Established in 1970, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is a State statue which requires local public agencies to provide analysis and disclosure of possible environmental impacts prior to the approval of building permits for a project.
Exemptions from analysis can be granted for minor projects, saving much time and money, but those exemptions can be appealed as can any findings of no environmental impact (a “negative declaration”), an appeal process which is ill-defined and costly and a favorite tool of both concerned citizens and NIMBYs alike.
Yesterday, following eight months of back and forth and the threat of a competing bill, Supervisor Wiener’s proposed legislation to revise and clarify the city’s process and procedures for appealing project exemptions and negative declarations was unanimously approved by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors.
While increasing the procedures for notifying the public as to projects in the works, including a new online system for electronically tracking project notifications and exemptions, the approved amendment will require appeals to be filed within 30 days of a project’s approval.
Assuming final passage, the amendment will take effect no earlier than September 1, 2013 and not until the new online notification system is up and running. All CEQA based appeals will continue to be heard before the full Board of Supervisors.
∙ CEQA Procedures, Appeals, and Public Notice Requirements Amendment [sfbos.org]
∙ See Supervisor Kim Introduce Competing CEQA Legislation [SocketSite]
This is great news – only thing that would have been better is if the legislation had been adopted as proposed, before watering down by Chiu/Kim. Scott Wiener is one of the few supes who is willing to tackle complicated, unsexy but really important issues like this one. Kudos to him.
True, Weiner took on the Castro
exhibitionistnudist situation which is about as un-sexy as possible.