Landmark California environmental laws will be suspended for wildfire victims who want to rebuild their homes and businesses, according to an executive order signed Sunday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Building permit requirements and revisions to the California Environmental Quality Act and the California Coastal Act — often considered onerous by developers — will be eased for fire victims in Pacific Palisades, Altadena and other communities, according to the order.
“California leads the nation in environmental stewardship. I'm not going to let that go,” Newsom told Jacob Soboroff on NBC's “Meet the Press.” “But the thing I will not agree to is delay. Delay is a denial of people: lives, cultures, places separated, divided between.”
Conservatives, particularly President-elect Trump, have criticized Newsom and other Democratic leaders in California for adopting environmental policies they say set the stage for the historic devastation caused by this month's wildfires. Calling Newsom “incompetent,” Trump said he should resign, and made false statements about water diversions to protect small fish and Federal Emergency Management Agency policy.
“Fires still burning in LA Voters can't put out,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform, on Saturday night. “Thousands of beautiful homes are gone, and many more will soon be lost. There is death everywhere. This is one of the worst tragedies in our country's history. They just can't put out fires. What is wrong with them?”
Trump's transition team did not respond to requests for comment Saturday.
Newsom, during an interview with NBC, said he asked the next president to come and see the damage, as did the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors of Los Angeles County, Kathryn Barger, a Republican, early Saturday.
“We want to do it with an open hand, not a closed fist. He is the president-elect,” Newsom said. “I respect the office.”
Although he notes that most of the buildings that survived the fire are more likely to be built under modern building codes, Newsom said he is concerned about the time it will take to rebuild. So his executive order removes certain CEQA requirements, modifies provisions of the Coastal Act and ensures that property tax assessments are not increased for those who rebuild.
The suspension applies only to buildings and facilities that are in “substantially the same location” as before the fires, and whose height and footprint do not exceed 110% of their original size, the order said.
CEQA was signed into law by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1970 during the environmental movement, and the Coastal Act was approved by state voters in 1972 after the devastating oil spill in Santa Barbara.
Both have faced challenges for decades, and governors from both parties have argued that CEQA needs to be reformed for more than 40 years. Many of the requirements of the law were temporarily suspended by an executive order issued by Newsom during the violence. He says now is the time.
Asked on a news program if this month's wildfires are the worst natural disaster in the history of the nation, Newsom noted that recent fires have caused many casualties but said, “I think it will be in terms of the costs associated with it. in measure and breadth.”
He called for California's version of the Marshall Plan, America's attempt to rebuild Western Europe after World War II.
He said: “We've got a team looking at rethinking LA 2.0, and we're making sure everyone is included, not just the people on the coast, the people here who have been devastated by this disaster.”
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