Newsom suspends landmark environmental laws to ease rebuilding in wildfire zones

Landmark California environmental laws will be suspended for wildfire victims seeking to rebuild their homes and businesses, according to an executive order signed Sunday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Requirements for building permits and reviews in the California Environmental Quality Act and the California Coastal Act — often considered onerous by developers — will be eased for victims of the fires in Pacific Palisades, Altadena and other communities, according to the order.

“California leads the nation in environmental stewardship. I’m not going to give that up,” Newsom told Jacob Soboroff on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “But one thing I won’t give into is delay. Delay is denial for people: lives, traditions, places torn apart, torn asunder.”

Conservatives, notably President-elect Donald Trump, have castigated Newsom and other Democratic leaders in California for embracing environmental policies that they argue laid the groundwork for the historic destruction caused by this month’s wildfires. Calling Newsom “incompetent,” Trump said he should resign, and made false statements about water being redirected to protect small fish and about Federal Emergency Management Agency policy.

“The fires are still raging in L.A. The incompetent pols have no idea how to put them out,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform, Saturday night. “Thousands of magnificent houses are gone, and many more will soon be lost. There is death all over the place. This is one of the worst catastrophes in the history of our Country. They just can’t put out the fires. What’s wrong with them?”

Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday.

Newsom, during the NBC interview, said he had asked the incoming president to come view the devastation in person, as Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Kathryn Barger, a Republican, did earlier on Saturday.

“We want to do it in the spirit of an open hand, not a closed fist. He’s the president-elect,” Newsom said. “I respect the office.”

While noting that many of the buildings that survived the fires were more likely to be built under modern building codes, Newsom said he was worried about the amount of time it would take to rebuild. So his executive order eliminates some CEQA requirements, modifies Coastal Act provisions and ensures property tax assessments are not increased for those who rebuild.

The suspensions apply only to properties and facilities in “substantially the same location” as before the fires, and whose height and footprint do not exceed 110% of their original size, the order says.

CEQA was signed into law by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1970 amid the burgeoning environmental movement, and the Coastal Act was approved by state voters in 1972 after a devastating oil spill off Santa Barbara.

Both have faced challenges for decades, and governors of both parties have argued for more than 40 years that CEQA needs to be reformed. Several of the act’s requirements were temporarily suspended by an executive order issued by Newsom during the pandemic. He argues that now is the time again.

Asked on the news program whether this month’s wildfires are the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history, Newsom noted that recent fires had resulted in a greater loss of life but said, “I think it will be in terms of just the costs associated with it in terms of the scale and scope.”

He called for a California version of the Marshall Plan, the American effort to rebuild Western Europe after World War II.

“We already have a team looking at re-imagining L.A. 2.0,” he said, “and we are making sure everyone’s included, not just the folks on the coast, people here that were ravaged by this disaster.”