CEQA has a history of derailing California’s high-speed rail

In voters approved a billion bond to build a high-speed rail line that would connect San Francisco to Los Angeles in two hours and minutes Californians were informed they would be taking their first trips along the line starting in Total costs were estimated at billion Related Articles Santa Clara County offers million to repair dilapidated mental robustness homes First manufactured homes arrive at new Half Moon Bay farmworker housing project Billionaires and CEOs bet on San Francisco s cheap real estate Zillow sharpens battle lines in fight over private home listings Opinion Why do California apartments cost so much to build How quaint that seems now As of only part of the first segment a -mile stretch from Merced to Bakersfield has been built That section is now slated for completion between and and it alone is estimated to cost billion Completing the entire -mile project could cost billion according to the California High Speed Rail Authority s latest estimates What happened Growing labor and material costs are only partly to blame There s been another major obstacle the California Environmental Quality Act Critics of the law point out the irony that a train system intended to reduce carbon emissions and help the state meet its lofty atmosphere goals has been paralyzed time and time again by a law intended to protect the surroundings Passed in CEQA was meant to force masses agencies to consider how a proposed project might harm the ecosystem and explain how it would mitigate any such impacts But the law s scope has expanded over time Now nearly anyone with a lawyer can file a lawsuit claiming that the agency s environmental impact review hasn t been thorough enough forcing them back to the drawing board or in particular cases stopping a project in its tracks Dozens of groups from farmers in the Central Valley to wealthy enclaves on the Peninsula have sued the rail authority under CEQA To resolve these challenges the authority has had to change its course redo station designs and pay out expensive settlements Environmental defenders and special interest groups say CEQA cements protections for the circumstances and populace healthcare The changes the authority has made they argue will ultimately lead to a better high-speed rail But each lawsuit is costly not only in the legal fees spent by high-speed rail to defend itself but also the funds it expends to alter complex plans That takes time critical time during which labor and material costs rise further Consider for example all the CEQA challenges the rail authority faced after it circulated its final plan for the track from Bakersfield to Merced The City of Bakersfield unhappy with the authority s planned passage going through downtown sued under CEQA The rail authority agreed to consider a new journey as well as a new location for the Bakersfield station Three lawsuits from farmers in Madera and Merced counties resulted in the rail authority promising to consider alternative routes creating a million fund to buy agricultural conservation easements and coughing up million in legal fees Three other lawsuits came from Kern County Dignity Vitality which owns a hospital along the planned direction and First Free Will Baptist Church which runs a school next to the high-speed rail All reached settlements the church got the rail to pay for in renovations to help them mitigate noise during construction Dignity Robustness had the authority pay up a seven-figure settlement and change its direction revealed George Martin the company s attorney Coffee Brimhall a developer owned land in Bakersfield where it planned to build retail offices and homes It sued the authority in June under CEQA arguing that the railroad would cause severe noise vibration impacts on residents The rail authority settled agreeing to consider a journey that would avoid the property The City of Shafter a town of in rural Kern County sued To settle the rail authority agreed to put the railroad on its own elevated track so that it would not interrupt traffic when passing through town After suing under CEQA Kings County got the rail authority to pay a million settlement to cover the cost of moving a fire station displaced by the railroad The rail authority also paid out million to Corcoran a city of in Kings County to make up for aesthetic effects from the rail course It took years for the authority to resolve just those lawsuits The authority at last broke ground on the first segment in three years after it distributed the environmental impact statement Meanwhile Bay Area groups were waging their own war on the trail between San Francisco and San Jose In a group of wealthy cities along the Peninsula Atherton Menlo Park and Palo Alto banded together to challenge the authority under CEQA Their motivation Concern over noise generated by the train whipping through their cities at mph After multiple rounds of revision to its environmental document and discussions of a settlement the lawsuit advanced to the courts which upheld the authority s environmental review The rail authority had plans to build a maintenance facility in Brisbane and planned to use eminent domain to acquire acres of land owned by Universal Paragon Corp a San Francisco developer But UPC didn t want to sell those acres which it had envisioned as part of a -acre master-planned neighborhood there called Brisbane Baylands The project would bring much-needed housing to Brisbane and vastly expand its tax base Brisbane sued the rail authority It settled agreeing to shrink the footprint of its maintenance facility by nearly half The Southern California segment has also seen its own set of lawsuits The Hollywood Burbank Airport filed a CEQA suit in for example arguing that plans to build tracks and a station nearby would impact the airport s operations The authority settled that suit too agreeing to compensate the airport for in legal and technical expenses As of the rail authority had received complete environmental approval of the highway from Los Angeles to San Francisco Still it could be decades before it s ever built