A state development agency might consider doing some oil exploration work in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge next winter, following a federal judge’s ruling Tuesday that the Biden administration lacked authority to cancel the agency’s oil and gas leases there, an agency official said.

The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority may not be able to pursue a full exploration program there next winter, with seismic surveys across the leases, agency executive director Randy Ruaro said in an interview Wednesday. But some seismic surveys — using seismic waves to map the subsurface — may be possible, he said.

That’s because the Biden administration threw up a major hurdle when it issued a decision in December that sharply limited exploration activity there, he said. That hurdle must still be removed, he said.

“They left part of ANWR open, even the Biden administration did, because they had to,” Ruaro said. “But quite a bit of it is zoned out.”

The agency is challenging the decision in court. It can also work with the Trump administration, which supports drilling in the refuge, to reverse Biden’s decision, he said.

“We’ve got a couple options,” Ruaro said.

But it’s unknown how long either option will take, he said.

The possibility of drilling in the refuge took a big step forward in 2017 when the Republican-led Congress passed a law opening the refuge to development.

The state agency acquired the seven leases, totaling 365,000 acres in the northwest corner of the refuge along the coast, in a lease sale held in the final days of the first Trump administration.

No major oil companies bid in that historic sale, and the state agency was the only bidder to hold on to its leases. But the Biden administration canceled the leases in 2023, citing legal flaws with the leasing program.

The 19.6-million-acre area for decades has been a battleground for pro-development advocates who say an oil discovery will help the economy and national security, and conservation and some Indigenous groups who fear it will threaten polar bears and caribou and add to climate pollution.

Judge Sharon Gleason, in her 22-page decision on Tuesday, said the cancellation violated the 2017 law calling for the refuge to be opened, because the Biden administration did not obtain a court order for the cancellation.

She sent the matter back to Interior, where the new Interior secretary, Doug Burgum, said last week that he plans to expand opportunities for oil and gas development in the 1.6-million-acre coastal plain of the refuge.

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy and the Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, representing elected Iñupiaq leadership from Alaska’s North Slope where the refuge is located, praised the decision.

So did Alaska’s U.S. senators, who helped write the provision in the 2017 law opening the refuge, and freshman Rep. Nick Begich III.

“After the first Trump administration developed a good program and AIDEA secured seven leases, the Biden administration spent four years attempting to turn the program on its head,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski said in a statement from the delegation Wednesday. “While we lost years of development to their willful intransigence, this decision is an important step to getting things back on track.”

Conservation groups and the Gwich’in Steering Committee criticized Gleason’s decision for allowing the agency to keep its leases. They said the state development agency has no ability to extract oil and gas, and has been has been the subject of reports showing it has made poor financial investments.

“AIDEA is the ‘grim reaper’ of Alaska megaprojects — when they show up to spend money, smart investors stay away,” said Andy Moderow, senior director of policy for the Alaska Wilderness League. “We will continue to challenge their misguided attempts to industrialize the Arctic Refuge, so that the Coastal Plain can sustain continued and new traditions for generations to come.”

‘Valuable deposits’

The refuge’s remote location in northeast Alaska, and the controversy over drilling there, has likely limited bidding interest from oil companies. The Biden administration held a second lease sale for the refuge early this year, but receive no bids of any sort.

Gleason’s decision suggested that the agency, which acquired its leases with the idea of working with exploration companies, could be sitting on sizable amounts of oil.

She said environmental reviews conducted under the first Trump administration and under Biden found that the coastal plain houses valuable deposits of oil and gas.

“Although these documents indicate that there are no proven plays, or groups of oil fields, due to the lack of oil and gas exploration in the Coastal Plain, they nonetheless confirm that the Coastal Plain contains valuable deposits according to the federal government’s best estimates,” Gleason wrote.

The U.S. Geological Survey in 1998 estimated that the refuge contains pools of oil that today would be comparable to large discoveries made in recent years in Alaska, far west of the refuge, such as at ConocoPhillips’ Willow field.

Ruaro said AIDEA has reviewed data from old wells drilled west of the refuge on state land. It’s also taken a new look at two-dimensional seismic surveys shot in the 1980s, when Congress allowed oil companies to drill the only well ever allowed in the refuge, he said.

“We think we have a very good idea of what’s in the northwest corner of ANWR, on our leases, and we think there are billions of barrels of oil,” Ruaro said.

The recent announcement of an oil discovery just west of the refuge also highlights the area’s oil potential, Ruaro said. The partners announcing the find included Australian-based Santos and Bill Armstrong, the geologist whose work led to major discoveries in Alaska and prompted ConocoPhillips to take steps that led the company to Willow.

“We think those trends continue into ANWR,” said Ruaro, referring to geological patterns that could support a discovery.

Next steps on possible exploration in the refuge will be considered by the agency’s board, he said. The agency will work with partners like the community of Kaktovik, an Alaska Native village in the refuge, along with the North Slope Borough and the Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, he said.

“I would say that all options to advance the project and development are on the table, and we’ll get full guidance from our board,” Ruaro said.

The board will likely consider what it will take to soon acquire detailed, new seismic exploration data, known as three-dimensional seismic, which replaced the old 2D seismic technology, he said.

“3D is the goal,” he said.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes announced he would not run for a U.S. House of Representatives seat left empty after the death of southern Arizona political icon Rep. Raúl Grijalva.

After telling journalists and his staff that he was “seriously considering” a candidacy, Fontes, a Democrat, said on March 26 he instead would focus on administering elections.

“With this week’s executive order from the Trump administration, I firmly believe the president is laying the groundwork to cancel the election in 2026,” Fontes said.

“I have considered the pros and cons of running for Congress. It is clear to me that our party must fight harder and stand up to the rising tide of fascism sweeping this nation,” he said in a statement.

Fontes cited Trump’s most recent executive order that would require proof of citizenship in a federal election, which was signed by the president March 25.

Fontes told Democratic attorney Marc Elias he believed a legal battle was on the horizon as President Trump attempted to change the process for the mid-term election of 2026.

“After careful thought and reflection, I have decided that for family, for country, and for democracy, I will continue to defend America as Arizona’s Secretary of State,” Fontes said.

Who are likely candidates for Grijalva’s seat?

The decision set up what election observers expected to be a two-way race between former state Rep. Daniel Hernandez Jr., who announced his run on March 24, and Adelita Grijalva, a daughter of the late congressman, who has not made a formal announcement to run.

Adelita Grijalva also serves on the Pima County Board of Supervisors in the same seat her father held decades ago.

Before Grijalva’s death, three other Democratic candidates — Andrew Becerra, David Bies and Abdul hadi Ghulam Habib — had filed paperwork indicating their interest in running for the 7th Congressional District seat in 2026.

As of March 26, 22 people had filed a statement of interest to run for the seat in the special election, including 10 Republicans, 10 Democrats, one Libertarian and one Green Party member.

The primary election will take place on July 15, and the general election will be held in September.

Arizona Republic reporters Laura Gersony and Mary Jo Pitzl contributed to this article.

Reach reporter Rey Covarrubias Jr. at rcovarrubias@gannett.com. Follow him on X, Threads and Bluesky @ReyCJrAZ.

By Ben Christopher, CalMatters

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

For years California has been stuck in a recurring fight between legislators who want the state to turbocharge new home construction and legislators determined to defend a landmark environmental protection law.

The final showdown in that long-standing battle may have just arrived. 

A new bill by Oakland Democratic Assemblymember Buffy Wicks would exempt most urban housing developments from the 55-year-old California Environmental Quality Act.

If it passes — a big if, even in today’s ascendent pro-building political environment — it would mean no more environmental lawsuits over proposed apartment buildings, no more legislative debates over which projects should be favored with exemptions and no more use of the law by environmental justice advocates, construction unions and anti-development homeowners to wrest concessions from developers or delay them indefinitely.

In short, it would spell the end of California’s Housing-CEQA Wars. 

“If we’re able to get it to the governor’s desk, I think it’s probably one of the most significant changes to CEQA we will have seen since the law’s inception,” said Wicks.

Wicks’ broadside at CEQA (pronounced “see-kwah”) is one of 22 housing bills that she and a bipartisan group of legislators are parading out Thursday as a unified “Fast Track Housing Package.” Wicks teed up the legislative blitz earlier this month when she released a report, based on the findings of the select committee she chaired last year, that identified slow, uncertain and costly regulatory approval processes as among the main culprits behind California’s housing crisis. 

The nearly two dozen bills are a deregulatory barrage meant to blast away at every possible choke point in the housing approval pipeline. 

Most are eye-glazingly deep in the weeds.

There are bills to standardize municipal forms and speed up big city application processes. One bill would assign state and regional regulatory agencies strict timelines to approve or reject projects and another would let developers hire outside reviewers if cities blow the deadlines. Different bills take aim at different institutions identified as obstructionist: the California Coastal Commission, investor-owned utilities and local governments throwing up roadblocks to the construction of duplexes.

Wicks’ bill stands out. It’s simple: No more environmental lawsuits for “infill” housing. It’s also likely to draw the most controversy.

“It’s trying something that legislators have not been willing to try in the past,” said Chris Elmendorf, a UC Davis law professor and frequent critic of CEQA. “And the reason they have not been willing to try in the past is because there are a constellation of interest groups that benefit from the status quo.  The question now is whether those interest groups will kill this or there’s a change in the zeitgeist.”

A spokesperson for CEQA Works, a coalition of dozens of environmental, conservation, and preservation advocacy organizations, said the members of the group needed more time to review the new legislation before being interviewed for this story.

A spokesperson for the State Building and Construction Trades Council, which advocates on behalf of tens of thousands of unionized construction workers in California, said the organization was still “digging into” the details of the bill.

What’s the big deal?

The California Environmental Quality Act has been on the books since 1971, but its power as a potential check on development has ebbed and flowed with various court rulings and state legislative sessions. The act doesn’t ban or restrict anything outright. It requires government agencies to study the environmental impact of any decisions they make — including the approval of new housing — and to make those studies public.

In practice, these studies can take years to complete and can be challenged in court, sometimes repeatedly. 

Defenders of how the law applies to new housing argue that CEQA lawsuits are, in fact, relatively rare. Critics counter that the mere threat of litigation is often enough to pare down or entirely dissuade potential development. 

As state lawmakers have come around to the idea that the state’s shortage of homes is the main driver of California’s punishingly high cost of living — and a major political vulnerability for Democrats — CEQA has been a frequent target. 

Until now, attacks on the law have generally come in the form of selective carve-outs, conditioned exemptions and narrow loopholes.

There’s the law that lets apartment developers ignore the act — but only so long as they set aside some of the units at a discount and pay their workers union-level wages.

A spate of bills from two years ago waived the act for most homes, but only if they are reserved exclusively for low-income tenants. 

There was the time a CEQA lawsuit held up a UC Berkeley student housing project over its presumptively noisy future tenants and the Legislature clapped back with a hyper-specific exemption.

Wicks’ new bill is different, in that the exemption is broad and comes with no strings attached. It would apply to any “infill” housing project, a general term for homes in already built-up urban areas, as opposed to fresh subdivisions on the suburban fringes.

That echoes a suggestion from the Little Hoover Commission, an independent state oversight agency, which made a series of “targeted reform” proposals to the environmental law last year.

“California will never achieve its housing goals as long as CEQA has the potential to turn housing development into something akin to urban warfare—contested block by block, building by building,” the report said. “The Commission recommends that the state exempt all infill housing from CEQA review— without additional conditions or qualifications.” 

Wicks bill defines “infill” broadly as any housing in an urban area that’s either been previously developed or surrounded by developed lots and doesn’t sit on a wetland, a farm field, a hazardous waste site or a conservation area. 

The site also has to be less than 20 acres to qualify for the exemption, but at roughly the size of 15 football fields, that’s not likely to be a limiting factor for most housing projects.

One possible rub: When a housing project varies from what is allowed under local zoning rules and requires special approval — a common requirement even for small housing projects — the exemption would not apply.

Enter another bill in the housing package, Senate Bill 607. Authored by San Francisco Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener, that bill would also exempt those rezonings from CEQA if the project is consistent with the city’s state-mandated housing plan.

“Put the two bills together and it’s really a dramatic raising of the ante in terms of what the pro-housing legislators are willing to put on the table and ask their colleagues to vote for,” said Elmendorf.

An environmental case against the Environmental Quality Act?

Environmental justice advocates regularly use the law to block or extract changes from developments that they argue will negatively affect low-income communities. Developers and lawyers regularly claim that organized labor groups defend the law to preserve it as a hard-nosed labor negotiation tool. Well-to-do homeowners who oppose local development projects for any reason may turn to CEQA to stall a project that otherwise passes muster on paper. 

All these groups have pull in the California capitol. That may be one reason why this kind of bill hasn’t been introduced in recent memory.

Wicks said she thinks California’s Legislature may be ready to take up the cause. The severity of the housing crisis, Democratic electoral losses over the issue of unaffordability, and the urgency to rebuild in the wake of the Los Angeles wildfires all have created a “moment” for this argument, she said.  

She, and other supporters of the bill, also insist that the cause of the environment is on their side too. 

“I don’t view building infill housing for our working class communities in need as on par with drilling more oil wells in our communities, yet CEQA is applied in the same way,” she said.

Researchers have found that packing more homes into already-dense urban areas is a good way to cut down carbon emissions. That’s because living closer to shops, schools, jobs and restaurants mean more walking and biking and less driving, and also because downtown apartments, which tend to be smaller, require less energy to heat and cool. 

Even if infill is, in general, more ecologically friendly than sprawl development, that doesn’t mean that a particular project can’t produce a wide array of environmental harms. In a letter to the Little Hoover Commission, the California Environmental Justice Alliance, a nonprofit member of CEQA Works, highlighted the 2007 Miraflores Senior Housing project in Richmond. 

A final environmental impact report for the project “added strategies to mitigate the poor air quality, water quality, and noise impacts” associated with the development and “included plans to preserve the historic character of buildings, added key sustainability strategies, and improved the process for site clean up.” That report was certified by the city in 2009.

Jennifer Hernandez, a land-use attorney and one of the state’s most prolific critics of CEQA, said local permit requirements and public nuisance rules should be up to the task of addressing those problems, no outside litigation required.

“The whole construct of using CEQA to allow the dissenting ‘no’ vote, a community member with resources, to hold up a project for five years is just ridiculous,” she said. “It’s like making the mere act of inhabiting a city for the people who live there a harm to the existing environment.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.