Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order Sunday, Jan. 12, temporarily suspending two California environmental laws in order to speed rebuilding in Los Angeles County wildfire zones.
The order lifts, with certain limitations, permitting and review requirements under the California Environmental Quality Act and the California Coastal Act.
Suspending the rules clears the decks for builders to jumpstart rebuilding homes and buildings throughout areas impacted by the wildfires, which have burned more than 39,000 acres in the Pacific Palisades, Eaton Canyon, Lidia, Sunset and Woodley areas of suburban Los Angeles.
More than 12,000 structures have burned or been destroyed in the fires.
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Newsom on Sunday noted the difficulty of those displaced having to now search for housing in a market where everyone already spends at least 30% of their income on rent.
“When the fires are extinguished, victims who have lost their homes and businesses must be able to rebuild quickly and without roadblocks,” the governor said.
The order also extends protections against price gouging on building materials, storage services, construction and other essential goods and services to Jan. 7, 2026, in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
Steve Hudson, a district director with the California Coastal Commission (CCC) who works with several Southern California counties, said his team already has fielded a significant number of calls on the recovery process. “We are actively reaching out with local governments and their staffs to assist in the recovery efforts.”
The Palisades fire grew by less than 100 acres overnight, according to Cal Fire estimates. It’s estimated at 23,707 acres and 11% contained. The Eaton fire also remained about the same size at 14,117 acres, while the containment estimate jumped overnight to 27% from 15%.
As of Sunday, the number of evacuations stood at 105,000 under mandatory evacuation and 87,000 under evacuation warnings.
There have been 16 confirmed deaths from the fires, including 11 attributed to the Eaton fire and five to the Palisades fire, according to a County of Los Angeles Medical Examiner update Saturday evening.
CEQA and coastal act suspended
The order signed by Newsom temporarily suspends the California Environmental Quality Act and the California Coastal Act, allowing victims of the recent fires to more quickly restore their homes and businesses.
CEQA, a landmark law passed in California in 1970 and signed by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, created an approval system for building projects that essentially slowed any development to a snail’s pace.
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The order will help cut permitting delays by suspending environmental reviews and Coastal Commission permitting requirements for restoring damaged or demolished homes that are substantially in the same location and the same size as before the fires. To qualify, for example, homes must not exceed 110% of the footprint and height of structures that existed before the emergency, the order said.
Newsom called the order “an important first step in allowing our communities to recover faster and stronger.”
The governor also ordered state agencies to identify more ways to streamline the rebuilding and recovery process. He directed them to identify additional permitting requirements and building codes that can safely be suspended or streamlined to make it more affordable for the thousands of homeowners and businesses hit hard by the fires to rebuild quickly.
Dan Dunmoyer, president and chief executive of the California Building Industry Association, called the executive order “really positive.”
“The governor is signaling the people literally sleeping on someone’s couch or in a hotel, my focus is to get you back in your home as soon as possible,” Dunmoyer said.
In California, CEQA and the Coastal Commission “are our two road blocks to building anything, and he’s signaling those two roadblocks will be removed.”
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Newsom said that he would work with California’s legislature to identify statutory changes that can help expedite rebuilding while enhancing wildfire resilience and safety.
CEQA has been a tough legal hurdle for builders to overcome on development projects. Environmentalists and builders alike have used CEQA for decades to stall housing development.
The governor’s order is “an admission that we can safely build housing without CEQA,” said Jennifer Hernandez, a CEQA reform advocate and San Francisco attorney with law firm Holland & Knight’s West Coast Land Use and Environmental Group.
Same with the Coastal Act, she said. “The governor’s executive order validates that these laws are in fact abused to cause delay and increase costs,” Hernandez said.
She added that the executive order should be extended to cover infrastructure to support housing.
The order also suspends certain legal requirements of the California Coastal Act, which will further streamline the rebuilding process.
Hudson, district director for parts of Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties with the CCC, explained in an interview on Friday that homeowners are permitted to rebuild under the Coastal Act what they had prior to the fires, “provided that the development would be in the same footprint,” and not go over 110% of the size of the original structure.
The additional 10% in the size of the building structure would require an exemption from local governmental entities, he said.
“There’s no prohibition on rebuilding larger, but that would trigger a coastal development permit,” said Hudson, who described the burned area in the Palisades as “substantial.”
“This is a very significant fire,” he said. “Our staff is working with local governments and members of the public to help those impacted by this tragic fire and to assist in recovery efforts as quickly as possible, given just how important this is.”
Coastal bureaucracy
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The burn areas affect three different jurisdictions for the Coastal Commission, including the city of Los Angeles for the Palisades area, a portion of Los Angeles County near Topanga, and the city of Malibu. Hudson explained that Los Angeles County and Malibu jurisdictions have local coastal zoning programs certified by the California Coastal Commission.
“The commission never intended to be in the local permit issuance game, but local governments are required to obtain local coastal programs which are very similar to general plans and zoning ordinances,” he said. “When the local governments developed those plans, and they’re certified by our commission, they become the primary permit authority for coastal permits, and the commission is simply an appeal authority.”
Underscoring the complexity of the commission’s role in the rebuild process is the fact that the city of Los Angeles does not have one of these local coastal programs, which involves a completely different process, Hudson said.
He explained that Los Angeles is the only city in California that allows the city to issue coastal development permits on its own — a nuance that was inserted into the original Coastal Act law in 1976.
The act was established after private development attempted to cut off public access to the state’s coastline, and after a huge oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara in 1969. The twin events led to the passage of Proposition 20, the Coastal Conservation Initiative, according to the commission’s website. The commission’s job since then has been to guide how land along the coast of California is developed.
Los Angeles has two permit jurisdictions — one close to the Pacific Ocean and the other in inland areas. So, when cities process exemptions to coastal permits — say, to build 10% larger structures — the city of Los Angeles would process the exemption for the inland areas and the commission would process the exemption requests for the remaining areas.
It’s unclear how Newsom’s order on Sunday will affect these exemptions working their way through the building departments and other bureaucratic processes.
“I don’t anticipate large numbers of appeals to those exemptions, but we stand ready to work with the local governments and the public,” Hudson said.
“It’s a tragedy,” he said. “This will be a priority for our agency.”
