A Toxic Facility in Your Neighborhood? It Could Happen with Changes to State Law

Apr 2, 2026

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.

Celebration Gratitude from Sustainable Solano

Sep 30, 2024

By Sustainable Solano

Attendees could view a timeline of SuSol’s 25-year history (Photo credit (all): Luke George)

We would like to extend a warm thank you to everyone who attended our 25th Anniversary celebration! Your presence truly made the evening special, and it was wonderful to see so many familiar faces and meet new friends who share our passion for the mission of our organization.

A special thank you to Assemblymember Lori Wilson, and the representatives for Congressmen Mike Thompson and John Garamendi for attending our event. We are grateful for the state Legislature recognition, Congressional commendation, and recognition from Wanda Williams with the Board of Supervisors. Your support means the world to us and helps us continue our work!

Assemblymember Lori Wilson recognizes SuSol / Attendees enjoy a farm-to-table dinner from Chef Lindsey Chelini

It was fantastic to witness everyone coming together, sharing their insights, and contributing to our vision board. Your ideas and perspectives are invaluable as we shape the future of our programs. Look for a blog in November where we will share some of the insights we received from attendees, how they intersect with our current work and where they guide us to look in our future work.

We’d love for you to stay involved! Whether it’s attending future events or making a donation to keep this work going, your support is crucial in helping us continue our mission. Every little bit counts and makes a difference.

SuSol staff and a Youth Leadership Council alum discuss programs with attendees

Thank you once again for being part of our journey. We’re excited to move forward together, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds!

Sustainable Solano’s Position on California Forever

May 29, 2024

By Sustainable Solano

Sustainable Solano has remained publicly silent until now about California Forever, both as a proposal and a ballot item. But we have spent that time in active discussions as a team and board to weigh the California Forever proposal and the process taken to get it to this point and test it for alignment with Sustainable Solano’s mission and objective to nurture initiatives for the good of the whole. We work to help bring our communities together in a way that connects people with each other, the Earth and something larger than themselves, and we must base our responses upon those values.

We have determined the motives behind California Forever do not align with our values as an organization, even if some parts of the proposed community do reflect measures we would like to see for Solano County’s existing cities.

Sustainable Solano’s work around community resilience, sustainable landscapes and local food all starts at a singular nexus — the interest in giving a voice to the community and building community trust toward the good of the whole. We can say without a doubt that the approach taken to acquire property and establish California Forever does not align with that core value for our organization. Solano County residents are frustrated due to the lack of transparency and absence of trust around the intentions of those behind California Forever. As an organization that is exploring what it means for us to democratically govern ourselves in an open manner, we ask no less of those who are seeking to change the county where we ground our work.

Even in the structure of its proposed community, California Forever does not align with our values. The decision for this community to remain unincorporated will result in residents being denied a locally elected municipal government. The new city will not have a mayor or city council, with many governmental functions relegated to nonprofits established by California Forever, or to the County Board of Supervisors. Consequently, the voices of residents may go unheard, and their ability to participate meaningfully in shaping the future of their community can be hindered. Without a local government, residents are often deprived of the essential mechanisms for representation, decision-making, and resource allocation that are fundamental to democratic governance. Issues such as environmental protection, infrastructure development, and public services become challenging to address without a locally elected centralized authority to coordinate efforts and advocate for community needs.

In the absence of a community-elected municipal government, this unincorporated city may face significant obstacles in achieving the democratic ideals of equitable representation and collective decision-making.

There are other areas where California Forever does not properly align with Sustainable Solano’s mission and values. We promote sustainable land use and the protection of ag land, which this proposal would directly affect as well as removing range land and endangering critically important habitat. We work with communities to lift up residents’ voices around environmental degradation and injustice, and see where creation of a large new city in the county would increase the negative effects on surrounding communities commensurate with increased traffic and strains on water supplies.

California Forever paints a picture of a community that would be built for walkability with good jobs and affordable housing. We appreciate and understand the vital importance of these features of a sustainable city, and would like to see more in our existing cities — cities where people could easily walk, bike or take local transit to jobs that pay a livable wage, have access to grocery stores with healthy seasonal food, can gather in public spaces with urban greening, and use renewable, local energy. We would like to encourage building this vision within our existing cities, and invite you to think about how such changes could be brought to where you live. These strategies would strengthen Solano County and our local communities, but for California Forever they remain only ideas at this point, and there are far too many conflicts with our values for us to support the California Forever proposal as a whole.

Help us Shape Our New Doing Good Business Awards Program!

Jan 26, 2024

By Sustainable Solano

Image source: PermaculturePrinciples.com

We know that there are Solano County-based businesses that make a difference in their communities, and this year, Sustainable Solano plans to launch an awards program to recognize those businesses that stand out in their efforts to support people and planet.

And we’d like your help!

The Inspiration

Sustainable Solano has spent 25 years working to strengthen our communities through urban agriculture and community gardens, supporting the local food system, building community conversations and action around environmental and climate resilience, and youth engagement and empowerment.

Our work is informed by the practice of permaculture, which at its base level applies to creating environments that support a healthy, thriving ecosystem. This can apply to landscapes, but also to people, communities and businesses.

We are inspired to recognize businesses that, in their own ways, embrace the three ethics of permaculture: Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share.

For businesses, we see these ethics materializing in different ways:

  • Earth Care — A dedication to authentic sustainability practices that comes from direct intent, rather than greenwashing or government mandate
  • People Care — A dedication to outstanding treatment of employees, both in policy and in action.
  • Fair Share — A dedication to giving back to employees or the community.

How You Can Help

We want an advisory committee that will help to guide what this program looks like in our community. We want input from business leaders on how to define meaningful efforts in these three areas, and how to judge which nominees are head and shoulders above the rest. Ultimately, an advisory board will review and select the recipients. 

Help us to envision and shape a program that recognizes, celebrates and supports Solano County businesses that are striving to do good!

Want to help? Contact us at info@sustainablesolano.org. We will start the planning process in early March.

Winter at the Pace of Nature

Dec 13, 2023

By Jazzmin Ballou, Solano Gardens Program Manager

Every winter I find myself overwhelmed with the need for rest. This comes regardless of how busy I have been, how much sleep I have, or what my calendar looks like for the next week. It shows up as an inherent, unignorable need to slow down and retreat. When I process this in the context of the human world, I feel kind of crazy. Everyone else is continuing on as normal, working and attending social gatherings … and some people are doing even more of those things considering the holidays are upon us! It all seems so surreal to me: the way the human world never seems to slow down, often appearing to just move faster and faster. And then I look to nature. Nature, with her ability to tune in directly to her needs and move at a pace that serves all of her inhabitants. When did we lose touch with this process?

In the winter when I tune in to the pace of nature I find myself face-to-face with myself in all of my slowness. The fog soon clears and I realize my body as a member of nature is asking to move at the pace that the rest of the natural world is moving at. This need for rest is not necessarily because my body is tired from my life, but because my body is taking the hints from the natural world that this time of the year, winter, is intended for slowing down, hibernation, and stasis. I’m reminded of a quote from the book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May, who writes “In winter, I want concepts to chew over in a pool of lamplight — slow, spiritual reading, a reinforcement of the soul. Winter is a time for libraries, the muffled quiet of bookstacks and the scent of old pages and dust. In winter, I can spend hours in silent pursuit of a half-understood concept or a detail of history. There is nowhere else to be, after all.”

As we enter into the holiday season, a time that for so many of us signals travel to see loved ones, time off of work and school, and cozy time spent indoors, I wish you rest. Rest that is so sacred and full of ease, it mimics the process of the leaves surrendering to the wind, carrying them from their host tree to be composted back into the Earth. Rest that is so intentional it allows space for your own internal composting process, preparing you for the rebirth of spring.

The Vision for a SuSol Education Center

Oct 26, 2023

By Sustainable Solano

Sustainable Solano has had a vision for a while now: To have an office space that serves as a place of education around the many things we teach about, such as sustainable landscaping, water capture and reuse; cooking with seasonal, sustainable local food; and building community resilience.

We have been lucky to spend the past few years in our office at the Global Center for Success on Mare Island. This office space puts us near nonprofit partner organizations and the beauty of the Vallejo People’s Garden and the Pollinator Pathway garden we installed with them and Solano RCD in front of the building. But as our team has grown in number, we find there are limitations in a one-room office, both for our team members’ needs as well as ways we would like to interact with all of you in the community.

And so we are returning to that original vision.

We would love to find a safe and beautiful place where we can create and exhibit the solutions we’ve been teaching and demonstrating for nearly 25 years. These may include a permaculture garden or farm, sustainable water techniques, solar energy and maybe even chickens. There could be a commercial kitchen space for teaching classes and preparing food (or the potential to add such a space). We also need a shared workspace and a place to gather around a table for large team or partner meetings, and an area to house tools and equipment, promotional materials and office files. The property would need to be zoned to allow for office space and would need to be able to support visitors coming to the site for meetings, classes and demonstrations.

We’ve seen creative and innovative ways individuals, organizations and cities have supported such projects. In Berkeley, the Ecology Center runs EcoHouse, which was founded in 1999 when a group of individuals “collectively purchased and transformed a small, dilapidated North Berkeley home into a demonstration house and garden.” In American Canyon, the city offered up an old public works yard to be transformed into the Napa River Ecology Center in partnership with the American Canyon Community Parks Foundation. Santa Cruz Permaculture now stewards a 26-acre farm under a 30-year lease as part of its operations.

We’d love to hear your ideas and suggestions for supporting this vision! Reach out to us at info@sustainablesolano.org

Even with this active vision for an education center, Sustainable Solano is committed to continuing hands-on sustainable landscaping and resilience-building workshops, cooking classes, and internships within Solano communities, because these are the very heart of our work. Our goal is to bring neighbors together in ways that help them connect with each other, the Earth, and themselves.