California voters will face a number of high-stakes races this November, including choosing a governor and helping decide control of Congress. They are also heading toward a major showdown over one of the state’s most powerful and controversial environmental laws.

The California Chamber of Commerce has collected more than 945,000 signatures — nearly twice the 546,651 required — to qualify a measure on the November statewide ballot to overhaul the California Environmental Quality Act, commonly known as CEQA. On Monday it will begin turning them in to elections officials.

The changes, if approved by a majority of voters, will help lower housing, energy and water costs, supporters say, by cutting burdensome regulations and making it easier to build everything from homes to reservoirs to solar farms. Environmental groups call the measure a giveaway to developers and are lining up to fight it.

The contest is expected to be the first clear indication in years about whether Californians are willing to rewrite environmental regulations, which they have traditionally supported, as concerns about housing prices, utility bills and other costs have soared to the top of polls.

“These reforms are long overdue,” said John Myers, spokesman for the Chamber of Commerce. “We are living through a severe affordability crisis in California. We are driving people and businesses away. When it takes so long to build anything of real public value, it increases costs.”

The “Building an Affordable California Act” would set a 365-day limit on environmental reviews for a wide range of projects, including new water supplies, desalination plants, forest thinning to reduce wildfire risk, apartments, housing subdivisions, senior housing, student housing, roads, bridges, public transit, hospitals, medical centers, broadband internet, solar farms, wind farms and battery storage facilities.

It would also require courts to rule on CEQA challenges to projects within 270 days.

Environmentalists say the ballot measure goes too far.

“We strongly oppose it,” said Miguel Miguel, director of Sierra Club California. “We know that what they are really trying to do is eliminate a lot of the environmental safeguards that have existed for a long time.”

Miguel said that imposing such deadlines makes it harder for the public to challenge developments that can bring pollution into neighborhoods, particularly in low-income areas.

“People have to read long technical documents to get a better understanding of whether a project is right or wrong for their community,” he said. “It takes time for us to do discovery and have conversations with neighbors. Our input needs to be valued. Are developers trying to make it efficient or cut out the true voices of people who have concerns?”

Most experts agree that the measure would mark a major shift.

“It’s a pretty sweeping change to environmental law and regulatory law in California,” said Eric Biber, an environmental law professor at UC Berkeley. “It is unclear how broadly it will apply. There’s a provision in there, for example, that says anything that reduces wildfire risk is covered by this initiative. That could be cutting trees or prescribed burns. But it says anything. If you pave over forests, that reduces wildfire risks. Is that what they mean?”

The ballot measure has been endorsed by business groups, including the Bay Area Council and California Business Roundtable; clean energy organizations, including the California Wind Energy Association and Large-Scale Solar Association; and several social justice groups such as the California-Hawaii NAACP and the California League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).

An organized campaign has not yet been formed to oppose it, although one is expected.

CEQA (pronounced “see-quah”) has been one of the most influential environmental laws in California for half a century. Former Gov. Ronald Reagan signed it in 1970.

Simply put, the law requires state and local agencies to study the effects significant new projects will have on wildlife, noise, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, traffic and other factors. The studies create an environmental impact report, and developers must offset or reduce impacts.

Over time, opponents to development have increasingly filed CEQA lawsuits to block and delay a wide variety of projects, often having little to do with environmental issues. Unions have threatened to sue to force solar power developers to use union labor. Neighbors in Berkeley delayed construction of a new UC dormitory for three years, claiming the students would create noise pollution. Bike lanes in Oakland, San Diego and Los Angeles have faced lawsuits. Neighbors sued to block the construction of a food pantry in Alameda two years ago, saying it was on a “historic parking lot.” In San Jose in 2012, the owner of a gas station sued under CEQA when a competing gas station across the street attempted to add four new pumps, delaying the project for three years and costing its owner thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Critics, including Newsom and former Gov. Jerry Brown, have said CEQA has contributed to California’s housing shortage and high prices.

Last July, Newsom signed bills from Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, and Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, to waive or streamline CEQA to build housing in already developed urban areas, and for other projects including farmworker housing, daycare centers, food banks and plants to build semiconductors, biotechnology and nanotechnology on land zoned for industrial uses.

“We needed to go bold and big on this holy grail reform,” Newsom said.

Key players like Newsom and major labor unions have not yet taken a position on the ballot measure.

Wicks has endorsed it.

“We have to build for the modern era, and I think we can do so in a way that still respects our environmental values,” she said at the Capitol Weekly Housing Conference in Sacramento on Feb. 24

Wicks cited a solar company that testified in a Sacramento hearing last year that it spent 12 years, filled out 11,000 pages of environmental studies and was required to obtain 72 permits from 28 agencies to get approval for one high-voltage electric transmission line.

“We say we have these climate goals and yet we make it almost impossible to reach them,” Wicks said. “As Democrats, we have to have an honest conversation about what we’re doing here and where our values are. And for me, as a Democrat, government has to deliver results.”

Supporters are expected to spend tens of millions of dollars on the race. Larry Gerston, a professor emeritus of political science at San Jose State University, said that how many other measures qualify for the ballot and who endorses it will be key.

“Californians are very environmentally inclined,” Gerston said. “We’ve seen it again and again. They have accepted higher costs in some cases to improve air quality and support other environmental rules. But it could be that people say, ‘We have to reduce costs in California, and this is one way to do it.’ I don’t know how it will go. There’s a lot at stake here.”