Quietly, CA legislators chip away at environmental integrity

With a pair of votes in the predawn hours, state legislators last week took historic steps to dismantle California's premier environmental protection act, making it easier than at any time in the past 40 years for big developers to ride roughshod over "the little guy." A majority of lawmakers had joined a bizarre alliance of big business, labor unions and one of the state's preeminent clean-air agencies to undermine California's landmark Environmental Quality Act. California's Environmental Quality Act, known by its acronym CEQA, has, ever since Gov. Ronald Reagan signed it into law, served as an impregnable bulwark against reckless development and rampant pollution.