HB1247 Summary

• Exempts affordable housing and qualifying housing development projects from Hawaii Environmental Policy Act (HEPA) requirements if they comply with existing zoning, general plans, and do not require variances for environmentally sensitive areas.

• Establishes statutory definitions of "program" and "project" to narrow court interpretations requiring developers to analyze tangentially related projects; clarifies that shared infrastructure or similar uses do not create presumption of a single program.

• Amends HEPA's applicability section to specify when multiple actions must be evaluated together, limiting project segmentation analysis to actions that are dependent phases or critical precedents to each other.

• Requires project opponents who provided written comments during environmental review to exhaust administrative remedies before filing lawsuits, and limits contested issues to those identified by the accepting authority or raised in written comments.

• Applies retroactively to projects that received environmental assessment or impact statement approval on or after August 9, 2019.