Why California cannot afford to kill CEQA
By sebraleaves
Since the passage of a number of California state bills attacking the California Environmental Protection Act, San Francisco has not had many appeals going before the SF Board of Supervisors. The recent appeal of the project at 469 Stevenson St., and media frenzy created by the Board’s decision to uphold the appeal, illustrate the importance of CEQA and the local community involvement that is being stripped out of the planning process by the California state legislature. Bills written by the development and investment community, sponsored by our state representatives who are largely influenced by the building industrial complex and the money that supports their campaigns, are overturning a system of checks and balances that was set up to protect our communities that are riddled with seismic challenges, by setting high construction standards. Unfortunately, these high standards are being ignored by the administerial system being established by the new state bills, that removes public notice and public review options.
A review of this appeal illustrates the need for reversing the trend that convinced some elected officials in California to write and promote a State Constitutional Amendment that is being released soon as a citizen’s ballot initiative. Details on that effort as they are released will be here: stopsacramento.org.
Two articles below, one by Tim Redmond in 48hills, and one by Gil Duran in the San Francisco Examiner, along with a taped recording of the appeal, should help explain why we support the Constitutional Amendment known as “Stop the Sacramento Land Grab”.
CEQA laws rely on local governments and citizen watchdog groups to protect the environment and our cities from the folly that unchecked greed and corruption may breed when allowed to buy government protections that allow bad dangerous projects to be built. Review the articles (linked below), the comments and tapes, and decide what you think is important.
In dramatic move, supes block huge luxury housing project in Soma
By Tim Redmond : 48hills — excerpt
Debate shows city planners’ utter failure to understand the role of market-rate housing in gentrification and displacement.
In a stunning victory for progressives, the Board of Supes voted 8–3 Tuesday to block a massive market-rate development that would have threatened one of the last affordable areas in Soma.
The vote to overturn the 469 Stevenson EIR doesn’t kill the project, but it’s a major setback and could help advocates who want to use the site for affordable housing…(more)
RELATED:
‘Absurdity’: San Francisco leaders stall SOMA housing project to preserve parking lot
By Gil Duran : sfexaminer — excerpt
In a shocking and possibly illegal act of public absurdity, eight members of the Board of Supervisors voted to stall the construction of 495 new housing units on the site of a parking lot in the South of Market neighborhood. They did this by supporting an appeal of the project’s environmental impact report, or EIR, last Tuesday…(more)
COMMENTS:
When the 48hills story was followed by a torrent of anti-supervisor articles in other publications and a threat from the state to investigate the case I had to go to the source to investigate by watching the hearing. You may do so also. https://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/player/clip/39719?view_id=10&redirect=true (starts around here: 2:17:46)
I appreciate it when the supervisors ask the questions I would like to ask, and one of those came from Supervisor Peskin (about here 4:31:19) quoted here:
“ In so far as this is a state bonus density project, doesn’t the Planning Department require the project sponsor to submit documentation as to why they need wavers from local code provisions to create more affordability and access wavers or concessions or incentives or whatever all that stuff is called? I’m still getting my hands around it. What financial analysis did they provide the department and how is that analyzed?”… How did they justify their state density bonus?”
How do they justify 27 stories with that analysis?
John Elbering speaking for the appellant, made a rather disturbing statement earlier in the meeting (around 2:28:07) that raised concerns about over-looking geo technical issues in the seismically challenged San Francisco neighborhoods, especially in SOMA, that is experiencing a number of sinking and tilting tower problems due to buildings constructed on “floating foundations” rather than pilings anchored to bedrock. Similar questions have been raised by Planning Commissioners on other projects, but were swept under the rug by staff and made it through the entitlement process because nobody challenged them. Not this one. John is quoted here:
“We finally learned this morning that the building the developer does not intend to put piles under this building. Now you all know south of market soil is bad. You know there was an old marsh here. We know in experience in building 8 buildings in SOMA that the conditions underneath even under a single lot can change a lot from one end to another and the risk of that you can get differential settlement. That is exactly what happened to the Transbay Tower. The Millennium Tower and Transbay. Differential settlement that is still not discussed in the EIR. It was not even mentioned in this morning’s letter from their engineer. We finally learned that they are not going to put pilings under the building. If the EIR had evaluated the whole issue the Planning Commission could have required pilings as a mitigation. But because it was scoped out and never discussed that is not going to happen.”
This leads to another bigger question. How many projects have gone through the entitlement process without seismic analysis since the anti-CEQA bills were passed to make the projects fly through the system under the pretense that CEQA and cities are to blame for the housing crisis?
Who should be blamed when the buildings fall, sink, tilt, or move away from the adjoining sidewalk and streets under this scenario? Who should the owners sue when damages are discovered years after mistakes and miscalculations result in another Millennium Tower or Transbay Terminal? Should they sue the state for removing important elements of the CEQA process and the role local communities and the public once played in protecting the environment and building reliable structures based on science, not profits? Are developers, land owners, engineers, financiers, lobbyists and state legislators liable for pushing through legislation that forces bad decisions on the public?
These are the questions we need to ask as we consider a new state ballot initiative that could reverse some of the anti-CEQA legislation Sacramento politicians have passed without public knowledge or consent. The issues raised by this project, and the state’s reaction to it, are proof that the public needs to take back the power to control our environment.
Follow the progress of the new state ballot initiative “Stop the California Land Grab” here: stopsacraento.org
