Path Forward Partners is proud to share that our Principal Geologist, David Grunat, recently testified as a key technical witness in support of Senator Scott Wiener’s SB 1258 for Cortese List infill housing sites before the California Senate Environmental Quality Committee.
SB 1258 is intended to help streamline infill housing projects on sites listed on the Cortese List, while maintaining strong environmental oversight and public health protections. These sites, often former industrial or commercial properties, represent some of California’s best opportunities for sustainable infill development, yet they frequently face procedural barriers despite being well understood and actively managed under existing regulatory programs.
That gap between a site’s actual environmental status and the procedural hurdles standing between it and productive reuse is exactly the issue David’s testimony addressed. Drawing on decades of hands-on experience with contaminated site investigation, regulatory cleanup programs, and risk-based mitigation, David highlighted how science-driven, regulator-supervised cleanup can safely support housing production on legacy sites. His perspective offered committee members a technical, on-the-ground view of how these sites are actually managed in practice, not just how they appear on a list, and why that distinction matters for a state facing both a housing shortage and a need to responsibly reuse its existing land inventory.
Legislation like SB 1258 sits at a genuinely difficult intersection: protecting public health and the environment while also removing unnecessary friction from housing production on sites that, in many cases, have already been extensively characterized and are actively managed under agency oversight. Getting that balance right requires input from people who work directly with these sites, understand the regulatory frameworks governing them, and can speak to what responsible reuse actually looks like in practice.
We’re grateful for the opportunity to contribute that technical perspective to an important policy discussion at the intersection of environmental protection, housing, and smart growth, and we’ll continue supporting policy efforts that advance both public health protections and California’s housing needs.
Learn more about Path Forward Partners at Regulatory Negotiation and Strategy.
#Environmental Policy #Infill Development #Brownfields #Cortese List #Housing Policy #Environmental Quality #Path Forward Partners