This commentary was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

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

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

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

Since 1970, CEQA has required public disclosure of any environmental harms a proposed project could cause and the adoption of mitigating measures to reduce that harm before public agencies can approve or fund a project.

But within SB 131, CEQA exemptions could fast-track some of the most polluting projects in the state and lead to dangerous facilities popping up, with no environmental review or public input. These exemptions allow for a range of industrial facilities, including strip mining, refineries and chemical manufacturing to locate virtually next door to homes and schools, with dramatically scaled back environmental protections and little public notice.

Law Attacks Lower-Income Communities of Color

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

Pixley, our community, has fewer than 5,000 people and is severely disadvantaged. We’re already facing disproportionate impact from various pollution sources, including emissions from transportation, agricultural operations, the production of factory farm gas and poor water quality.

In 2024, Tulare County approved an experimental hydrogen project in our community, with no prior environmental review, despite its 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 impacts would be on our already overburdened town.

Without the protections of CEQA, we would have another hazardous facility surrounding our small town. SB 131 undoes decades of environmental protections in the name of expediting industrial development, at tremendous cost to public health and the environment. Pollution effects are already costing Californians billions of dollars a year in health care and cleanup costs, with the highest burdens on low-income communities of color.

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

Little Oversight of Massive Industrial Projects

It is abhorrent that environmental justice communities now won’t even get the bare minimum — transparency and a review of environmental harms — from massive industrial projects. Instead of having commonsense environmental review at the start of a project, developers will build resource-intensive, polluting projects with minimal oversight or health protections.

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

Since then the Assembly and the Senate have both introduced bills nodding to their intention to correct the most egregious components of SB 131. This is a key moment for legislators to ensure that protections for public health, safety and the environment remain intact for communities like ours throughout California.

We expect more from our legislative leaders. They shouldn’t waste this opportunity to right the wrongs of last-minute decision-making, which would have negative consequences on California communities for decades to come if allowed to stand.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

About the Authors

Beverly Whitfield is a member of Pixley Residents for Environmental Justice and has lived in Pixley for more than 50 years. Christina Velazquez also is a member of Pixley Residents for Environmental Justice and has lived in Pixley for more than 50 years.