🚨 NEW: New York State is modernizing its environmental review process to ensure that infill housing, clean energy, and climate resiliency infrastructure doesn’t get blocked by endless lawsuits and delays.

SEQRA, a law originally intended to protect our environment, is now holding us back from building the green infrastructure we need to tackle today’s climate and affordability crisis.

When the law passed in 1975, SEQRA rightly targeted dirty coal power plants and highways that bulldozed through neighborhoods. But today, it's being used to block the solutions to our climate crisis: dense, transit-oriented housing, clean energy, and clean water infrastructure.

SEQRA allows a single wealthy opponent to sue and block new housing—even after receiving local approvals—often costing projects hundreds of thousands of dollars and causing years of delays. Sometimes, projects are cancelled outright. This drives up costs for New York families.

Modernizing SEQRA will make it easier to address New Yorkers’ affordability challenges, ending a major source of delays for new apartments, childcare centers, food banks, and more. Under the changes proposed by @governor.ny.gov, these would be exempt from expensive delays.

When projects spend 5 years being delayed by paperwork, people lose faith in government. This is about restoring faith that government can do big things.

With rising energy bills, rising temperatures, and rising rents, we need to equip our local governments to take action. Thank you to @governor.ny.gov for leading on this.