Bay Area Council Calls on Legislature to Enact Comprehensive Reforms to End Abuse of CEQA

In the wake of an abusive and shameful California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) lawsuit that effectively will deny enrollment to thousands of UC Berkeley students, the Bay Area Council today (March 7) called on the state Legislature to fix this broken law once and for all.

“When our principal environmental law allows an individual to stop 5,000 students from attending the most prestigious public university in the world, or block the construction of multi-family housing next to transit, when it is used to stop bike lanes on our streets that get people out of cars, or stop solar farms that reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, it is time for that law to be fixed,” said Jim Wunderman, President and CEO of the Bay Area Council. “Governor Newsom and many legislators have spoken out against the injustice of this lawsuit, and it is now time to act and make sure this never happens again.”

“CEQA was signed over 50 years ago by Governor Reagan with the intent of protecting our precious environment, however in that same time we have watched opponents of any kind of progress exploit and abuse the law for purposes not even remotely related to environmental protection, and as a result builders of the housing we so sorely need are forced to build more and more car dependent subdivisions in the Central Valley and Sierra foothills to avoid expensive and time-consuming CEQA lawsuits. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! The time to make comprehensive reforms to CEQA is long overdue. We call on the legislation to act now.”