New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal to fast-track certain housing projects by peeling back some environmental regulations is dividing some of the state’s most prominent climate advocacy groups.
The State Environmental Quality Review Act, or SEQRA, is intended to make sure projects don’t harm sensitive lands and waters, but developers have long criticized the process, saying it slows down construction times and drives up costs. Hochul said she’s trying to bring down housing costs amid New York state’s ongoing housing affordability crisis.
And some environmental nonprofits now say they support limited changes to the decades-old measure.
“ We are broadly supportive of the governor's proposal,” New York League of Conservation Voters Policy Director Patrick McClellan said in an interview.
McClellan said that supporting the creation of denser housing close to mass transit “ is a huge net benefit for the fight against climate change.”
But others criticized Hochul for trying to roll back a bedrock environmental law meant to protect clean water and critical habitats — and argue the move is an escalation of her push to rescind some of the state’s environmental protections.
“Instead of using a scalpel to help build affordable housing, we would be using a machete to create an open season for developers,” said Adrienne Esposito, head of the Citizens Campaign for the Environment, in recent testimony to lawmakers.
The state adopted SEQRA in 1975, just a few years after the first Earth Day, at a time when New York was enacting a number of new environmental laws. The law requires all levels of state and local government to examine potential environmental effects alongside social and economic factors while reviewing commercial and residential development projects.
Hochul’s proposal would exempt certain housing projects that local or state regulatory agencies find to have “no significant impacts” from additional environmental review. In New York City, the new exemption would apply to projects of up to 250 units, or up to 500 units in higher-density zoning areas.
For the rest of the state, the exemption would include projects of up to 100 units that are on “previously disturbed” land and are already connected to water and sewer.
A coalition of affordable housing groups, developers and business organizations are now pushing the Legislature to support Hochul’s plan, writing in a letter to lawmakers that the environmental review process is a “bottleneck” that blocks critical housing, clean energy, transit and infrastructure projects.
Some environmental groups argue that bottleneck is an important check for developers driven more by profit than environmental stewardship.
“The governor’s proposal is poorly conceived and will have a negative impact on the environment,” Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter Conservation Director Roger Downs said in testimony to lawmakers. He said the state’s affordable housing crisis is driven by land speculation, a lack of public housing and runaway rents — not permitting delays.
“Merely blaming the environmental review process will only ensure that new unaffordable housing comes now with greater environmental impacts,” he said.
But other green groups argue Hochul’s changes are not that destructive.
“ I do think it is really important to note the historical importance of this set of laws and the ongoing attempts by big industry to roll back environmental permitting,” Earthjustice New York Policy Advocate Liz Moran said in an interview. But “ what the governor has put forward does not appear to do that.”
One point of unity between the sparring environmental groups is concern over Hochul’s definition of a “previously disturbed site.” The proposal defines such a site as having been developed more than two years before the application for a permit and “substantially altered” by that previous development.
Advocates say that definition could include farmland that has an old barn or shed.
“ There are definitely changes that we would like to see before we would be willing to give it a full-throated endorsement,” McClellan said.
“ We think that should probably be tightened up a little bit to prevent any exploitation by developers,” Moran said. “ What's been proposed so far is a little bit broad.”
The state Senate and Assembly will continue holding hearings on the governor’s budget proposal through the end of February. They’re expected to put forward their own proposals in early March.
Leaders in the Legislature are predicting a battle. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told reporters last month he expected the proposed changes to the environmental review process would be one of the most contentious items in the budget.
“When you start to change the way that local communities do their reviews, that takes conversations,” he said.
McClellan said he hoped the wide array of environmental nonprofits could coalesce around a set of recommendations to tighten and improve Hochul’s proposal.
But “ if at the end of the day we still have disagreements with some other environmental groups, that's fine,” he said. “That's politics.”
“It's happened before,” he said. “I'm sure it will happen again.”
