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Key enviro law suspended in California under drought emergency
http://grist.org/news/key-enviro-law-suspended-in-california-under-drought-emergency/
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When California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) declared a drought emergency last week, his administration slipped a bit of legalese into the declaration that has some environmentalists worried.
It states that the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) will not apply to efforts by state agencies to “make water immediately available.”
CEQA, a landmark 1970s environmental statute, requires environmental analyses for major projects, which leads to delays as the studies are conducted and fought over, and as proposals for reducing environmental harm are debated. Brown, who hates the law, once remarked, “I‘ve never seen a CEQA exemption that I don’t like.”
The drought declaration says the limited suspension of CEQA will help “streamline water transfers and exchanges between water users” and help the state change limits on how much water can be diverted from reservoirs and from the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta.