A coalition of over 200 organizations from throughout California today called on Governor Newsom and the California Legislature to immediately fix major problems in the recently enacted “permit streamlining” law (Senate Bill 131) that threatens the health of neighborhoods and workplaces, the safety of our air and water, and areas critical to threatened wildlife. The coalition letter was signed by environmental, environmental justice, labor, affordable housing, public health, farm, local government, social justice, and food safety organizations.
“Californians depend on our strong environmental laws to trust the safety of our air, water, and land, and we count on the Governor and Legislature to defend these safeguards. In less than a week, SB 131 wiped away core environmental and public transparency protections on polluting industries with health harming consequences for our children and our families. Now, Californians are counting on the Legislature to fix this,” said Esther Portillo, Western Environmental Health Director at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council).
Since 1970, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has required public disclosure of the environmental harms that a proposed project could cause and the adoption of mitigation measures to reduce that harm before public agencies can approve or fund a project. The law was approved in response to increasing public concern about exposure to hazardous chemicals, air pollutants, water contamination, and loss of sensitive natural and scenic lands.
SB 131 exempts a wide range of industrial and other development projects from CEQA including advanced manufacturing facilities that can be major sources of toxic contamination, air and water pollution, and destruction of wildlife areas. The new law’s definition of “advanced manufacturing” is so broad that it can include lithium compound, heavy metal, battery manufacturing, waste incineration, strip-mining, and other polluting industries.
Thanks to this backroom deal, this wide umbrella of risky projects no longer sees the critical public disclosure and mitigation requirements that are imperative for limiting pollution and other hazards.
“Until SB 131 was passed, Californians had a protected right to know when an industrial project could threaten their health, their community’s safety, the air they breathe, and the water they drink. This rollback is a green light to fast-track some of the most dangerous, polluting projects without public notice and without accountability,” said Veda Banerjee, Senior Communications Director, California Environmental Voters. “As we head into the final weeks of session, the Legislature and Governor must act with baseline amendments for tribes, endangered species, and around advanced manufacturing. Our health cannot be sacrificed for corporate convenience.”
The coalition letter urges the Governor and Legislature to repeal the most damaging SB 131 provisions that remove CEQA’s public disclosure and mitigation requirements from polluting manufacturing industries and to reinstate protections for endangered and threatened species habitat and priority conservation areas.
“SB 131 is the most environmentally damaging bill the legislature has adopted in at least half a century,” said Frances Tinney of the Center for Biological Diversity’s urban wildlands program. “In addition to harming the health of our communities, it also threatens the survival of endangered animals that rely on the critical lands and waters that sustain their populations.”
SB 131 is the product of backroom negotiations just after the Legislature approved and sent the state’s 2025-26 budget bill to the governor. The bill first became public on Friday, June 27th and was rushed to legislative votes after a single hearing the following Monday, June 30th. Provisions added by Governor Newsom and legislative leadership threatened to blow up the statewide budget bill if the Legislature failed to pass SB 131, despite little time for legislators or the public to understand its provisions.
“Under the guise of a housing bill, SB 131 allows the most polluting industries, from strip mining to fuel production, to site their manufacturing facilities virtually next door to homes and schools with dramatically scaled back environmental protections and public notice. This weakening of environmental law comes at the exact moment of slashes to environmental law at the federal level. Pollution impacts are already costing Californians billions per year in healthcare and clean up costs, with the highest burdens on low-income communities of color. Governor Newsom and California legislators traded the health and wellbeing of their constituents to score some points with polluting industry,” commented Asha Sharma from Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability. “The Legislature must act now to correct this.”
SB 131 was enacted despite continuing public support for protecting the environment. The July 2025 PPIC poll found that “62% (of Californians believe that) protection of the environment should be given priority, even at the risk of curbing economic growth.”
Conservation groups pointed out that California’s economy grew to be the 4th largest economy in the world with CEQA fully intact before the enactment of SB 131.
“UAW Region 6 wholeheartedly supports the growth of high quality advanced manufacturing jobs in California. These jobs are important not just for workers, but to meet our aggressive state environmental goals. Unfortunately, SB 131 attempts to grow manufacturing while enabling companies to more easily pollute our environment and workplaces, thereby undercutting the environmental and community development goals we and state leaders are so enthusiastically trying to promote,” said Mike Miller, Director of UAW Region 6, which encompasses the western US, and represents workers in manufacturing, higher education, and government scientific positions. “We urge policymakers to come up with a solution for workers, communities, and the environment before major projects move ahead without safeguards.”
“It is hard enough to see the harm that President Trump is doing to America’s environmental and community protections. It is shocking when Governor Newsom and the California Legislature take a page from the Trump playbook and rush to gut our most important environmental protection law. State leaders should urgently fix this problem,” commented Raquel Mason from the California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA).
