Last week, when California declared a state of emergency due to drought, a small but important section of the declaration temporarily suspended the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in order to "make water immediately available."
CEQA is a 1970s statute that requires environmental analyses for all major projects and often creates project delays due to studies of and discussions over the environmental impact of a project. The declaration suspends this "on the basis that strict compliance … will prevent, hinder or delay the mitigation of the effects of the emergency," for the purpose of carrying out another part of the declaration to "streamline water transfers and exchanges between water users" in two massive state water systems.
At the same time, California is in the planning process of a $25 billion project to overhaul the state's water system, including the controversial construction of two enormous tunnels to divert water from the Sacramento River and carry it under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to southbound pumps and farms.
Gov. Jerry Brown last week suggested the state will press the federal government to accelerate environmental reviews of the project, according to the Sacramento Bee. Depending how long CEQA is suspended, the project could be pushed through the reviews without the standard oversight.
The people who have to pay for environmental regulations generally are not fans of them; they create extra expenses and extra work, and some argue that they give too much power to those enforcing them. But they are there for a reason: Despite our best intentions, it's not always clear how much harm we might be doing to natural habitats and watersheds while building new infrastructure or what the future implications of new development might be. Let's hope California is able to find a middle ground by making water available to citizens and industry while ensuring the natural world is not harmed in the process.
