By Bonnie Hamilton, M.D.
Bonnie Hamilton is a SuSol board member, a pediatrician, member of Climate Health Now and Physicians for Social Responsibility, and facilitates a Solano Climate Policy Action Team through the Bay Area Chapter of the Climate Reality Project. She will speak about the changes to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in an online community conversation 5:30 pm April 22. Register here.
Imagine waking up to find a manufacturing facility being built in your community, one that may release arsenic, lead, PFAS, hexavalent chromium, and other toxic chemicals into your air and water. If you live near industrial-zoned land anywhere in California, this can now happen without your receiving notice of the project’s construction or its associated health risks.
That’s because last year the California State Legislature passed Senate Bill 131, which was signed into law by the governor. SB 131 was introduced and passed in conjunction with AB 130, a bill that was intended to make building affordable housing faster and easier. AB 130 exempts housing projects that already fit into a city’s housing plan from environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) — California’s foundational environmental law.
SB 131, however, goes much further, allowing projects to move forward without environmental review in a number of circumstances, including exempting nearly every category of industrial manufacturing from review.
For more than 50 years, CEQA has been California’s strongest environmental justice and conservation law. CEQA required that developers disclose and mitigate public health and environmental impacts of proposed projects such as new factories, freeways, and refineries. CEQA has given residents a voice in land use decisions, empowering local communities, most notably communities that are marginalized. While SB 131 helps rectify delays in the creation of housing, which CEQA has been criticized for, its final form had significant unintended consequences of exempting “advanced manufacturing” from CEQA.
Until last year, CEQA required public agencies to review and publicly disclose the environmental and public health damage a proposed manufacturing facility may cause. The law also required public agencies to adopt feasible ways to prevent harm, and — unique among California’s laws — required disclosure and reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Now, if a project qualifies for this new “advanced manufacturing” exemption, none of these protections apply.
The “advanced” label does not mean these industrial projects are clean. This exemption covers more than 75 categories of heavy industry, including strip mining, pesticide manufacturing, waste incineration, plastic and metal fabrication, defense and aerospace manufacturing, and many others. Pollution from these facilities can cause cancer and birth defects, aggravate other health problems like asthma, and can travel miles through the air or groundwater, contaminating communities for generations. The exemption can be used even by facilities that are located near homes, schools and daycare centers.
The exemption is also a major threat to our open space lands. This raises particular concern in Solano County, where the county’s open space protection through the Orderly Growth Initiative is set to expire in 2028 and will need to be renewed as part of the county’s General Plan update.
This could have a direct impact on California Forever’s proposed project in eastern Solano, which would sit within the sensitive Bay-Delta watershed, adjacent to the Suisun Marsh, and could significantly impact surrounding ecosystems and strain local resources. Projects on private land can qualify for this exemption and threaten habitat and endangered species without CEQA review. There is a real risk that the developers could claim this exemption applies to substantial portions of the massive project.
State Sen. Catherine Blakespear has authored Senate Bill 954, which would restore key protections and residents’ right to know about the risks industrial projects could pose to their families, communities, and the environment. Community members interested in seeing CEQA protections restored are encouraged to attend the community conversation, learn more and reach out to their legislators.
Resources
Register for the online community conversation on CEQA and current legislation from 5:30-6:30 pm April 22.
For more information on CEQA, visit CEQAWorks.org
Read the text of SB 131 and SB 954
Find your legislator here.
