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The University of California, Berkeley campus has become a focus of a new wave of efforts to scrap the long-controversial state environmental law CEQA. 

The University of California, Berkeley campus has become a focus of a new wave of efforts to scrap the long-controversial state environmental law CEQA. 

Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
CityLab
+ Green

The Landmark Environmental Law Inside a NIMBY Firestorm

Since the 1970s, critics have argued that the California Environmental Quality Act is doing more harm than good. What would reforming the law look like?

Patrick Sisson

In 1978, Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin Braude, who described himself as the city’s “first avowed environmentalist elected to public office,” took aim at a landmark California environmental regulation. 

“Will we now drown in paper pollution?” asked the headline of his Los Angeles Times editorial on March 26. “It’s raining environmental impact reports.”