California is an expansive state, but most people live and work in a series of spaces that are – proportionally – rather small. It may seem like it takes forever to traverse metropolitan Los Angeles or the San Francisco Bay Area, but these population centers make up only a tiny portion of the state's overall land area. Meanwhile, the open lands in the state are quickly being scooped up for permanent protection. The federal government already owns half the land in the state, and state agencies and land trusts are picking up a good portion of the rest. Large pieces of real estate are available in the Central Valley and the Inland Empire, but most of them are far from job centers. Which brings us to brownfields – those contaminated sites, mostly in already urbanized areas, that represent great opportunities to use urban land more efficiently if only they can get cleaned up. California has tens of thousands of brownfield sites. Most are small, but some are large parcels – usually with an industrial past – that represent great opportunities to alter the state's urban form. California has never taken brownfields seriously enough as an issue – unlike a compact urban state like New Jersey, which is quickly moving to lock up most remaining undeveloped land and making it easy to develop on brownfields. But now the issue is beginning to get some traction in Sacramento. It remains to be seen whether the traction continues next year – an election year that is likely to feature a down economy – and whether the Legislature is interested in change sweeping enough to make a difference. This year's passage of SB 32 — which takes some baby steps towards encouraging brownfields development — represents a good example of how the coming debate is likely to shake out. On the one hand, it shows that there's a broadening of support for certain types of brownfields legislation, especially in connection with the environmental justice crowd, which has traditionally been wary of facilitating brownfields development. On the other hand, it suggests that brownfields policy, like most other land use policy in California, will be a work in process for a long time, driven mostly by the incremental steps the that Legislature is willing to take in any given year. Brownfields policy is a delicate three-part balance between the government, the landowner, and the community. Government agencies want contaminated urban land cleaned up, often to very high standards, and usually with private landowner dollars. Property owners want to realize profit from their real estate, and they do not want to be saddled with cleanup costs. Older urban communities want environmental problems eradicated, but they don't want to feel "dumped on." The result of this triangle is often bureaucratic, litigious gridlock, in which one or two of the three players holds the power to stop or slow down brownfields cleanup so much that under-utilized urban land simply cannot compete with "greenfield" sites. Piled on top of that is the "place-blind" orientation of California land use policy, especially the California Environmental Quality Act. Traditionally, planning in California is based on what Professor John Landis of University of California, Berkeley, calls "the suburban growth model." Under this model, the whole assumption underlying the planning process is that communities are converting raw land into urbanized neighborhoods. That is one of the reasons why CEQA has always been, by and large, "place-blind." Generally speaking, it does not matter whether your project is in a century-old industrial district or in the middle of nowhere – the requirements are pretty much the same. And as pressure to redevelop urban sites has grown, environmental justice groups have latched on to CEQA as one of the few levers they have to ensure that poor urban neighborhoods do not get railroaded. That is why attempts to reform CEQA to favor development of brownfields and infill sites – like other brownfields bills – have often failed. Beyond that is the fact that toxic contamination, unlike most land use issues, falls under the purview of a state agency, in this case the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC). Not surprisingly, DTSC is concerned with paying for and cleaning up contamination, rather than altering the urban form of the state. So the agency has had little motivation to facilitate brownfields development. Senate Bill 32, carried by Sen. Martha Escutia (D-Huntington Park), is not sweeping. The legislation takes three tiny steps toward making brownfields redevelopment easier. The most important aspect of the bill for land use is that it gives local governments the ability, in certain circumstances, to order landowners to investigate toxic contamination problems on under-utilized parcels of five acres or less. Far more important than what SB 32 does is who supported it and the fact that it passed at all. The bill won the backing of a wide variety of urban environmental justice groups – the first time such a broad coalition has been put together to support a brownfields bill. We will have to wait and see how far the brownfields coalition can go next year. The state's already limited brownfields program took a hit in November, when Gov. Davis axed $44 million of the $52 million originally allocated for DTSC's CLEAN Brownfields Loan Program because of the state budget deficit. Major CEQA reform still does not appear to be in the cards. The staunchest defender of CEQA – Sen. Byron Sher (D-Palo Alto) – remains at the helm of the Senate Committee on Environmental Quality. And even some minor CEQA changes to facilitate infill development in downtown Oakland required all of Mayor Jerry Brown's juice to get passed this year. And the big cahuna in brownfields is much tougher than CEQA. It's the question of liability. Currently, California law creates open-ended liability for all present and past landowners on the question of toxic cleanup – a boon to DTSC regulators who want to find deep pockets, but not exactly an incentive for enlightened developers to enter the gauntlet of redeveloping brownfields. To make the brownfields effort really sing in California, a sweeping deal will have to be brokered on liability. The deal will probably need to involve reining in the trial lawyers, throwing additional state money into the pot, and encouraging the locals to redirect redevelopment funds and other precious revenue to a task they would rather let somebody else pay for. That is a tough assignment in any climate. A sour economy with a budget deficit will make it even harder. And California is not given to sweeping political change on anything these days. Term-limited legislators move forward an inch at a time – and the electricity deregulation debacle has made them more cautious than ever. At this rate, it will take a decade or more to whip our state's brownfields policy into shape.