California bullet train chief seeks environmental exemptions
The chief of the state bullet train authority said Tuesday that he hopes to obtain some type of relief from environmental laws that would eliminate a risk that the 130-mile initial construction project could be stopped by an injunction, a potentially growing prospect as agriculture interests in the Central Valley gear up for a legal fight.
At a state Senate hearing, Chairman Dan Richard also said the agency plans to spend the entire $6 billion of initial construction money within a 2017 deadline set by the federal government.
In the past, Richard has insisted the California High-Speed Rail Authority would not seek an outright exemption from state or federal environmental laws, including the California Environmental Quality Act. At the hearing, Richard said that if the project ends up in a lawsuit he would hope the matter would involve mitigations rather than an injunction.
In March, the rail authority and major environmental organizations held meetings to discuss some type of relief on certain environmental reviews for the project. At the time, Richard called it a "technical" matter. So far, the rail authority has been sued twice and lost on a review of a so-called programatic document in Northern California. If it has to redo the report, it could hold up construction.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bullet-hearing-20120516,0,3420535.story
= new reply since forum marked as read
and it looks like *maybe* what they're trying to do is make it so that the project can't be stopped by a lawsuit.
Were the project to be hit with an injunction, the suit could take years to work itself out, and I think the people who want the high-speed rail want to get it started under this administration so that federal funds will be available.
All the articles I read about it were really vague, though. 
In other cases, for mainstream unsustainable projects, we seem to look the other way.
Wind power, solar, high speed rail often face environmental hurdles that seem, to me, to be way overblown compared to other schemes that don't face the same scrutiny.
Hell, imagine if they were retroactive- we'd have to do away with Fresno altogether and most parts of Bakersfield!
