Small CA communities stand up to polluting producers

By Beverly Whitfield and Christina Velasquez, especially for CalMatters

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Guest Comment written by

Hasty decisions and backroom deals led to one of the worst environmental rollbacks in recent California history during the last legislative session.

Senate Bill 131which the Legislature passed and the governor signed in June contains a number of exemptions from California Environmental Quality Act or CEQAinclusive one for advanced manufacturing.

This exemption makes jobs more dangerous, increases the risk of toxic pollutants in already polluted neighborhoods, and prevents workers, communities, and governments from holding corporations accountable for protecting community benefits, good jobs, and safe places to live.

Since 1970 CEQA requires public disclosure any environmental harm that the proposed project may cause and the adoption of mitigation measures to reduce that harm before public agencies can approve or finance a project.

But under SB 131, CEQA exceptions could fast-track some of the state’s most polluting projects and lead to unsafe facilities without environmental review or public input. These exemptions allow a number of industrial facilities, including ore mines, refineries and chemical production to locate almost next door to homes and schoolswith drastically reduced environmental protection and little public attention.

This law will not harm all California communities equally. It will be an attack on lower-income communities of color who consistently receive harmful industrial projects.

Pixley, our community, has less than 5,000 people and is very disadvantaged. We are now standing disproportionate impact from different sources of pollutionincluding emissions from transport, agricultural activities, production of factory farm gas and poor water quality.

In 2024, Tulare County approved an experimental hydrogen project in our community, without prior environmental review, despite stated plans to produce and store large quantities of hazardous and explosive materials.

We and a group of our neighbors challenged the county’s approval of the project and the developers were instructed to do an environmental review to determine what the impact would be on our already congested city.

Without CEQA’s protection, we would have another dangerous facility around our small town. SB 131 undoes decades of environmental protections in the name of accelerating industrial development, at huge costs to public health and the environment. The effects of pollution are already costing Californians billions of dollars a year in healthcare and cleanup costs, with the greatest burden on low-income communities of color.

Eliminating or severely limiting CEQA review deprives communities like ours of opportunities to challenge polluting projects proposed for our neighborhoods. Without an environmental review, how can the developer ensure that safeguards are in place to protect the community from impacts?

It is disgusting that environmental justice communities will now not get even the bare minimum—transparency and review of environmental damage—from massive industrial projects. Instead of having a reasonable environmental review at the start of a project, developers will build resource-intensive, polluting projects with minimal oversight or health protection.

Governor Gavin Newsom and California lawmakers traded the health and well-being of their constituents to score points with polluting industries.

Since then the assembly and the senate both introduced bills nodding to their intent to fix the most egregious components of SB 131. This is a key moment for lawmakers to ensure that public health, safety and environmental protections remain intact for communities like ours across California.

We expect more from our legislative leaders. They must not lose this opportunity to correct the mistakes of last-minute decision-making that would have negative consequences for California communities for decades to come, if left in place.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.