Case Studies

The price of letting developers self-permit.

Three real projects. What CEQA caught — and what the CalChamber measure would let through.

What CEQA caught

Aliso Canyon Gas Storage

Porter Ranch, Los Angeles County

Delay: 3 years
Cost imposed: $1.8B in damages
Community impact: 8,000 households displaced

Under the CalChamber measure

Under the CalChamber measure's industrial-reuse exemption, SoCalGas could have self-certified the well's integrity. The 2015 blowout — California's largest methane release ever — would have come with no independent review and no community recourse.

What CEQA caught

Inland Empire Warehouse Boom

Riverside & San Bernardino Counties

Delay: 18 months avg.
Cost imposed: $420M air-quality mitigation
Community impact: 200+ warehouses required to electrify trucks

Under the CalChamber measure

The measure exempts logistics and 'industrial reuse' from environmental-justice review. Asthma rates in the Inland Empire are already 60% above the state average. The measure would let the next thousand warehouses skip the hearings that produced those mitigations.

What CEQA caught

Tulare Basin Dairy Digesters

Central Valley

Delay: 2 years
Cost imposed: $95M monitoring requirements
Community impact: Setbacks from farmworker housing

Under the CalChamber measure

The CalChamber measure treats dairy biogas as 'clean energy infrastructure.' Self-certified digesters could be sited next to schools and labor camps without the air-quality study currently required.