NEWSOM UNVEILS PLAN TO SPEED PROJECTS
Infrastructure proposal could expedite process for permits, approvals
Surrounded by hard hatwearing construction workers at a solar energy project in the Central Valley, Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a sweeping package of legislation and signed an executive order Friday to make it easier to build transportation, clean energy and water infrastructure across California. The governor said the proposal intends to cut through bureaucratic hurdles that have stymied grand public works projects and will help California capitalize on an infusion of money from the Biden administration to boost climate-friendly construction.
Newsom’s proposal aims to shorten the contracting process for bridge and water projects, limit timelines for environmental litigation and simplify permitting for complicated developments in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin River Delta and elsewhere.
Altogether, administration officials hope the package could speed up project construction by more than three years and reduce costs by hundreds of millions of dollars — efforts they say are necessary to achieve the state’s aggressive climate goals.
But it quickly garnered criticism both for going too far in weakening the state’s environmental protections and not far enough because it limits proposed reforms to select projects.
Newsom characterized the proposal as essential to restoring trust that government can improve people’s lives, especially under the threat of climate change.
“The question is, are we going to screw it up by being consumed by paralysis and process?” Newsom said. “We’re here to assert a different paradigm, to commit ourselves to results.”
Newsom’s effort is the latest foray in decades-long debates over quickening the state’s sluggish process for building major infrastructure. Major reforms
clined to comment on his case Friday.
In a separate case, Chin M. Wang, also known as Summer Wang, and a second defendant were charged with four counts related to the sale and importation of totoaba bladders. Wang and her co-defendant — a Mexico-based man who was not in custody as of Friday — allegedly sold 23 of the bladders to a law enforcement informant for $247,000.
Wang, charged by complaint, has pleaded not guilty. Her attorney did not respond Friday to a request for comment.
Illegal fishing of totoaba is closely connected with the fate of the vaquita porpoise, the smallest porpoise in the world. Only about a dozen of the animals are believed to remain in existence, though a two-week survey by the Mexican government and conservation groups is currently under way to obtain an exact count. The vaquita live only in a small area along the northern part of the Gulf of California, also known as the Sea of Cortez, which separates Baja California from the Mexican mainland.
The gill nets that fishermen set to catch totoaba, which can grow longer than 6 feet and weigh about 220 pounds, can easily snare and drown vaquitas, which typically grow to about 5 feet and up to 120 pounds.
Totoaba bladders don’t contain urine but fill with gas, helping them to control buoyancy. The sun-dried bladders, which are high in collagen, are believed to boost fertility and improve the skin, and are the key ingredient in a centuries-old Chinese soup recipe. A 2017 investigation by the Elephant Action League mapped how the bladders make their way from small Mexican fishing towns to wealthy Chinese buyers, with huge amounts of money being made along each link of the chain.
“A fisherman in San Felipe, Mexico, can earn more in one night catching a few totoabas than they may otherwise earn in a year,” the
group concluded.
Totoabas are protected under the Endangered Species Act, as well as an international trade pact that includes the U.S. and Mexico.
Federal prosecutions involving totoaba bladders appear to have been more common a decade ago but seemed to decline some as conservation efforts ramped up in the Gulf of California. As part of those efforts, the Mexican government enforced a strict ban on gill nets and compensated fishermen to not fish — but a new presidential administration reportedly ended those payments in 2019.
That same year, federal prosecutors in San Diego brought charges against two men involved in a scheme to smuggle nearly 8 pounds of bladders across the Calexico border. Both men have since pleaded guilty, including the lead defendant who did so this week.
Wu, the Chula Vista resident charged this month, is accused of buying and selling totoaba bladders on at least five occasions between February 2021 and March 2023. He’s also charged with
selling sea horses and sea cucumbers that were illegally imported from Mexico and purchasing a shell of the critically endangered hawksbill sea turtle.
During a detention hearing on Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Melanie Pierson said each of the transactions had been video or audio recorded. She said a search of Wu’s home turned up $400,000 worth of illegal wildlife and more than $600,000 cash, though Wu’s attorney contended the cash belonged to several different family members who lived on the property.
Wang, the lead defendant in the other recently filed case, allegedly told a confidential informant that she had a total of $2 million worth of totoaba bladders. Her co-defendant, Gerson Rene Pulido Paez, allegedly made the introduction between Wang and the informant. In September 2021, inside a van in Chula Vista, the informant allegedly paid Wang $247,000 for 23 bladders in a transaction that prosecutors said was audio and video recorded.