#infrstructure

Excerpt from this story from the LA Times:

Surrounded by hard hat-wearing construction workers at a solar and energy storage 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, water and other 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.

The plan consists of 11 bills, and Newsom said he wants to fold the package into the 2023-24 state budget, which must pass both houses of the Legislature by June 15. Lawmakers are currently negotiating the final details of the fiscal blueprint with Newsom’s office.

At the center of Newsom’s plan is the California Environmental Quality Act — a polarizing 1970 law credited for helping preserve the state’s natural beauty but often criticized for miring needed housing, energy and transportation projects in litigation.

The proposal does not make major changes to the law, which requires public officials, agencies and developers to broadly consider and make public a project’s effects on the existing environment. Rather, it attempts to limit how long environmental lawsuits can drag out in court.

The proposal aims to prevent any lawsuit against certain water, transportation, clean energy, semiconductor and microelectronics projects from lasting longer than nine months.

Liberalisation: Ethiopia bars foreign telecom infrastructure firms

The Ethiopian government has suspended the entry of foreign telecom infrastructure companies to the country, The EastAfrican reported. The decision may not affect foreign telecom service providers and operators that have submitted expressions of interest in buying a stake in Ethio Telecom, it added. The decision came after the government reviewed the list of companies intent on buying a 40…