Region: California
New State Bill Targets Pollution from Aggregate Facilities
Guest contributors Mayahuel Hernandez and Ian Bertrando explain the air-quality benefits of SB 526, a bill they worked on with California State Sen. Caroline Menjivar.
The California Senate just took a critical step toward confronting unhealthy air quality in environmental justice communities through the introduction of a new Senate Bill 526. This proposed legislation aims to curb dangerous dust emissions from aggregate facilities in the South Coast Air Basin, where industrial pollution has long threatened public health and the environment. …
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CONTINUE READINGCongress Lacks Authority to Review California’s Car Waiver
It’s a complicated issue but the answer is clear: the Congressional Review Act does not apply.
States get many kinds of waivers from the federal government. For example, many states (including quite a few Red states) have received waivers from some Medicaid requirements. Overturning the EPA vehicle waiver would expose all state waivers to the risk of being overturned under the Congressional Review Act, contrary to the plain language of that statute.
CONTINUE READINGNew Tools for Communities Seeking to Leverage Energy Infrastructure Projects for Community Priorities
Local action becomes even more important under a new federal regime
The Biden Administration placed substantial emphasis on community benefits mechanisms in federal climate infrastructure investments, building on years of legal and community advocacy work that laid the foundation for federal community engagement standards for project developers. With the Trump Administration taking a different approach at the federal level, the role of stakeholders at the local …
CONTINUE READINGWhy Isn’t Hydrofluoric Acid Banned at Oil Refineries?
The Torrance Refinery Action Alliance and Rep. Maxine Waters have renewed calls to ban hydrofluoric acid at SoCal refineries. Here’s why and how that could work.
On the morning of Feb. 18, 2015, pent-up gases at ExxonMobil’s refinery in Torrance triggered an explosion so powerful it registered as a magnitude 1.7 earthquake and sent industrial ash over entire neighborhoods. It’s been called the near-miss disaster that most people have never heard of. But that near miss is raising new calls to …
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CONTINUE READINGThe California Car Waiver and the Congressional Review Act
Trump has found a possible way to end run California’s legal arguments for the waiver. But there’s no reason to give up.
If the CRA resolution does go through, California should wait until after the midterms, when Democrats are favored to take the House, and then try again with different formulated regulations. When the Trump Administration rejects them, it could then litigate whether the new versions were “substantially the same” as the old ones.
CONTINUE READINGThe Trump Administration Is Trying an End Run Around Revoking California’s Car and Truck Rules
Zeldin’s actions face a major problem: the Congressional Review Act doesn’t apply to California waivers.
Last Friday, EPA’s Administrator Lee Zeldin announced a new and unprecedented way to try to prevent California from implementing its ambitious program to move toward 100 percent zero emission vehicles. This time around, the Trump Administration is trying a new tactic. Rather than revoking EPA’s decision (called a waiver) to allow California’s program to move …
CONTINUE READINGThink Globally, Act Locally – Personal Environmental Action in the Era of Trump 2.0
AKA it should be much easier to put in a heat pump water heater.
The chaos of Trump 2.0 is making it difficult to think about affirmative environmental action these days. At the policy level and in the courts, environmentalists are going to be playing defense for the next few years. Much of what is going on these days feels beyond the average person’s control and that can be …
CONTINUE READINGA Disinformation Deluge on California Policies
Trump and House Republicans are trying to ‘flood the zone’ when it comes to wrongly blaming California environmental regulations for the LA fires.
Trump’s longtime strategy of ‘flooding the zone” — aka overwhelming opponents with a flurry of announcements and superficial initiatives — took a literal turn last week, when his administration ordered the release of a significant amount of water from two dams in the Central Valley to try to score political points. As the New York …
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CONTINUE READINGTrump’s Offshore Wind Ban vs. China’s Wind Juggernaut
Why is the Trump administration kneecapping the U.S. offshore wind industry while China becomes a global giant?
This January, when I was in Beijing for a workshop at Tsinghua University on offshore wind, presentation after presentation from Chinese experts revealed just how China has become an absolute juggernaut in offshore wind. Professors from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Tsinghua walked us through the governance structure — state planning, targets, industrial …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Green-State Playbook
Here are five ways states can save climate policy despite Trump.
Trump’s election is a body blow to U.S. climate policy, but there are ways that those states can fight Trump and move forward on their own plans. To cut to the chase, here are five key strategies for green states — starting with lawsuits against the Trump Administration, which were highly successful in Trump’s first term.
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