It remains to be seen how much impact the changes in CEQA will have on housing sector, but it should certainly help the superfund sector.

Here's an article about the California Environmental Quality Act roll-back that all of the YIMBYs were so happy about. Let's take a look. 

"The new law exempts nine types of projects from environmental reviews: child care centers"... That seems reasonable.

"health clinics, food banks, farmworker housing, broadband"...

I don't have any issues so far.

"wildfire prevention, water infrastructure, public parks or trails"...

The second 2 make sense and I really like the 1st one. Complaining about smoke from controlled burns is and has always been insane. 

Now let's see what's next...

... "and, notably, advanced manufacturing." 

The new exemption for “advanced manufacturing” facilities in areas already zoned for industrial use — including plants that build semiconductors and nanotech — drew some of the fiercest criticism. State law defines the category as processes that improve or create new materials, products or technologies. 

...

A major proponent of the exemptions, State Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco said in an interview with CalMatters today that criticisms by environmentalists were  “extreme, unfounded, melodramatic statements.” 

 
To recycle an old joke, the three leading causes of injury in Sacramento are automobiles, power tools, and getting between Scott Wiener and a microphone, but I digress.

“This is a bill that, literally, will help us get more housing, more childcare centers, more health centers, more food banks, and bring clean advanced manufacturing to California,” Wiener said. “And to suggest that that kind of bill is bad for the environment — or the worst environmental bill in decades — or whatever it is they said, that’s just over the top.”

 More digression. If an industry is responsible for multiple Superfund sites, it may not qualify as "clean advanced manufacturing." ["Raquel Mason, senior legislative manager with the California Environmental Justice Alliance, told senators that there have been 23 Superfund sites in Santa Clara County — in the heart of Silicon Valley, and several are related to semiconductor manufacturing. "]

Wiener said the changes exempt manufacturing projects only on land that is already zoned as industrial. The goal is to make it easier for high-tech industries to build, with Wiener arguing that California risks losing out on major private-sector investment because it’s too costly and difficult to build in the state. 

This is an appropriate time to mention that California has a really ugly history of leaving behind industrial waste disproportionately in black or brown neighborhoods, generally from factories that were zoned industrial.  

“The environmental movement needs to ask itself: Why is it that CEQA keeps getting used to stymie climate action, whether it’s transit-oriented development or bike lanes or public transportation or phasing out oil?” Wiener said.

This is a classic bait and switch—bringing up a number of genuinely good causes that have nothing to do with what you're actually selling. It's a perfect example of why I’ve always found Scott Wiener untrustworthy and unserious. It's also a great illustration of how the black-and-white, heroes-and-villains, binary worldview of the YIMBY movement can be so easily manipulated by bad actors.

What makes this such a teachable moment is that it includes both a case where the law has been perversely applied and a case where it has upset powerful people by doing what it's supposed to.

Using clean air laws to prevent controlled burns is absolutely insane. This is the one tool we have that works at scale to reduce the risk of megafires, which produce far worse pollution—not to mention causing devastating environmental effects. Anyone who cares about the environment should be cheering this part of the roll-back.

More Superfund sites? Not so much.

If we are serious about addressing the housing crisis, it shouldn’t be that difficult to prioritize changes to the law that actually help build more dwellings, make transportation more sustainable, and which serve the original intent of CEQA. Unfortunately, this is not a movement that does nuance—at least not the people like Wiener or the countless journalists at The New York Times who love to weigh in on California’s problems. If you’ve followed this discussion closely, you’ve constantly heard the debate framed as “build or not build,” “growth or anti-growth.”

This has always been a misrepresentation. The question has always been where to build and how to build smarter—what trade-offs make sense and what trade-offs don’t. As with the abundance movement, the demonization of regulation does little to advance the goals that pretty much everyone can agree on. Instead, it allows people with money and influence to hijack the system.