemption. The Amendments also specify that the “near miss” process only applies to existing exemptions.

      • Comment: The May Amendments do not alleviate all of our concerns about the bill’s blanket approach to categorical and statutory exemptions. First, it will remain nearly impossible for agencies and courts to determine when projects miss an exemption by a “single condition”; the new requirement that the projects be “similar in kind” is equally ambiguous. Second, a massive project (e.g., a hydroelectric project) might be “similar in kind” to a small-scale exempt project but its environmental impacts could be far greater. Third, the bill would still allow for truncated environmental review of “near miss” projects, with no analysis of cumulative impacts or alternatives.

    • Rezoning exemption: The May Amendments revise the rezoning exemption to state that CEQA “does not apply to a rezoning that implements an approved housing element.”

      • Comment:  While the latest bill is more focused than earlier drafts, it remains overly broad. As drafted, it would exempt from CEQA review rezonings that contain housing projects to implement the housing element even where they also include commercial or industrial development. 

Examples of Projects Requiring EIRs in Los Angeles County

  • As one of LA County’s largest proposed residential projects, Newhall Ranch would have added over 260,000 tons of greenhouse gases each year. Despite this, CEQA did not deem the increase to be "significant," and thus no mitigation was recommended. 

    Environmental groups filed a CEQA lawsuit to challenge the EIR’s unlawful approach. The case reached the California Supreme Court, where it ruled in favor of the petitioners. The result? Substantial mitigation measures were included, such as energy-efficient “zero net energy” homes, on-site solar, and carbon offsets that cut emissions nearly in half. The developer also committed to supporting to local efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The project now includes stronger climate protections because CEQA worked.

    California Department of Fish and Wildlife and Los Angeles County reapproved the project in 2017, and it is currently under construction. (1)

  • Since 2011, Caltrans and its local partner, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro), have planned to build a five-mile tunnel under the cities of Pasadena and South Pasadena to connect the stub ends of two freeways – the SR-710 and I-210. The $3.2 billion project was fiercely opposed by environmental groups and a coalition of five cities: South Pasadena, La Cañada-Flintridge, Glendale, Pasadena, and Sierra Madre. 

    The Draft EIR revealed serious safety and environmental impacts on communities and the environment. Because CEQA required a full review of the tunnel’s impacts, Metro ultimately scrapped the project in 2017 and looked for less harmful alternatives.

  • The City of Long Beach, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, and the Long Beach Unified School District sued the Port of Los Angeles in 2013 after it approved a massive freight railyard directly across from homes and schools in West Long Beach. The Attorney General intervened for the petitioners. 

    As a result, a state court later ruled that the EIR failed to properly assess the significant air quality impacts of the SCIG project. Thanks to CEQA, the project must go back and fix its analysis before moving forward, ensuring public health is protected.

  • In a long-running dispute, environmental justice and community groups have used CEQA to address life-threatening air pollution from the 142-acre China Shipping Container Terminal in San Pedro, which operates next to residential neighborhoods.

    In 2019, a new Environmental Impact Report (EIR) proposed steps to cut pollution, like requiring ships to lower emissions while docked and limiting ship speeds near the terminal. But the EIR failed to make those protections legally enforceable and left out other feasible measures, such as a pilot program for electric yard tractors. Community groups sued.

    In 2023, the Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the petitioners and issued a landmark order requiring the terminal lease to include enforceable measures to reduce pollution and protect public health. Thanks to CEQA, clean air became more than a promise—it became a legal requirement.

(1)   The Housing Workshop, CEQA: California’s Living Environmental Law (Rose Foundation, Oct. 2021)(“2021 Rose Report”) at 90-92, https://rosefdn.org/wp-content/uploads/CEQA-California_s-Living-Environmental-Law-10-25-21.pdf.

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Mithzy Hernandez
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