Proposals to weaken the California Environmental Quality Act and to put more people at risk of fire emerged from the State Legislature and Governor.

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires analysis of environmental impacts before approval of a project, presentation of least-harm alternatives, and accountability through the courts. Despite studies showing no significant effect on housing supply, repeated building industry attacks have opened the door to a host of exemption requests. One example was an attempt by Bay Area park districts to eliminate CEQA review for recreational trails on newly acquired property. 

Unfortunately, such “social trails,” put in place through trespass, are the worst offenders in terms of harm to wildlife. Without benefit of advance planning, they fragment habitat, drive wildlife away from water sources, and block wildlife movement. As a result of work by conservation groups, some safeguards were inserted into the bill, and instead of a statewide scope, the exemptions will largely be limited to the orginal park districts. However, a core and legitimate function of CEQA was unnecessarily compromised.

In 2019, the Governor’s Strike Force on fire called for better land use planning to shift new development away from high hazard locations into safe locations. This was pure common sense, as even “hardened” homes burn, albeit less often, and people die in attempts to evacuate. Indeed, there is widespread insufficiency of evacuation routes without adding more development. Building in fire zones also decimates wildlife habitat and causes sprawl with increased greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet, in a bill supported by CalFire and the Governor, common sense would be thrown out the window. The bill, supported by the development industry, echoes a prior industry attempt to build in danger zones (that time by eliminating CEQA review and substituting unaccountable “findings”). Indeed, the bill’s explicit purpose is, according to the author, to “expedite fire-adapted development” in fire zones, under the false narrative that “mitigation” is the same as safety. For example, in the Camp Fire of 2018, 56 percent of the homes destroyed were built to the latest construction codes. In the 2019 Thomas fire in Ventura, the great majority of homes destroyed or damaged had “fire safe” features. While it is vital to improve the survivability of existing homes, it is the height of foolhardiness to put more and more life and property at risk in fire-prone locations. And this only worsens the insurance crisis.

The bill in question would have eliminated the low-to-high Fire Hazard Severity Zone classification that guides good land use planning, and which the Strike Force recommended for increased use. The zones are extensively used in state and local regulations.  They would be replaced by broad-brush “mitigation” areas, which would effectively greenlight new development. The bill would completely undermine good planning by local government, like that by the County of Los Angeles, where density increases in these high fire danger zones are restricted, and projected growth is accommodated elsewhere. Backers claim that existing mitigation standards need greater consistency within the various local and state fire zones. That can easily be achieved without eliminating them and their vital planning benefits.

After a concerted effort by dozens of conservation groups and by local government, the bill did not pass this session. But its reappearance is expected.

On the bright side, a different bill incorporated EHL’s suggestion to include experts in fire ecology on a panel which will formulate guidelines for using grazing in fire management.