Opinion: State Legislature must close loopholes to protect Bay Area’s air and water

More than 20,000 West Oakland residents were exposed to potential air hazards when Radius Recycling caught fire in March, highlighting a toxics pollution loophole in California's budget trailer bill that exempts dangerous industrial projects from CEQA review. Senate Bill 954, awaiting state Assembly approval, would tighten the definition of advanced manufacturing to require stringent environmental review for high-risk projects, supported by conservation groups, doctors, scientists, and labor groups.

Getting your Trinity Audio //trinityaudio.ai player ready...More than 20,000 West Oakland residents were once again forced to wonder what was in the air they were breathing when Radius Recycling caught fire in March, and not for the first time. The facility has a documented history of fires and environmental violations, yet lawmakers have made it easier to fast-track dangerous facilities. If that same plant were proposed in any California community located in an industrial zone today, it could be exempt from thorough review. The same goes for dozens of other potentially risky, heavy industrial projects: strip mining, fertilizer production, lithium battery cell manufacturing, carbon black production, peptide pharmaceutical manufacturing and many others. All because of a toxics pollution loophole that the Legislature jammed through in a budget “trailer” bill last year. That law established a multitude of dangerous projects that could be exempted from the California Environmental Quality Act CEQA , the state’s gold-standard environmental law that requires thorough analysis of project impacts and a transparent public process to assess those impacts. Dangerous projects could be built without transparency, without giving communities a real say, and without mitigation to protect the health of the public and critical natural resources, like San Francisco Bay. Regrettably, the new law defines these exemptions so broadly that almost any industrial use qualifies. To protect Californians’ health, safety, and environment, that definition must be tightened. A proposal now awaiting state Assembly approval — Senate Bill 954— would create guardrails to ensure that high-risk projects will be submitted for stringent environmental review. Among other requirements, SB 954 would limit CEQA exemptions for manufacturing projects to those that meet certain air pollution thresholds, are located in industrial zones that are set back from disadvantaged communities and are certified by the governor as advanced manufacturing leaders. That would conform with common-sense views of “advanced manufacturing” that most Californians expressed in a recent poll – robotics and high technology. SB 954 would ensure that public agencies continue to disclose and work to reduce harms to public health and the environment when they review industrial projects that use and potentially release toxic chemicals, particularly those associated with cancer and birth-defects. Our state has thousands of sites already polluted with toxic chemicals and other pollutants, and those projects affect air quality, safe drinking water and community health for millions of Californians. Prevention is the most cost-effective way to prevent these problems and CEQA is key to prevention. Indeed, CEQA’s greatest value is in addressing projects that pose the most serious risks to public health. Naturally, every major conservation organization in the state, doctors, scientists and labor groups in the East Bay and across California support closing this loophole. California communities must not be threatened by the unintended consequences of a bill hastily jammed through the Legislature last year. Surely, lawmakers who voted for it didn’t intend to create a fast track for public health hazards. Indeed, the Legislature recognized this problem a year ago and committed to fixing it. Now is the time to follow through on that commitment and pass SB 954. Shannon Olivieri is chief strategy officer at California Environmental Voters, and Jennifer Clary is California director of Clean Water Action.