Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Dan Wu and Shiloh Ballard: Why state's CEQA laws need update

By Dan Wu and Shiloh Ballard
Posted:   08/25/2012 08:14:46 PM PDT
Updated:   08/25/2012 08:14:47 PM PDT
For nearly 40 years, the California Environmental Quality Act has served as an important law to ensure that any proposed project receives adequate environmental review, community input and that any potential impacts on the environment are adequately evaluated and mitigated.
However, CEQA now is being abused by project opponents to file lawsuits to delay or kill projects -- not to further the interests of the environment. While many of us hoped that important reforms would have been adopted this month, pledges Thursday by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Sen. Michael Rubio to work with a coalition co-chaired by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group for substantive CEQA modernization is a hopeful sign.
Locally, several good projects have been held up by CEQA challenges that have little to do with the environment and more to do with plain-old project opposition. A Netflix plan to expand in Los Gatos and create close to 800 new jobs in an existing office park is being challenged by some who say the building will be too tall.
A union is challenging a transit-oriented housing development across from the future Milpitas BART station that would create much needed housing and support public investments in transit. And, in San Jose, a small-business owner would like to add three gas pumps to his gas station but faces a CEQA challenge from a competitor. All three projects would help spur economic development, community renewal
and achieve broader sustainability goals.
While these stories are good illustrations of how CEQA is misused to advance a nonenvironmental agenda, one of the saddest stories is about an affordable housing proposal for seniors.
Almost 10 years ago, the Santa Clara Methodist Retirement Foundation and Charities Housing proposed building 162 affordable homes for seniors across from Westfield Valley Fair mall and the adjacent transit hub.
After undergoing a four-year CEQA process and completing an environmental impact report (EIR), the project was approved by the city in 2007. A local opposition group initiated a referendum against the project and voters overwhelmingly supported building the housing.
The opposition then sued under CEQA to try to overturn the project but was rejected by the courts.
It's now been 10 years since the project planning began and five years since the council approved the project. But the project has not broken ground because of the delays caused by the frivolous CEQA lawsuit, delays that jeopardized funding for the proposal.
Clearly, this type of abuse of CEQA was not what was intended when the law was passed, and it's not serving any environmental benefit.
Posted by Steve Sinai

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