Editor’s Note: Following publication of this column, CA State Senators voted 22-10 to approve SB954.
After watching nearly 50,000 residents evacuate because of a previously unknown chemical plant in the midst of Garden Grove this holiday weekend, the statewide debate that has been raging in recent years over exempting industrial businesses from major environmental regulations is expected to play out today in the state senate during floor votes starting this afternoon.
State Senator Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat who represents Northern San Diego and South Orange County in the state legislature, is sponsoring a bill dubbed SB954 that seeks to reverse exemptions from the California Environmental Quality Act granted last year for some industrial businesses.
Today, that bill could be voted on by her colleagues.
“It starts the conversation that should have happened last year with stakeholders and legislators on where to draw the line with advanced manufacturing,” said Blakespear during an April debate in the Senate Standing Committee on Environmental Quality.
“Specifically, SB 954 clarifies the intent of the legislature to refine what advanced manufacturing should be granted a CEQA exemption, and it adds important environmental guardrails, including that advanced manufacturing within a thousand feet of a disadvantaged community must go through CEQA,” Blakespear said.
“I plan to bring up Garden Grove on the floor of the Senate when I bring up the bill,” Blakespear said in an interview today just before the senate session started. “It’s an example of what can go wrong. We want to make sure our communities are protected,” she added.
At the same time, the state’s Republican caucus is against adopting the bill, arguing that it’s a job killer and creates a complex environment where the sitting governor will be able to grant exemptions, an ability that has the potential to fuel cronyism and pay-to-play schemes.
“Those who didn’t get what they wanted then, along with those who don’t want any CEQA exemptions period, are behind this,” said Senator Suzette Martinez Valladares (R-Santa Clarita) – a vice chair for the environmental quality committee in a press release sent out today by the caucus.
“Last year’s reform was clearly intended to expedite, to develop and grow industry and the jobs that come with it,” she continued. “Under SB 954, Californians will be the losers because there will be fewer job-creating projects and the ‘winning’ ones will be larded up with costly concessions to powerful special interests.”
Yet many environmental advocates – especially those confronting public health issues in urban communities across the state – warn that the mass evacuation that just happened in Garden Grove should remind people about the risks of mixing industrial uses in neighborhoods, an issue many communities are confronting in real time.
“We need people to not forget,” said Deja MCcauley, a land use and health program manager for Physicians for Social Responsibility, LA, who points to pollution issues in places like nearby Vernon with battery manufacturing as a reminder that public health shouldn’t have to be risked for economic development.
The challenge facing state leaders, she notes, is “how can we build safely and in a way that works for people that need jobs and industries but also protects people that live close to those industries.”
Last year, legislators took up SB 131, which created sweeping CEQA exemptions – including ones for advanced manufacturing in places like Garden Grove.
Supporters of trimming back those exemptions argue that restoring the most essential safeguards removed by SB 131 is key, especially requiring the environmental review and public disclosure before an industrial facility goes up near neighborhoods and schools.
Under current law, supporters of SB 954 argue facilities like the one in Garden Grove can be sited, permitted, and built with no environmental review and no requirement that neighbors, schools, hospitals, or first responders be told what is going in next door, or what is being stored there.