As California’s nine months of lawmaking careens toward a close, Surfrider’s impact at the legislative level can mostly be seen through what isn’t up for vote: a wholesale gutting of the California Coastal Act. You can find more specifics about bills we’ve been working on and tracking here and below.
Before we get to that, however, here’s your chance to take direct action –
Get microplastics off our bodies and out of our waterways!
We were pleased to see AB 823 (Boerner) pass out of California’s Senate unanimously! This is a proactive bill that would ban the sale of toxic plastic microbeads in non-rinse-off personal care and cleaning products, and ban plastic glitter in personal care products – because who wants to be slathered in microplastics?!
Unfortunately, Governor Newsom has threatened to veto AB 823, so we’re calling on all those who prefer a clean ocean and healthy beaches (and healthy bodies!) to take action encouraging him to sign this important bill into law!
Back to ensuring public access and the ongoing existence of beaches…
We’ve been working with our partners in Sacramento to ensure that any amendments to this landmark legislation to speed housing development also maintain protection of public access and recreation opportunities, critical habitat, and the preservation of our shared beaches.
For example, we worked with legislative committees to amend AB 462 (Lowenthal), which would have created complex exemptions for ADUs for places in the Coastal Zone under a state of emergency, in a way that would simply align ADU development rules in the Coastal Zone with those already existing in the rest of the state, making for a much better bill. While we’d hoped to support it, given this success, we ultimately couldn’t quite get there with the author’s office due to the bill’s prohibition against appeals. The explanation gets wonky, but in short, preventing appeals takes away the public’s ability to challenge a project that doesn’t comply with the jurisdiction’s local coastal program (LCP). You can read our full letter on the matter here.
Building more housing throughout California – in the Coastal Zone and elsewhere – is a reasonable statewide priority. But sacrificing our state’s long-vaunted environmental standards and guarantee of public coastal access is a short-sighted way to go about it. Unfortunately, many legislators have decided that complete elimination of public input and environmental review is the best path forward. We saw this back in July with the gutting of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) through SB 131.
How CEQA exemptions will harm California’s people and wildlife
Ostensibly aimed at increasing housing supply and accelerating infrastructure development, SB 131 exempts “advanced” industrial manufacturing facilities – including chemical recycling, lithium battery and semiconductor plants – from environmental review. Nearby communities will not have a chance to weigh in on the use of hazardous chemicals or the inevitable pollution from these facilities. These same “advanced manufacturing” projects will also be entirely exempted from CEQA even if they are located on critical habitat. This is in direct conflict with California’s biodiversity initiative to protect 30 percent of our state’s lands and waters by 2030.
Next up, the Coastal Act?
We anticipate renewed efforts to strip protections out of California’s Coastal Act. As lawmakers look to adapt the Coastal Act to modern needs, Surfrider will continue to ensure those efforts don’t take away the rights we’ve celebrated for the past 50 years. Additionally, we are working proactively with legislators to find pathways that create logical pathways toward more housing in the Coastal Zone and maintain the rights of Californians under the Coastal Act. For example, this session, we supported SB 484 (Laird), a bill that, in short, would require the California Coastal Commission to identify “infill” spots in at least three coastal communities without a certified LCP for the purpose of allowing development in those spots to skip the usual permitting process.
Don’t Enable Sable!
As part of our campaign to stop Sable Offshore from restarting offshore oil drilling in the Santa Barbara Channel, Surfrider has been advocating for AB 1448 (Hart), a bill that would prevent the State Lands Commission from entering into a new lease or other conveyance authorizing new construction of oil- and gas-related infrastructure upon tidelands and submerged lands within state waters associated with Pacific Outer Continental Shelf leases issued after January 1, 2018.
While the bill has enjoyed broad support while moving through the legislature, a competing piece of legislation put forth by Governor Newsom threatens to undermine this effort. SB 237 includes a number of energy-related provisions including some protections against offshore oil drilling that echo the language in AB 1448, yet SB 237 also leaves open loopholes that put California’s coastal communities, economy, and wildlife at risk of oil drilling, spilling and killing.
Additionally, SB 237 calls for new terrestrial oil drilling in central California and is broadly opposed by frontline communities in Kern County and elsewhere. Surfrider stands in solidarily with the environmental organizations opposed to the bill – offshore protections should not come at the expense of the health and well-being of inland communities.