Yeah. I'd bet developers would happily pay 2-3x in fees if they didn't have to do environmental impact reviews (EIRs).
It's not that EIRs themselves are especially troublesome. But the reviews are the hook for litigation by NIMBYs, especially in California where the state-based environmental review law makes it incredibly easy for challengers to tie up a project in court for an eternity; even tiny developments. Exceedingly rare is the case where a legitimate environmental issue is at stake; and on the whole EIRs have had the effect of encouraging urban sprawl--there are fewer challenges to EIRs in less populated areas.
It's really difficult to keep investments lined-up for an indeterminate amount of time. Time and indeterminism is perhaps the most costly aspect.
And it's compounded by the fact that California doesn't provide development-as-of-right, which means zoning reviews and permitting can drag out for years as committees hem and haw, or allow NIMBYs to control the process. Many if not most cases in the state are likely unconstitutional as a violation of Due Process. But the Supreme Court hates taking those cases because it's a tricky area of the law. Part of the problem is that developers are repeat players in the game, which means they tend to not want to, literally, make a federal case out of any particular project because they know they'll be black-balled on their next project. So the really good cases that would make for good law never materialize.
It was maddening--nay, sickening--to see Governor Jerry Brown's development-as-of-right legislation fail in the legislature. Localities could still have had all the ridiculous zoning restrictions they wanted; it just would have required them to strictly apply their own rules, rather than making them up on-the-fly according to their and challengers' whims. Which is what Due Process technically requires, anyhow! And that legislation would have required 25% affordable units in a project, which means it wouldn't have applied to single-family units, nor effectively to most other projects except large inner city residential projects. Basically it would have had very limited effect. But localities across the state--rural and urban--went apoplectic at the mere hint of being subject to their very own rules.