California has been ahead of others in environmental leadership. As a landmark law, California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) ensures environmental impacts of future projects are studied, disclosed, and mitigated before they begin. A new bill, SB 607, could significantly change how CEQA functions with detrimental consequences. As federal environmental laws are weakened by the Trump administration, CEQA is the primary tool Californian’s have to protect the environment.
What is SB 607?
SB 607 was introduced by Senator Scott Wiener in February 2025. While being promoted as a housing reform bill, this bill is part of a broader push to streamline development, particularly in urban infill areas. While this may sound enticing with more housing and less sprawl, it raises a few red flags.
Limits Environmental Review
CEQA was designed to assess all potential environmental impacts—air quality, traffic, water use, noise, biodiversity. SB 607 will weaken environmental review requirements for nearly all private and government projects, including freeways, airports, dams, railyards, shopping centers, sports complexes, power plants, prisons, and mining operations. An Environmental Impact Report (EIR) is required when a project indicates there is a “fair argument” based on substantial evidence that it may have significant impacts on the environment. SB 607 would allow any agency to refuse to prepare an EIR. An agency could rely solely on a Negative Declaration (ND) or Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND) under a more deferential standard that is difficult to overcome. EIRs play a critical role in identifying significant impacts, allowing for public scrutiny and ensuring those impacts are minimized. SB 607 would give agencies more flexibility to overlook credible evidence related to air pollution, water contamination, climate change, and threats to wildlife. This is especially troubling where project applicants and their consultants drive the environmental review process, with a rubber stamp from agency staff and officials. In historically marginalized communities with a disproportionate share of industrial and polluting facilities, this presents greater concern.
Exemptions for Rezoning
California has a housing crisis. Affordable and infill housing is already largely exempt from CEQA. However, a dangerous aspect of SB 607 is its proposal to exempt rezonings from CEQA review if a project aligns with an approved housing element. Rezoning is the process of changing how a piece of land can legally be used—from industrial to residential or from low-density to high-density housing. As currently written, SB 607 could allow rezonings that include commercial and industrial development to bypass environmental review. Even if the rezoning allows for pollution heavy or traffic generating development, the project could bypass CEQA review simply because it fulfills a housing element, even with mixed use developments including distribution centers or factories. Increased industrial and warehouse uses can stress the water supply, traffic infrastructure, and contaminate natural habitats and wetlands. This bill should clarify that exemptions should apply to rezones for residential housing projects only. However, even if redrafted, this exemption is unnecessary. While California needs to meet its housing goals, exempting rezoning from environmental review could lead to long-term consequences that harm ecosystems, communities, and public trust.
Restricting Public Participation
CEQA is a tool that allows the public to understand and influence how developments affect their neighborhoods. It isn’t just an environmental law – it’s a transparency and accountability tool. By narrowing or exempting what is reviewed, SB 607 shuts the public out of the process, especially in vulnerable or disadvantaged communities that are already susceptible to pollution, displacement, and poor planning. Low-income neighborhoods and communities of color have historically faced disproportionate exposure to polluting infrastructure, poor land-use decisions, and environmental injustice. Without Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs), communities have less access to information, and the public loses the opportunity to weigh in or hold decision-makers accountable. CEQA is a powerful democratic tool that ensures development decisions are not made quietly.
Why We Must Protect CEQA
At a time when federal environmental protections are being rolled back, California must protect CEQA. SB 607 threatens to undermine CEQA—the very law that ensures our development is informed, transparent, and sustainable. By weakening environmental review, exempting broad categories of rezoning, and restricting public participation, this bill shifts power away from communities and into the hands of developers and agencies with little oversight.
California can and should build more housing—but not at the cost of environmental protection, public health, or democratic accountability. CEQA doesn’t stop housing; it ensures that housing is built responsibly, with input from the people who live in and around proposed developments.
How You Can Help
Please join more than 130 environmental groups calling on Senator Pro Tem Mike McGuire and Senator Anna Caballero to vote NO on SB 607.
Please contact these legislators today to register your opinion. Your voice makes a difference!
You can call:
(916) 651-4002
(916) 651-4014
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