[FreakyT]

You're getting downvoted, but it's true -- CEQA is a great example of how well-intentioned environmental legislation can be abused by basically anyone to stonewall any project for any reason.

A common-sense change might be requiring minimum quantities of local signatures to limit the potential impact of a small opposition.

[narrator]

Yeah CEQA is why the high speed rail project will never get built. It grants godlike powers to NIMBYs in California. Every single mile of the high speed rail project has the potential to get stuck in CEQA hell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Environmental_Quali...

"In one case, anti-abortion activists filed a CEQA lawsuit to try to block a new tenant (Planned Parenthood) from using an already constructed office building in South San Francisco. They cited the noise caused by their own protests as the environmental impact requiring mitigation. This lawsuit delayed the new tenancy by at least 18 months."

"Governor Jerry Brown, in an interview with UCLA's Blueprint magazine, commented on the use of CEQA for other than environmental reasons: "But it’s easier to build in Texas. It is. And maybe we could change that. But you know what? The trouble is the political climate, that's just kind of where we are. Very hard to — you can’t change CEQA [the California Environmental Quality Act]. BP: Why not? JB: The unions won’t let you because they use it as a hammer to get project labor agreements." "