Fortify California’s Premier Environmental Law

Stop Attempts to Roll Back CEQA

Build a Greener CaliforniaCalifornia’s cornerstone environmental protection law is celebrating more than 40 years of empowering Californians to protect and better their quality of life. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) enables us to safeguard our urban environment, conserve our natural treasures and farmland, and more. CEQA does this by providing a critical framework for government accountability and public participation. CEQA inspires Californians to protect this great state and stand up to the powerful forces driving environmental devastation. Every year, though, there are more and more legislative attempts to weaken CEQA and make it less effective.

The concept behind CEQA is simple. Careful, public consideration of the impact of a proposed project is necessary to protect our communities and the environment. If a fair argument can be made that a project may have a significant effect on the environment, CEQA requires the consideration of alternatives as well as mitigation of adverse effects to the extent feasible.

As noted by Bill Lockyer, former California Attorney General:

“CEQA’s purpose is its genius—to foster transparency and integrity in public decision making while forcing consideration of the full scope the impacts development activities have on our natural and human environments.”

CEQA is the tool that enables us to ensure that future generations inherit a California that is cleaner, healthier, and more vibrant. Victories and projects that were improved thanks to the processes put in place by CEQA are numerous.

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Some of the success stories in which ordinary citizens used CEQA include:

  • Toppling a toxic waste incinerator in East Los Angeles
  • Reducing pollution at the Port of Los Angeles
  • Reducing particulate pollution at the ConocoPhillips oil refinery
  • Ending the agricultural industry’s exemption from the Clean Air Act
  • Reducing sewage overflows from San Francisco’s Mission Bay Project
  • Protecting the Bay Area’s vanishing marshes
  • Keeping the Santa Monica Mountains pristine

And the list goes on. For more examples and details about these victories and how CEQA works, see our joint report with the Planning and Conservation League: Everyday Heroes Protect the Air We Breathe, the Water We Drink, and the Natural Areas We Prize.

Now is not the time to restrict our ability to protect California from careless industrial and development projects. The good news is that we defeated bad legislation that would have implemented the Governor’s plan to exempt some of the biggest development projects from complying with CEQA. Now legislators need to continue to hear why the public supports CEQA and will not put up with attempts from special interests to weaken it during the budget negotiations.