After a Yolo County court denied a petition which sought to prevent the Sites Reservoir project from proceeding, California Gov. Gavin Newsom celebrated the news June 4.
According to the project plan, the Sites Reservoir will be constructed by diverting water from the Sacramento River to inundate about 13,200 acres in Glenn and Colusa counties—northwest of Sacramento—using 11 dams, a bridge, two regulating reservoirs to manage water levels, and a new conveyance system to deliver water to nearby communities.
The reservoir will capture water during rainy seasons—storing up to 1.5 million acre-feet of water, enough to supply about 3 million households for one year—and make it available later in the year when water is most in need.
With an estimated cost of $4 billion, the project has already received almost $47 million from the state and is eligible for about $875 million from Proposition 1—passed by voters in 2014 and also known as the Water Quality, Supply, and Infrastructure Improvement Act.
Critics challenged the project in court alleging that salmon could be negatively impacted by the water diversion and cited other environmental concerns. The groups in opposition—including Friends of the River, Center for Biological Diversity, and the California Sportfishing Alliance, among others—argued that the environmental reviews underestimated the impacts of the project.
SB 149 allows the governor to streamline the environmental review process mandated by the California Environmental Quality Act, better known as CEQA, for certain infrastructure projects.
The law requires courts to rule on legal challenges within 270 days, thus saving “months or even years of litigation delays,” according to the governor’s press release.
Long a priority for the governor, the reservoir project will be the largest constructed in about 50 years and will now come to fruition sooner because of the streamlining efforts, he said.
“We’re cutting red tape to build more—faster,” Mr. Newsom said in a press release when he expedited the Sites Reservoir project last year. “These are projects that will address our state’s biggest challenges faster, and the Sites Reservoir is fully representative of that goal—making sure Californians have access to clean drinking water and making sure we’re more resilient against future droughts.”
Streamlining will allow state agencies to improve project delivery timelines and “maximize taxpayer dollars” while ensuring that environmental reviews are conducted and communities are engaged with the process, the press release said.
CEQA is blamed for holding up development by several industries in the state, including housing and commercial construction, with multiple bills introduced in recent years to modify the environmental review process to facilitate approval.
Currently, the process entails multiple studies to evaluate environmental effects of projects, with environmental impact reviews regularly challenged by opposing groups that cause lengthy and costly delays.
One group in favor of the law passed last year expediting projects said it was needed because lengthy court battles over environmental reviews create significant uncertainty that jeopardizes investment and development opportunities.
“SB 149 will allow certain clean energy and water projects to be certified for expedited judicial review if a project is challenged,” the California Municipal Utilities Association said in legislative analyses. “This back-end process improvement provides important certainty to project developers that litigation will be resolved in a timely manner and preserves the process of preparing an [environmental impact review].”
The governor believes the bills he signed in recent years to expedite processes will allow California to take advantage of $180 billion in state, local, and federal infrastructure funds over the next decade, thus creating approximately 400,000 “good-paying jobs,” according to his recent press release.
