California governor backs new pipeline to vastly increase state water supply

California has not built significant new water infrastructure since the 1970s, when CEQA was first adopted. Under CEQA, any stakeholder can use courts to hold up projects nearly indefinitely based on objections to the projects’ environmental impact reports. Due to the deteriorating condition of the state’s basic infrastructure as a result of CEQA, the governor and state legislature worked together to pass SB 179 this year, which allows the governor to require that court rulings on environmental impact reports filed by the government for infrastructure projects certified as priorities by the governor be issued within 270 days.