by Travis Longcore
CEQA Protects Birds
California’s bedrock environmental law, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), is always under attack, but the attacks have gotten worse of late, from both purportedly “progressive” anti-zoning advocates and the traditionally profit-driven construction and development industry. The current venue is the Little Hoover Commission, an independent State of California agency tasked with investigating and making recommendations to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and economy of California state government. In recent hearings the building industry has painted a picture of CEQA throwing the state into disarray and standing in the way of needed progress. In our view, CEQA works, and, if anything, it is not strong enough; the Little Hoover Commission should reject calls to further weaken it.
First, CEQA protects fundamental rights of people to participate in environmental protection when all else fails. It mandates public disclosure and the rights of people to appeal the decisions of elected officials and quite frankly that is sometimes necessary. It is especially necessary when monied interests, or the State itself, push forward projects that are not in the public interest. CEQA lets the people have their say through the public participation process that is required.
Second, CEQA is not the reason for unaffordable housing in California, as pro-development assert. Take the City of Los Angeles as an example, and some statistics published by environmental attorney Jamie Hall. During 2022 the City of Los Angeles exempted over 99.67% of all housing development from any review under CEQA at all. They conducted only 29 environmental reviews for a City of over 500 square miles. California as a whole has experienced multiple building boom and bust cycles since CEQA was made law, and those were on the fault of the law, but underlying economic conditions. More exemptions than ever are available to build in California; more are not needed.
Third, CEQA litigation is extremely rare and does not by itself stop projects. We see litigation in egregious cases, often in cases where elected officials or bureaucracies ignored impacts on communities and the environment to push forward projects that served their own purposes but not the public’s. Even if a CEQA suit is won, the project is not stopped, but delayed until the correct environmental disclosures and considerations can be made. CEQA does require that significant adverse impacts on the environment be mitigated, that less damaging alternatives to projects be chosen when available, and that this analysis be done before a project is approved. It is not too much to ask, and a strong CEQA is critical for bird conservation.
Regulate Pesticide Seeds
Current California law, for some reason, does not clearly give the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (CDPR) the authority to regulate pesticide-treated seeds, even though such seeds are impregnated with the very pesticides that this department normally regulates.
Pesticide-coated seeds are astoundingly dangerous. A single seed can kill a songbird. It has enough active ingredient to kill 80,000 insects. And 95% of the coatings escape into the environment, persisting in the soil and killing local wildlife. They travel in the environment, killing invertebrates that would normally support local bird conservation. They are very, very bad for birds.
A study of Los Angeles County by the CDPR found that 93% of urban water samples had seed-coating pesticides that exceeded the thresholds for harm to aquatic ecosystems.
California Assemblymember Alex Lee has introduced a bill (AB 1042) that would clarify that CDPR has the authority to regulate pesticide-coated seeds just like all other pesticides. That is a good idea and deserves the support of bird conservationists everywhere.
Rain Illustrates How Ballona Habitats Work
The Ballona Wetlands are one of our most important local bird habitats. They are, in fact, identified as an Important Bird Area by National Audubon. The State of California has developed and is attempting to implement a project that they call a “restoration” that would remove the levees along the Ballona Flood Control Channel to create a “meander” in the channel that never existed and to dig a series of saltwater canals into areas that never had them either. We oppose the plan, because it is based on an incorrect understanding of how the Ballona Wetlands function ecologically. In short, the wetland areas in question were historically flooded, not by daily tides from the ocean, but by freshwater rain runoff in the wintertime. Because of this, during drought periods they are drier, leaving the ill-informed to believe that they do not have a water source (even though the high water table keeps the pickleweed vegetation healthy). But during wet years, their role as seasonally flooded freshwater wetlands is obvious to see.
The Department of Fish and Wildlife does not yet have permission from the US Army Corps of Engineers, because the State neglected to plan for the right amount of stormwater runoff that comes down the Ballona Flood Control Channel that they want to move. As a result of that mistake, they cannot go forward with that part of the project at this point. Instead, they are trying to move forward with construction of canals to bring tidal water into the area south of Jefferson Boulevard outside of the freshwater marsh that Playa Vista constructed. This area is, however, already a freshwater seasonal wetland, and is in no need of saltwater canals to introduce water.
A new tool developed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to track wetlands important to migratory shorebirds provides near real-time monitoring of this type of shallow wetland so loved by wading birds (Figure 1). It shows that the whole area subject to the State’s dimwitted canal-building plan was, during the month of March 2023, a shallow wetland with emergent vegetation. That is primo bird habitat. Cutting canals into it will reduce this function by draining it faster after rains, and lowering the water table as well, harming the native pickleweed that is thriving there now. It makes no sense, but the process appears to have been driven by out-of-town consultants with little knowledge of the history and current function of the site, so we are left in a position of having to continue to advocate against the project and asking our elected officials to listen.