What New CEQA Reforms Aimed at Streamlining Housing Production Mean for the Environment

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 18 August 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

California has long prided itself on being a leader on environmental issues. Innovative laws like a carbon cap and trade program to limit greenhouse gas emissions and CEQA, which allows for environmental reviews of development projects, were a hallmark of that leadership. But a focus on cost of living and the need for more housing are putting into question how the state will balance environmental concerns with its desire for growth. In the first of a 2 day series looking at the impact of environmental reforms, we talk about what’s ahead for California’s environmental agenda. Guests: Wade Crowfoot, secretary, California Natural Resources Agency Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, UC Berkeley School of Law; host of the podcast, Climate Break Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:36.5	From KQED.
0:37.9	From KQED.
0:37.9	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:53.7	For decades, California's environmental laws and regulations tended to be at the forefront
1:00.0	of national policy.
1:02.5	Renewable energy, car and appliance efficiency standards, carbon cap and trade, and of course
1:08.0	SICWA were landmark laws.
1:10.6	But times have changed and the state's many
1:12.8	innovations are in question, both here and across the country. What's changing and what should
1:18.8	be preserved? That's all coming up next, right after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. We're looking at California's legacy of leadership on
1:48.6	environmental laws and the revisions that people here in the state are making to some of these
1:53.3	rules and regulations. Foremost among them, SICWA, shorthand for the California Environmental Quality
1:59.9	Act, has been a contentious piece of legislation.
2:02.9	As developers say, it slows down building and creates unnecessary uncertainty in their projects,
2:09.4	while advocates contend it's a necessary part of preserving the state's landscapes and communities.
2:15.7	Recently, the California legislature passed some changes to SICWA, and we're taking them
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