Senate Standing Committee on Environmental Quality

Okay, we're ready. Well, good day, everybody welcome. This is the Senate Environmental Quality Committee's first bill hearing of the legislative session. And before we begin today, I would like to recognize the brilliant minds that make this Senate EQ machine work.

The Senate EQ staff is led by Eric Walters as staff Director, Brynn Cook as principal consultant, right down there. Renea Tipton as Committee assistant right here. Taylor Mckie as CCST Science Fellow right down here. And then Evan Goldberg, who is an additional Committee consultant that we're blessed to have as well. I would like to recognize particularly Taylor.

She has a PhD in Oceanography from Scripps Institute of Oceanography, which is in the heart of my district and is at the forefront of ocean research. We're very happy to have you with us, Taylor. Thank you for spending the year with us.

Environmental Quality is the First Committee in Senate history that has always had a Science Fellow throughout the partnership with CCST. This is 18 years worth of PhD minds contributing to policymaking in this Committee. This is also the first time the Committee has been chaired by a woman, and also the first time the Committee has been all women.

So we are excited to break that glass ceiling as well. So next up, we have Committee announcements. So the proposed consent calendar consists of file item number two, which is SB13, file item number three, which is SB39, and file item number nine, which is SB235.

We do not have a quorum yet, so we will start as a Subcommitee. And with that we will go to our first Bill. So this is SB2 from Senator Jones, and we would like to welcome you to come up to the podium. And we allow two lead witnesses in support and two in opposition for two minutes each.

And you're welcome to come up here if you're already in the room.

Okay, when you are ready you may begin.

When you are ready, you may begin.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Before I start, I would also like to introduce the Republican staffers that make this Committee work and operate, and that's Scott Seekatz, our very highly appreciated consultant, on the Minority Party site. So, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you for that member's privilege.

I'll open on SB 2, for the Senate Environmental Quality Committee. SB 2 is a very simple piece of legislation to roll back recent amendments to the Low-Carbon Fuel Standard Regulations at CARB. Last year, CARB ran roughshod over the people of this state, and over us, their elected representatives, when they approved these new LCFS rules.

Knowing the LCFS amendments were imminent, and after waiting months for CARB to release cost estimates, legislators, from both sides of the aisle and all throughout our state, demanded to know how much these new rules would hurt our constituents at the pump. They ignored. Request after request, inquiry after inquiry.

They refused to release any forecast of what the price spike might be, claiming they themselves didn't even know. If the appointed Members of CARB don't know what their own rules are going to cost Californians, then they shouldn't be blindly approving them. If they can't do the math, then they shouldn't write the regulations.

And if they can't be responsive to the people of this state, whom their very decisions affect, then who—they—should simply find a new line of work. We need a government that is benevolent, responsible, and responsive to the people it governs.

The board's most recent actions on LCFS could increase gas prices as much as 65 cents per gallon for your constituents and mine. And that's according to an independent economic analysis. This Bill would halt those changes before they take effect, and wreaking havoc on California families already struggling with the ever-increasing costs of living here in California.

At this time, Madam Chair, I'd like to introduce my two witnesses in support of the Bill, Mr. Augie Venezia and Mr. Dan Bochem, to testify on the devastating impact these new regulations will have on California families and small businesses, if they are not halted with this Bill.

You're welcome to begin.

So, as a small business owner in the Napa Valley area— thanks for letting me speak, by the way, sorry—we are heavily impacted by fuel costs and everything else that's going on. In the past, we have had regulations passed that put ethanol in fuel, which actually decreased the power and performance of our equipment.

And that had a pretty negative effect because we have to burn a lot more fuel now because of it. Approximately 30%, roughly, because that decreases the power of equipment. To an increase in fuel costs, um, is just getting to the point of being devastating to my business.

We're looking at whether or not we can sustain being in business in California, at all, due to the cost of everything going on. My employees need their jobs, and every time we do something that impacts them as far as the cost of operations, then that's—we have to—give our employees more money, paying our employees more money.

Paying our employees more money means our insurance costs go up. When our insurance costs go up, the cost of the customer goes up. And in my industry, one company after another has been pulling out of California and going out of business.

At this point in time, I'm one of the still—people still—standing, but don't know that that's going to continue to happen. It's just simply the customers can no longer pay the prices that are needed to be able to keep it a sustainable business, in this state, anymore.

Adding cost to it, of any amount, is just going to make that worse, and these are real people trying to feed their families and make a living, pay their bills. You know, it's like I said, a 30%, you know, increase in fuel consumption is already problematic.

So, if you look at $5/a gallon at the pump in my area, it's about that. You know, you reduce the mileage of equipment, the fuel mileage and everything else, it's pretty bad. This last year I put out over $600,000 in equipment just trying to keep up with CARBS' regulations.

And we still now are going to have to do more, and then we're going to have to pay more for fuel, more in taxes than anything else. It's just unsustainable. At some point in time this has to stop.

If we're going to help the public, we're going to start driving down prices on things, then you're going to have to find a way to get prices lower, not higher. You know, food is going through the roof. Going to a store, pay $10, you know, for a dozen eggs, I think that's kind of insane.

But people have to do what they have to do to keep in business, keep the food coming. So, everything's going to go up higher. So, the employees are going to need more wages. So that, that's, there you go.

Thank you for your testimony and coming today.

Hello, my name's Augie Venezia. I'm President of Fairfax Lumber and Hardware. Fairfax Lumber was established in 1912, and today we're 100% employee owned.

I just got back from the ACE Trade show in Texas. And, casually talking to other dealers and manufacturers from across the country, when I told them I was from California, their voices sank and asked, "How can we continue in that type of an environment?" Nowhere else does the phrase "energy poverty" exist except California. California, where 30 to 31% of the population is at or below the poverty line.

And the Low-Carbon Fuel Standard will only exasperate that unenviable economic statistic. The LCFS seeks to penalize residents who live in the suburbs, residents who moved out to outlying areas to find cheaper housing, and who will now be giving up any cost-of-living savings, sinking more citizens into the ranks of the poor.

I am down in the trenches with everyday people. The Low-Carbon Fuel Standard also sets the stage for a larger stampede of residents leaving the state for a lower cost of living elsewhere. And make no mistake, those that are leaving, more money is leaving the state than is coming in.

I was born and raised in California, and never in my life have I known more acquaintances, friends, and family that have left California for other states. I understand CARB has a job to do. The current sunset dates for fossil fuels, up to now, has been a feel-good thing.

But from here moving forward, getting compliant with those deadlines is going to start costing serious money. And who's got that kind of money? And what does that mean for our employee owners?

CARB can come up with all the mandates they want, but unless it makes economic sense, no one will want to buy into it and know that people are always smarter than government. We'll figure out a way to get around it.

For instance, where are people going to come up with the money to abandon fossil fuel heating and cooking?

To pay for the cost, to increase the gauge of the line from the street to your house, to upgrade your electrical service panel, to demo and repair your house, to get wiring from here to there, where plumbing exists? And who's, then, to pay the high rates of electrical rates that we pay here in California.

Make no mistake, back when I was in grade school, California was known as the Golden State. Back then, if you worked hard and you worked smart, you would be a success. Not maybe. That was then, and today, California, in my opinion, gets its golden color because its goose is almost cooked. Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony. And now we may go to the two witnesses. [Unintelligible Whispering] Okay, before you do that, we're going to invite anybody who would like to come up to the microphone and express their support. And if you could, please say your name, affiliation, and position on the Bill.

Good morning. Tim Taylor, with the National Federation of Independent Business, in support.

Thank you. Anybody else in the room? Okay. Then we will go to the opposition witnesses.

Good morning. Michael Boccadoro, on behalf of the Agricultural Energy Consumers Association. We work with the state's leading agricultural groups and food processors here in California. I want to start off by saying we certainly agree with the author that gas prices, and for that matter, diesel prices in California, are exorbitant.

And there's no question in our mind that they are in part caused by the climate and environmental policies implemented by the State of California. Affordability is a real concern. It's not just about the cost of living. It's also about the cost of doing business, as you've heard here today.

However, we don't perceive the LCFS program as the root cause. LCFS is a market-based mechanism that allows for compliance with our climate policies, in a way that is far cheaper than direct regulation. For those reasons, we support the LCFS Program, and we support programs like Cap and Trade for the same reason.

They're market-based mechanisms that allow us to come into compliance far cheaper. So, we are here in opposition today.

The LCFS program also provides significant benefits, from an air quality standpoint, particularly with heavy duty trucks, conversion to renewable natural gas or other drop in biofuels, provides tremendous air quality benefits to the State of California, while helping us achieve our methane reduction goals here in the state. For those reasons, we are in opposition to the Bill today, but recognize we do need to do something about affordability in this state.

It isn't going to go away on its own. We have increasing costs, not just for gasoline and diesel, but for energy, as you heard here today. And those issues need to be addressed, because it is having a tremendous impact on the food production industry. Our grocery prices here in California are 30 to 40% higher than other states.

Even though we are the breadbasket, it should be far cheaper. It's not. And part of that is transportation costs.

The agricultural community uses diesel at just about every level of the trans—food supply—chain production: tractors on our farms, transportation to packing houses and food processing facilities, and then more transportation to grocery stores and other places where we sell our products. So, for those reasons, unfortunately we have to be here in opposition.

But again, we appreciate Mr. Jones highlighting the affordability issue on the cost of gas here in California, and the cost of diesel here in California. Thank you.

Thank you, Michael.

Good morning. Thank you. My name is Laura Ranger. I'm from the California Electric Transportation Coalition. Cal ETC is an industry coalition representing utilities, automakers, charging station providers, and other stakeholders committed to a zero-emission future. We strongly support the LCFS and urge you to vote no on SB 2.

The Low-Carbon Fuel Standard has been a catalyst for billions of dollars of investments in EVs and infrastructure. And with the proceeds from the LCFS, the utilities have spent over $840 million in programs to incentivize ZEV adoption and help California's citizens and businesses come into compliance with the CARB regulations.

Depending on credit prices and the speed of EV adoption, about $10 billion could flow into these programs over the next 10 years. These programs from the LCFS also lead to downward pressure on electric utility rates.

EV drivers, in investor-owned utilities territories, contributed approximately $1.7 billion more in revenue than associated costs, which helps to lower the rates for all Californians. Eliminating or weakening the LCFS would remove a key mechanism that helps offset rate pressure, ultimately making energy more expensive.

Lastly, we believe that the concerns about the gasoline price impacts, from the LCFS, are overstated. Independent studies have found that the correlation is minimal compared to the impacts from broader market forces and macroeconomic considerations.

The LCFS also contains price containment mechanisms, such as a ceiling on credit prices and the requirement for the Executive Officer to assess the impacts on retail gasoline prices and proposed measures to mitigate those impacts. And for those reasons, we encourage you to vote "No." Thank you very much for the opportunity today to testify.

Thank you very much. Anybody else in the room in opposition? Please state your name, affiliation, and position on the Bill.

Morning, Madam Chair. Chris McKeley on behalf of the California Renewable Transportation Alliance, in respectful opposition. Thank you.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Committee Members. Alfredo Redondo, on behalf of the Green Hydrogen Coalition, and H Cycle, a renewable hydrogen developer, in opposition.

Good morning, Madam Chair. Members of the Committee. With respect to the author—Clean Energy—I'm Ryan Kenny with Clean Energy, in opposition, as well as the California Hydrogen Coalition, as well. Thank you.

Madam Chair. Members. John Winger on behalf of the Coalition for Renewable Natural Gas, also in opposition.

Madam Chair, Members. Carlos Gutierrez here on behalf of the California Advanced Biofuels Alliance and Clean Fuels Alliance America. In opposition.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Members. Senator Jones. I'm Jennifer Roe with Capital Advocacy on behalf of the California Hydrogen Business Council. In opposition.

Good morning. Mary Solucki on behalf of World Energy, a renewable fuel producer, in opposition.

Good morning, Committee Chair, Members. Thank you for your time today. Kai Cooper, on behalf of CALSTAR and the Electric Vehicle Charging Association, in opposition.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Members. Melissa Cosio, with Pacific Gas and Electric, to realign our comments with those of Laura Ranger and McKeley, in strong opposition. Thank you.

Good morning, Madam Chair Members. Joe Zanze, with San Diego Gas & Electric, in opposition. Thank you.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Members. Brady Van Engelen, here on behalf of Southern California Edison, and likewise, we align our comments with those from...thank you very much.

Good morning. Andy Schrader, on behalf of Climate Action California, in respectful opposition.

Thank you. Anybody else in the room wishing to express opposition? Okay, seeing none. Then we will bring it back to our Members. Do any Members have questions or comments they would like to make? Yes?

You're the Vice Chair. Welcome.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'm excited to be working with this Committee. Thank you, Senator Jones, for bringing this Bill forward. You know, I come from a super commuter district and the biggest cost for families in my district, right now, are the price of groceries, the price of utilities, and the price of gas.

And we have a clear problem with the continuous mandates that are increasing that price of gas for, for, my community. And it's getting harder and harder and harder.

I want to point out though that I completely understand that the Air Resource Board has been given a directive to help us meet our climate goals, but there's no directive to also balance that, with the need for affordability in our state.

And until we give them that directive, to both help us meet our goals, but also help us do it in a way that our hard-working Californias can afford it, we're going to end up needing bills like this.

I do want to point out that former state Senator Dean Flores, who is a Democrat from Schaeffer, was, is, appointed to the ARB Board, voted "No" on the regulations. And he stated in a CalMatters op-ed, "After evaluating the economic, environmental and social implications, I cannot, in good conscience, support them."

By downplaying these potential expenses, CARB risks understanding the hardship stricter targets could impose on communities already facing high living costs. We have a problem here. And I'm supporting this Bill because it's so imperative for working communities, like me, that the Legislature take action to address the affordability crisis, particularly when it comes to energy and our commuters.

Thank you.

Thank you. Let's see, the other two Members I think do. Senator Menjivar.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't disagree, um, that everything's really expensive, and I get where you're coming from, Senator. You know, obviously no one wants to pay...you quoted in your author's statement, "65 to 85 cents more a gallon."

A question to you, or maybe to your supporters here, is, if this Bill were to go forward, can't CARB come back and do another set of regulations?

They probably can, but I think they would be put on notice by the Legislature that we're now paying attention. And I mean, ultimately, they have to be responsive to the Legislature. The Legislature and the Governor have, just over the several past years, let them go rogue and do their own thing.

My, one of my, goals here today is to have proper legislative oversight over the regulations that they're passing on your constituents and my constituents.

And to the opposition, you shared, ma'am, some of the benefits of LCFS. But can't those benefits still exist without these regulations?

No, the benefits would not. The money that I was talking, that was flowing to programs that incentivize and help customers to switch to EV adoption, those come from the LCFS. So, without the LCFS regulation, those programs that I mentioned would not exist.

May I respond to that real quick?

Yes.

I think there's some misunderstanding on what actually this Bill does, based on some of the opposition comments. This Bill is very simple. It only rolls back the regulations that CARB put in place at 9:00 pm, on a Friday night, of a holiday weekend, three days after the election.

And if you sense some cynicism in that, I hope you would share my cynicism. When an unelected board is passing these types of regulations onto your constituents and my constituents, at the dead of night, on a holiday weekend, it only rolls back that regulation.

I'm not trying to undo LCFS here, as some of the arguments have been made that that's what this Bill does. This Bill does, goes, nowhere near undoing LCFS. It only undoes that one set of regulations, that they passed on that Friday evening.

So that's how I understand it, Senator. I think that's my question. If this is only for the recent regulations, the benefits for LCFS would still continue?

No, honestly, that's not that. Actually, technically, yes, that is correct, Senator, but given where the LCFS market is right now, because the program was so successful and essentially outperformed itself, if those regulations don't take effect, the program will be ineffective, and the credit prices are very low right now.

So those programs are not, we're not able to use that money for programs to incentivize EV adoption. So, without the Amendments that we saw November 9th, I was there as well. There was many, many people there. We'd been working very hard.

Eight hours worth of public comment.

What's that?

Eight hours.

Eight hours worth of public comment.

That was just on that one hearing. We've had many workshops. There's been many opportunities for public comment, over two years. And so, in effect, the effect of this proposed Bill would end the LCFS effectiveness.

Thank you.

I think I would go back to your original question. And could CARB, if this Bill passes, could they make new regulations? Absolutely, they can. So, if this Bill passes, what the Legislature is communicating to the CARB is, we don't agree with your analysis of your regulations.

We don't agree with the economic effect of your regulations on our constituents. Go back and redo them. Protect the LCFS program, without raising additional costs, to our constituents. Our constituents are already paying for the LCFS program. We don't need to make it more expensive for them.

Thank you. Senator Gonzalez.

Yes, thank you, Senator, for bringing this forward. We're talking about gas prices again. But I will not be voting and supporting your Bill. I just would like to ask you because, I think we've gone through this.

It seems that gas prices, although they have been rising quite significantly for some time, the LCFS credit prices have been falling as been mentioned. So why do you believe that repealing the LCFS, even in this amendment, this narrow view, per you, will lower gas prices? What do you think? Why do you think there's a relation to prevent them?

There's been several analyses, independent analysis, and I believe CARB themselves have done an analysis on it, that these particular regulations are going to—and the number is estimated between 47 cents a gallon and 85 cents a gallon—we kind of picked the middle and what the independent analysis said.

And so, there's several economic experts out there, and people that follow the LCFS program, that have said that. That's not me making up that number.

Well, I think per CARB last—from late last year—they had mentioned that there is no relationship between the Low-Carbon Fuel Standard credit prices and retail gas prices.

I also think that—and I don't disagree with you—you know, do I agree with CARB all the time and the way they regulate and what they do, and sometimes it supersedes what the Legislature should do? I agree with you on that.

But as it pertains to this, we can't create an illusion of something happening, that is not happening, and you know, providing a solution that may not be the be all—end all—result for residents out there. They need to see prices lowering. I agree with that. But how do you—What do you?

My next question is why do you think that the LCFS would not lower emissions while also lessening the rate pressure, while also creating, you know, price-mitigating sort of effects for diversifying our fuel? I mean, you've got the hydrogen folks here, right? They're basically saying that they need these credits.

So, the program as a whole—I agree with you, if you agree with that statement—I agree with you that it is possible. My argument today is, very simply, these regulations, passed on that Friday evening, are the ones going to drive up additional costs. I'm not. Again, I'm not trying to undo the LCFS program.

I'm trying to have an impact on your constituents and my constituents, from an agency that voted late at night and without much communication even to the Legislature. And one of the points you made is the regulations that they have passed, some that you agree with, some that you disagree with.

I'm of the same way, but when the Legislature disagree with them, I believe it's our responsibility to communicate that to them, by providing proper oversight on their regulations.

You're exactly right. I just don't think that this is the way to lower prices. So, we'll leave it there. I think that there's enough information and data that basically shows that there is no relation between the two and, you know, we want to be able to lower prices. This is just not the way to do it.

But thank you.

Well, maybe afterwards we'll compare notes on who you are reading that says it doesn't and who I'm reading that says it does, so. Right.

Okay. Thank you. Well, I'd like to welcome Senator Padilla. He's filling in for Senator Gomez Reyes. And I very much appreciate you being willing to do that. We now have a quorum, so we'll take a quick pause and have our Committee Assistant call the roll.

[Roll Call]

Okay, thank you. Thank you for the comments. I'm going to go ahead. Okay. Apologize, a little bit more housekeeping. So, because we have a quorum, we need to adopt the Committee Rules. So, without objection? Seeing no objection, the Committee rules for the 2025- 2026 legislative session are adopted.

Do you need to call the roll?

Okay, and I would just like to make a couple comments. So, thank you again for thinking about prices, and working to lower them, in the way that you think is appropriate. I just would like to express that I am sympathetic to the critics of LCFS and particularly, to the November Amendments.

And also, in general, there have been various concerns about CARB, that are expressed across the board. And I think it's important to note that CARB has never gotten any statutory input on a program from us—on this program—on LCFS. And so, I don't believe that your Bill is the path forward.

I think LCFS is important because it's been a driver for developing and subsidizing low-carbon fuels, including zero emission options like electric vehicles. Of course, it's not perfect and it's not without its costs. And I'm happy to continue working across the aisle to take a good look at how the Legislature feels about LCFS.

It is admittedly a big and complicated program, and it also has big and complicated politics. So, it's important that, you know, that we, that we do something if we are going to do something that is substantive. So, I think it's worth considering if the program is truly misaligned with the Legislature's goals.

And we should look at the big picture because, if it is in line with the Legislature's goals, then we should support CARB's efforts to refine the program.

But voiding the November amendments, which is basically what your Bill does, I mean, it is what your Bill does, would just keep the status quo of LCFs, and I don't think it would solve any of the problems that are being talked about. So for those reasons, I will not be able to support your Bill today.

Now, if we—you—would like to close, then we will move on.

I'm encouraged by the robust conversation this morning and obviously the robust feedback we got from the associations and advocates on this issue. Obviously, LCFS is an important program to the State of California, and to our constituents, for multiple reasons, as were stated this morning.

I'm also encouraged that there seems to be, if not unanimous, at least majority agreement in that CARB sometimes goes rogue, and it's our responsibility as legislators to rein them in at times.

I am waiting for that day to happen, and I'm hoping that maybe this is the year that we can work in a bipartisan manner to accomplish some restraint on their impacts on our economy. I think it's important to point out, as Senator Valladares mentioned, Member Flores—Director Flores—there was one other Member that voted "No."

So, two "No" votes, 12 "Aye" votes on these regulations. I think it's also important to point out that these Members of CARB are appointed solely by the Governor, and many of them are millionaires, just like he is. And where I'm not a millionaire, and I think most of the Legislature are also not millionaires, we're feeling this.

You are feeling it through your constituents. I'm feeling it through my constituents. I'm feeling it every time my wife goes and gets gas and every time my adult children go and get gas.

And I hear about how much gas prices are in California, compared to any other state in the country, but especially Nevada, Oregon and Arizona, our border states. The gas prices sometimes are more than $2 a gallon less, as soon as you cross the line.

When you cross the border from Needles, California, to Arizona, the price of gasoline goes down $2 a gallon. And our constituents see that, and they want to know why that is. Is Arizona's air any more clean than our air? Is Arizona's environment any much better than our environment?

I think that would be a hard argument to make, based on the LCFS program. I will also share that over 6,500 Californians from across the state, not just my district, but across the state—6,500 Californians.

On just a minuscule amount of social media and advertisement and a little bit of press, 6,500 Californians signed a petition agreeing with SB 2. I think it's important that, as legislators that are responsive to our constituents, that we understand that that is happening.

Californians are paying attention to what we're doing here this year, especially, maybe more so, than in the past. This Bill does not take money away from the Clean Energy or Green Transportation Projects. It does not draw into question the validity or the righteousness of California's climate goals.

What Senate Bill 2 does do is halt the proposed 65 cent per gallon price spike, passed with unrivaled opacity, and no fiscal analysis by a rogue bureaucratic board filled with unelected ideologues, with no regard for the financial realities facing everyday Californians. Your constituents and mine.

An "Aye" vote for this Bill is an "Aye" vote for the little guy, the everyman, the workers, and the families trying to survive in the most expensive state in the union. That's who this Bill is for. That's who I'm here for, because that's what I am and that's who I care about.

I urge you to vote for them at this time, as well, with an "Aye" vote on SB 2.

Thank you, Senator Jones. And I will ask if there is any motion? Okay. The Bill has been moved by Senator Valladares. And I'll ask the Committee Assistant to call the roll.

[Roll Call]

Okay, it's two to one. We will leave it on call.

All right, thank you.

I'm sorry, it's one to two. Leave it on call. I will start working the other Members. That aren't sharing, see if we can.

Get their support by the end of the day. Thank you. That's great.

Okay, so just to make sure everyone knows what order we're going, and we're going in file order, except for if you are not here, we will skip you and go to the next person. So. And we will take the Committee Members last. So, Senator Padilla, you'll be at the end.

So next we will have Senator Caballero for SB88. We can move consent right now, too. I think Gonzalez wants to move consent. Education. Okay, apologies. We'd like to move the consent calendar, so let's do that really quickly. So would any Members like to remove an item from consent? Okay. Hearing none.

Do we have a motion on the consent calendar? Okay, the Vice Chair has moved, so let Committee assistant please call the roll.

Okay. Consent calendar consists of file item number 2,3 and 9. Senators Blakespear.

Aye.

[aye votes].

Okay, it's five to zero. We'll leave it on call. And Senator Caballero, you are free to start.

Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to present SB88 to address a critical issue that affects California. The air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from wildfires and open air burning of agricultural waste and the subsequent impact on our health, environment and climate goals.

As we all know, California has battled devastating wildfires in recent years, with the most recent fires in Los Angeles causing catastrophic damage. These fires, fueled in part by overgrown forest and urban incursion into canyon chaparral growth, release significant amounts of smoke and toxins and carbon particles into the air and accelerate climate change.

This bill will address the problem by tracking, locating, and quantifying the emissions from burning of biomass, forest, and agricultural residues, and encourage the beneficial use of the data to prevent wildfires, reduce air pollution, and avoid environmental damage.

Open burning of agricultural waste, while an established practice, results in massive amount of harmful emissions, including greenhouse gases and black carbon substances that significantly contribute to global warming. And candidly, open air agricultural burning was terminated January 1st of this year. It can no longer be done. So you have a buildup, significant buildup of agricultural waste.

Our forest and agricultural lands produce vast amounts of biomass every year. Biomass that when burned, releases harmful emissions. But there is another option. By converting biomass into useful products such as biofuels, biochar and low carbon energy, we can not only avoid these emissions, but create new economic opportunities in rural areas.

The agricultural rural areas of the state produce significant quantities of this waste. We can incentivize and scale the use of the waste streams for bioenergy and other sustainable products. We can generate good paying jobs, reduce fire risk, help mitigate climate change and reduce harmful emissions all at the same time.

SB88 requires CARB to quantify these emissions and benefits from fuel reduction activities and adopt methods of assessing life cycle emissions from alternative uses of forest and agricultural biomass residues.

The bell directs CARB to assess the suitability of developing a carbon credit or offset protocol for beneficial carbon removal products that are generated from this waste and adopt, if appropriate. Moreover, SB88 directs the Department of Forestry and Fire to ensure that state funded forest health projects include verifiable methods of biomass disposal.

This bill will not only help to meet California's climate goals, but to create new jobs and reduce waste, reduce toxins and air pollutants and presents an economic opportunity for the state. By encouraging the utilization of biomass, we can stimulate the bioenergy sector and create jobs in rural communities.

The bill also promotes healthier forest and agricultural lands by incentivizing practices to actually use the biochar in our processes. Colleagues, we have to create a future where we convert waste into valuable products, reduce harmful emission and protect the state from the devastating impacts of climate change.

I thank Madam Chair and the Committee staff for their work and I would like to accept the Committee amendments. With me today to testify and support is Christiana Darlington with the Placer County Air Pollution Control District and Amy Roberts with the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District.

Welcome. You have two minutes each.

Yes. Is this okay? Hi, I'm Christiana Darlington and I'm with the Placer County Air Pollution Control District. Thank you, Chair Blakespear and for the rest of the Members hearing us today. We're talking about SB88 and this bill has three main components. The first part of the Bill is to talk about CARB regulations.

The second part is to talk about CAL FIRE. And the third part is about the California Energy Commission. The reason that the Air District has keen interest in this topic is because over half of our geography is forested. Recently, in the last few years, we had the Mosquito fire.

This fire covered our county for over three months with smoke and had significant health and air quality impacts. A big part of this bill is focusing on the values of the forest and the fact that forest should be maintained but also allow for big trees. We recognize that forests should not be grown for power.

At the same time, we need forest health projects in order to prevent wildfire and sustainability. Additionally, in 2011, our district demonstrated through a field study that there are significant air quality benefits to wood that would be otherwise open pile burned but used in a biomass facility, including a 98% reduction in PM and a 60% reduction in NOX.

And while these harmful, that NOX is the one that contributes to smog. Right. So it's important these benefits would even be more significant if wood is processed through systems with advanced emission control technologies like ceramic filtration.

We are happy to be moving this bill forward that will direct CARB to develop a lifecycle analysis of alternate uses of biomass residuals, which can lead to better outcomes than open burning they normally do. Also, when removed, the reference to wildfire baseline report. We did remove that in the bill.

Just wanted to note that's because the report is essentially complete. So we did. That's why that's removed. The district also is encouraged to see CAL FIRE better clarify when pile burning is a proper waste disposal during prescribed fire projects or fuel reduction forest health.

But also sometimes there's just too much biomass out there to be to be open burned. And so we're looking for direction from them about that more specific direction and I'm going to pass it on to my cohort here at SAC Metro.

Good morning, Madam Chair, Members of the Committee, My name is Amy Roberts and I'm one of the division directors at the SAC Metro Air District and one of the co sponsors of SB88. Our organization is one of the 35 local air districts in California and we're responsible for meeting air quality standards and protecting public health.

Essentially, we seek to reduce air pollution and climate pollution through many traditional programs such as permitting enforcement, air quality monitoring, but also through innovation and actions to combat climate. We oversee prescribed burning and agricultural burning to manage the smoke impacts and air pollution that come from open burning of biomass waste.

For those reasons, our air district, along with air districts in the northern Sacramento Valley Region, advocate for alternatives to burning biomass because one, any reduction in burning will help improve air quality, two, increased biomass utilization can increase economic opportunities and workforce development, especially in the rural parts of our region.

And three, using biomass creates useful products like biochar and biofuels like hydrogen instead of burning it. And it just makes good sense in our mind. This is a waste not, want not principle in action. We support the use of non combustion technologies like pyrolysis and gasification.

In particular what we have been referring to as Biomass Energy 2.0 just to differentiate it from the traditional bioenergy power plants that are often criticized. These are typically smaller scale, more localized production facilities that can create little excess pollution.

SB88 supports the use of biomass for producing alternative energy products by asking CARB to assess the feasibility of adopting a carbon credit or offset protocol that would support increased production of biochar and other useful products.

It also requires the California Energy Commission to include in relevant agency reports the value proposition for using biomass to produce fuels such as hydrogen. Both energy actions will help to incentivize the use of of biomass for beneficial uses.

We believe that California needs to have multiple energy solutions to meet its pollution and climate goals and biomass utilization should be included in the array of options. We are co-sponsors of SB88 because it helps open up the pathways to using biomass waste in more beneficial ways and it supports our mission of lowering air and climate pollution.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much to both of you for coming today. If you are in support, please come up and state your name, affiliation and position.

Madam Chair, Chris McKayley on behalf of the California Biomass Energy Alliance. We are in support of the Bill. Thank you.

Good morning again Madam Chair. Alfredo Redondo on behalf of the Green Hydrogen Coalition and H Cycle, in support.

Good morning Madam Chair and Members. Alex Torres on behalf of the Bay Area Council and New California Coalition, in support.

Good morning Madam Chair and Committee Members. Nick Blair on behalf of the Association of California Water Agencies in support.

Good morning Chair, good morning Members.Thank you author for bringing this Bill forward. Kai Cooper on behalf of East Bay Regional Park district in strong support.

Morning Chair members Matt Klopfenstein on behalf of the Bioenergy Association of California in strong support. Thank you.

Good morning Madam Chairmembers Erin Norwood on behalf of the Almond Alliance. Please be in support of the bill. Thank you.

Morning Chairmembers Carlos Gutierrez here on behalf of the California Fresh Fruit Association, California Citrus Mutual, and American Pistachio Growers in support.

Madam Chair Members Michael Boccadoro on behalf of the Ag Energy Consumers Association strong support and appreciate Ms. Caviar's leadership on these issues.

Thank you.

Good Morning Chair Blakespear and Members. Neil Edgar on behalf of the California Compost Coalition, in support.

Dennis Albiani on behalf of the California Pear Growers Association, California Cherry Growers, California Grain and Feed, and California Seed Association. Thank you. We support.

Dede Smullen, I'm the Co-owner of Earth Foundries Inc. In support, and also the chair of The Santa Clara County Fire Safe Council, in support. Thank you.

Good morning. Jacqueline Madden, on behalf of Yosemite Clean Energy and we are also in strong support. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have lead opposition witnesses? I don't see any. Do we have anybody who would like to just express their opposition? You may come to the microphone now. Okay. We have one. There has to be someone, right?

Yeah, just leave it.

Chair Members, my name is Molly Culton with Sierra Club California, and we are in opposition to this bill. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, thank you. We will bring it back to the Members for any questions or comments. Does anybody have any? Okay, after she closes, we'll come back for a motion. Okay.

Would the author like to close? Thank you very much to everybody who came here to testify today. The beauty of this energy, it's on demand energy. It's capable of being produced at a time when we may not have a windy day or we may not have solar.

And so it provides us an alternative to our current energy sources. And so I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Okay, thank you. Vice Chair Valladares made a motion.

Yes, and it's as amended. Do pass as amended. And so please call the roll, assistant.

Okay. SB88. Do pass as amended to Natural resources and water. [aye vote]

Okay, it's 4 to 0, and we will leave it on call. Thank you again. Next, we are moving to item 7 and 8. We have Senator Seyarto with SB231 and then SB232. And if you are in support as a lead witness, feel free to come up. And I see you are. Thank you. Or if you're.

And if you're opposed, you can feel free to come up. So with that, we'll turn it over to the author. Go ahead Mr. Seyarto.

All right. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and Committee Members, for hearing SB231. So SB 231 implements a recommendation from the Little Hoover Commission in 2024 to establish clear parameters for significance thresholds and for analysis and mitigation of impacts, starting with those categories of impact that are most frequently the subject of litigation.

The report noted that these categories are likely to include greenhouse gas emissions and noise, among other things. SB231 will bring more clarity to these environmental impact categories by creating a technical advisory document outlining suggested thresholds of significance that lead agencies may adopt.

This clarity will help lead agencies comply with our existing environmental laws and avoid litigation costs so that needed housing and critical infrastructure projects can be advanced more efficiently. The Little Hoover Commission is here with me today and can share more about the background and reasoning behind this recommendation.

My expert witness today is Ethan Rarick from the Little Hoover Commission.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Members. My name is Ethan Rarick. I'm the Executive Director of the Little Hoover Commission. The Commission is a nonpartisan, independent Commission consisting of citizens and sitting legislators charged in statute with recommending changes to state policy that foster economy efficiency or improved service.

We issue written reports based on our hearings and research, make recommendations, and then support legislation which implements our recommendations. As Senator Searto said, Beginning in 2023, we held a series of hearings on the California Environmental Quality Act. And then in 2024, we issued a report, targeted Reforms for California's Core Environmental Law.

That report noted that CEQA has been a bedrock of environmental protection for more than 50 years. But the Commission did recommend what it called targeted and limited reforms to address certain components of CEQA as it exists today.

One of those recommendations, as the Senator said, was to create clearer parameters for significance thresholds, which we believe would help create more consistency and predictability in the CEQA process. Excuse me. And could provide legal support for lead agencies that face litigation.

We acknowledged in the report this would be an extremely difficult task and also noted the importance of recognizing the geographic diversity of the state and the need to balance statewide guidance or expertise with local control.

We believe that SB231 furthers the Commission's goals by requiring the Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation, still getting used to the new name, to develop technical guidance for lead agencies regarding significant thresholds on greenhouse gas emissions and noise impacts.

The Bill would preserve local control while also providing technical assistance that could assist lead agencies and recognize the geographic diversity of our state. These were key components of our recommendation. We view the Bill as supporting that recommendation and accordingly, we respectfully ask for your high vote.

Thank you. Any other lead witnesses in support? Anybody wishing to express support? If you would like to express your support, please come to the microphone. Okay. Seeing None. Any lead witnesses in opposition? Yes. zero, wait, wait. Sorry. Go ahead. Sorry about that.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Members. Raymond Contreras with Lighthouse Public affairs on behalf of Home Building Alliance, CA, YIMBY and Abundant Housing LA. And support. Thank you.

Alex Torres on behalf of the Bay Area Council and the Housing Action Coalition. Support. Thank you. Okay, now we'll go to lead witness and opposition.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Jeremy Smith here. On behalf of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, I want to thank Senator Seyarto's staff for reaching out to us. We've exchanged voicemails like it's 1998, but we've exchanged some voicemails.

We haven't been able to connect yet, but we are hoping to talk to them to his staff after today's hearing. We understand there's also amendments possibly pending on this bill. We look forward to seeing those. But I just wanted to note our opposition on this to this Bill and end to 232.

Some of the talking points are the same for both. First of all, regarding significance thresholds. Those are updated as science and the physical environment change. And so locking those in, those being part of the process when there's no way to kind of think about them outside the box in real time by local agencies, is concerning to us.

For example, the City of Los Angeles recently updated its construction noise thresholds after observing that newer buildings have increased noise insulation standards due to improved construction techniques and state regulations. Accordingly, the city adjusted its significance thresholds for construction to its impacts on new buildings.

Further, the Bill ignores thresholds that make sense in one environmental setting may not be reasonable in a different setting. For example, labor organizations have been at the forefront of identifying impacts on worker health and public health and the environment, which agencies had never before addressed.

In response to those comments, agencies now regularly address and require mitigation for public health impacts such as toxic air contaminants and valley fever exposure. The Bill, we are afraid, would restrain agencies in the public's ability to respond to changing environmental and public health conditions with scientific thresholds and new mitigation.

And finally, I just wanted to let everybody here know why the building trades care so much about all CEQA bills, whether they're streamlining, which this is, not that, or bills such as these.

We represent construction workers, as you all know, and they are the first people on a job site turning over dirt, creating dust, digging into the ground.

And it is important to us and to our Members that that ground, and I know it's important to Senator Syrto as well that that ground, that job site, is safe for them to work on from the beginning, not to mention the fact that it be safe for people to live on or to work on.

I know that last comment isn't necessarily what this Bill is about, but I wanted to make sure that everybody understood that that is why we are here today. And in many other committees when it comes to bills affecting ceqa. So for those reasons, we do oppose today.

We look forward to seeing the amendments in print and then connecting with Senator Searto's staff as the Bill moves forward. Thank you.

Okay, thank you very much. Anybody else in the room in opposition?

Good morning, Madam Chair Members, Jakob Evans with Sierra Club of California in opposition. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, we'll bring it back to the Members. Does anybody have any questions or comments? Yes, Vice Chair.

Well, thank you, Senator Seyarto, for bringing this Bill forward. I'm glad you have accepted the amendments.

Yes.

Okay. Um, this is a really important conversation. There are developments in my district that have taken 20 to 30 years to even break ground because of their perpetual litigation because of CEQA.

And CEQA has been very prohibitive to and contributed to our housing shortage here in California. So I'm really glad that this conversation is happening and I think that there are opportunities for us to fix CEQA to address our housing needs and I'm glad that this bill aims to do that.

I'm looking forward to seeing it move forward.

Thank you.

Thank you. I wanted to just ask the author about, or your lead witness, if you could address some of the concerns that were raised by the building trades around changing standards. Do you expect LCI would change as time went on or what exactly how would you address those concerns that they raised?

Well, I think the opposition is looking at this bill like it's going to set standards or change standards. It is not. What this does is this document merely provides the suggested information to help lead agencies comply with whatever standard it is. And there's nothing legally binding about the information in this advisory. In fact, it can be changed if somebody else c. Basically what this bill does is it helps alleviate some of the legal issues from people not having that clear guidance so that we can get people working sooner. Because when it's in court, nobody's working, nobody's taking, nobody's building anything.

And that's one of the problems that we're trying. I think that's what the Little Hoover Commission was pointing out on this. So these are two separate bills. And even though they're both trying to provide clarity, there's nothing legally binding in either of them. So. And we'll- we talked about the other ones. Sorry.

So significant thresholds may be different in different locations, and this bill does not do anything to alleviate or make that happen. Like I said, this is advisory.

Okay, thank you. I am planning to support this bill today, and I think it's important to provide more legal certainty and to find that middle ground between not having it set at the state level. So there is still local, there is local input, local control.

But in general, I do believe that we need to be modifying and reforming and updating CEQA because it is clearly a barrier, and we end up with enormous amounts of litigation. And so I support efforts toward that. And this does seem like it takes the right middle ground, path.

And I do hope that you continue to work with the building trades and others who are concerned about making sure that there is a way for it to evolve over time. So I think his main point was that 10 years from now, we may have a different understanding of noise thresholds or something else.

So if LCI would be updating at that time, you know, some mechanism for that to happen in real time. So with that, I think. Senator, Menjivar, do you want to say anything? No. Okay. So with that, I will entertain a motion. Okay, great. I'll ask the Committee. Oh, yes, you did close. You did.

Yeah, that could be my closing. That's fine

So ask the Committee assistant to please call the roll.

SB231, the motion is do pass as amended to Appropriations Committee. [CALL MOTION] 4 to 0 on call.

Okay, it's 4 to 0, and we will leave it on call.

All right, thank you.

Thank you again to the witnesses so we can move on to your second bill.

Okay. SB 232. And thank you again for hearing this bill. SB 232 implements a recommendation again from the Little Hoover Commission in 2024 to commission a study to examine the benefits and drawbacks of some reasonable period during which project review and litigation could proceed to completion, regardless of new modeling that might emerge.

As you all know, our state faces a severe shortage of housing supply from decades of underproduction. We also find ourselves in an energy transition that current infrastructure is unable to support. While CEQA plays an important role for our state's environmental consciousness, we should not be content to let the ambiguity of the law unnecessarily impede projects that serve the state's critical needs.

SB 232 will get the ball rolling on finding more ways to provide legal clarity to our environmental regulations so we can spend less time arguing in court and more time meeting the needs of our state. The Little Hoover Commission is here with me again today to share more about the background and reasoning behind this recommendation. And that will be Ethan Rarick again.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Members. So on some issues, our commission recommended that the Legislature commission additional studies rather than our commission making a specific recommendation. One such area of recommended study, as the Senator said, was the concept of creating some reasonable period of time during which a CEQA case could proceed using the models and standards that existed when the case began.

The current requirement that CEQA use the latest analytical models can become difficult if a project is contested in lengthy litigation, where new modes of analysis can force successive rounds of project redesign and review, and then the redesign is litigated in turn.

However, we also noted that there are significant environmental benefits to using the latest scientific knowledge that is available. So we acknowledged the tension between those two things and recommended some additional study. This bill requires the Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation to submit a report to the Legislature evaluating the impact of such a lock in period. It does not create such a period. We believe that the bill furthers the goals of our recommendation, and again, respectfully request an aye vote.

Okay, thank you. Anybody else wishing to express support? Please come up and state your name, organization, and position.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Members. Raymond Contreras with Lighthouse Public Affairs on behalf of Abundant Housing LA, California YIMBY, and the Home Building Alliance in support. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else in support in the room? Not seeing anybody. Okay. Lead witness in opposition.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, Jeremy Smith here on behalf of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California. Similar to my comments on SB 231, we have reached out and exchanged voicemails with staff on this bill as well. Some of my comments from the previous bill will suffice here as well, but I will add just a couple more thoughts here. First, the CEQA guidelines in effect now already contain lock in provisions providing regulatory certainty under current regulations.

Revisions to the guidelines are prospective, and new requirements will apply to steps in the CEQA process not yet undertaken by the effective date of the revisions. Revisions of the guidelines apply to a CEQA document if the revised guidelines are in effect when the document is sent out for public review.

Furthermore, this bill may also decrease regulatory certainty because the CEQA guidelines are updated in response to legislation and court decisions. If an environmental document is subject to a new piece of legislation or court decision released after the notice of preparation, but the locked in guidelines from this bill are out of date when a notice of preparation is issued, the lead agency and project proponents will be unable to comply with both current law and the outdated guidelines.

And just quickly, a note on litigation, as your analysis correctly points out. I think astutely points out, 2% of all projects are subject to CEQA result in lawsuits in the state. Furthermore, a recent Senate Judiciary Committee analysis on SB 1118 by former Senator Borgeas noted that of all litigation in California, our CEQA litigation is between 1 and 3%. So this idea that CEQA lawsuits are out of hand, the data does not support that.

From what I have seen. I know in real time, in all of your districts, you hear the stories about lawsuits that, you know, not by us, not by, you know, people that want to build housing, by folks who don't want certain projects in their district, in your district, in their cities, do occur.

But overall, the data do show that litigation rates are low when it comes to CEQA. So for those reasons, we look forward to seeing the amendments in print for this bill today. We do remain opposed to the bill in print that we're debating on today and look forward to talking to Senator Seyarto as the bill moves forward. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Smith. Anybody else in the room wishing to come forward and express opposition?

Good morning again, Madam Chair and Members. Jakob Evans with Sierra Club California in opposition. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members. My name is Artie Valencia with, on behalf of Restore the Delta. We strongly oppose the bill and look forward to working with the authors on it.

Good morning, Madam Chair. Scott Webb, Director of Advocacy with the Resource Renewal Institute, convener of the Bay Delta environmental coalition. We are in strong opposition to the bill. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Now bringing it back to the Members. Any questions or comments? Okay. I just want to clarify that you are accepting the amendments?

Yes, the amendments are being accepted.

Okay. And I will just express that I don't see any potential harm with the study. And ultimately it will be up to Appropriations if this is something that the bang is worth the buck. So we'll just see what happens. So I am planning to support this today. So is there a motion? Oh, I'm sorry. I would like to hand it back to you for closing.

I would like to close and address a couple of the comments made by the opposition. And I'm going to try to speak just like plain English here for from experience dealing with these issues over the years. There are a lot of projects that get hung up, whether they're road projects, commercial projects, residential projects that get hung up in court over lawsuits. And a lot of those lawsuits are using CEQA and the vagarities that surround it in some cases to make their lawsuit valid.

They go through years and years of litigation, and in the meanwhile, the project dies. People just decide they're not going to spend the money and nobody works and the project doesn't get done. Not only that, but if it does go forward, then a lot of the studies that were done become invalid because they're too old and then they have to go through and do studies again. At the end of the day, the people who get to pay for all that is us, the taxpayers. We're sick and tired of it.

We want to try to get clarity. All this bill does is have a study so that we can talk about what are the drawbacks, what are the benefits, do the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. And we should be doing that with everything. So that's why I would ask that you support this bill so that we can get some answers, we can get some clarity about what we can do to make this process a little more certain. And once it gets to a certain point, it doesn't have to go backwards and start all over again because that is a cost payer expense or a taxpayer expense that we are tired of doing. So anyway. With that, I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Thank you. And will the Committee Assistant please call the roll? Oh yes, the Vice Chair made the motion.

Okay. SB 232, the motion is do pass as amended to Appropriations Committee. [Roll Call]

It's 4 to 0, and we will leave it on call. Thank you. Okay, next we are on item number 10, which is Senator McNerney, SB 279. And if you have lead witnesses in support, they're welcome to come up. And any lead witnesses in opposition are also welcome to come up. And you may begin when you are ready.

Well, thank the Chair and Members. I'm excited to defend my first bill here in Sacramento. I also want to thank the community, the committee, for passing SB 235 on consent earlier this morning. I'd like to begin by accepting the committee's amendments and I thank the committee staff for working closely with my staff to get this to my office.

I'm pleased to present SB 279. This bill increases flexibility for farmers and wine grape growers to compost agricultural waste on site when they have a large biomass event like removal of an orchard or vineyard. This year, as mentioned earlier by Senator Caballero, a nearly complete ban on open burning of agricultural materials went into effect in California.

This places new burdens on farmers and growers. How are they going to be able to manage their ag waste? Unfortunately, California does not have enough commercial composting facilities to meet current demand. To help California farmers and growers, we need to increase their ability to compost organic materials on-site in a sustainable way.

SB 279 allows farmers and growers to combine their compost from large-scale ag waste event with off-site ag waste to catalyze composting process. The bill also allows small community composters such as urban farms and school farms to compost up to 500 cubic yards of green waste and food scraps. This is up from 100 cubic yards.

SB279 allows small and medium-sized composting operators to accept food scraps amounting to 10% of the composted mass. This will help divert waste from landfills and reduce our emissions of methane. Lastly, SB 279 increases the amount of compost an operation is allowed to sell or give away from 1,000 to 5,000 cubic yards annually.

The bill is co-sponsored by California's Against Waste, Western Tree Nut Association, California Wine Grape Growers, the Climate Center, and People Food and Land Foundation. With us today to testify in support is Erica Parker of California's Against Waste and Roger Isom of the Western Tree Nut Association.

Right. You're welcome to go ahead.

Good morning Chair and Members. My name is Erica Parker. I am a policy associate at Californians Against Waste and a proud co-sponsor of SB 279. California has made bold commitments to fight climate change and SB 1383 is one of the strongest tools that we have to address the climate crisis.

Right now, organic waste in landfills produces 20% of the state methane, a climate super pollutant that is 84 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in the short term. To address this, 1383 has set a goal to cut organic waste disposal by 75% by 2025. But we're far from reaching that target.

One of our biggest challenges is capacity and Cal Recycle estimates that we need 50 to 100 new or expanded facilities to meet this demand. But expanding capacity isn't just about large industrial facilities.

SB 279 helps small-scale solutions flourish by removing regulatory barriers that hold back school gardens and community composters, while also eliminating disincentives for growers, the very people eager to be part of this solution. Additionally, composting isn't just about managing organic waste. It's a key tool for climate resilience.

Compost improves soil health, increases carbon sequestration, enhances water retention, and reduces reliance on artificial fertilizers. To fully realize these benefits, we need a composting system that works at all scales, and comparing small-scale composters and growers to large industrial facilities is like comparing apples to oranges.

Community composters operate on a much smaller scale and they don't collect tipping fees or garbage rates. Many community composters are small nonprofits that operate using donations and rely on volunteers to provide essential community services and public education. Similarly, growers neither collect garbage rates nor tipping fees.

And for the purposes of this bill, on-farm composting is not a daily ongoing operation, but a way to responsibly manage large biomass events every 25 to 30 years, like a whole orchard or vineyard. Removal and treating small composters and growers like waste facilities creates unnecessary barriers and prevents them from being part of this solution.

They simply want the flexibility to manage organic waste responsibly, returning nutrients to the soil, reducing agricultural burning, and creating healthy climate-resilient communities. Finally, increasing compost capacity also gives jurisdictions more purchasing options for meeting their procurement targets. SB 279 is an essential step forward for meeting our climate goals.

It empowers growers and small compost to do what they, composters to do what they do best, turning waste into a resource while helping California meet its climate and waste reduction goals. And for these reasons, I respectfully urge your aye vote today.

Thank you. Go ahead.

Morning Madam Chair, members of the committee, My name is Roger Isom. I'm the President and CEO of the Western Tree Nut Association. We represent growers, hullers, and processors of almonds, walnuts, pecans, and pistachios.

And actually many of my points have already been made, as you heard in the previous bill by Senator Caballero, lower commodity prices like down on walnuts and almonds, the implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, or SGMA, have greatly increased the biomass that's being generated.

At the same time, a lot of the outlets that we used to go to, like biomass plants have shut down in the San Joaquin Valley. As has been stated, ag burning has been completely eliminated as of January 1st. So our ability to use these materials and take them other places has been greatly diminished.

Using them on site, like shipping them and incorporating them, the price for that for contractors has skyrocketed from a few $100 per acre to almost $2,000 per acre. So on-site composting makes incredible sense and it's just such a solution.

I want to point out that once an orchard or vineyard has been removed, and until such time as a new vineyard or orchard is in place, there's no farm income from that farm. I do want to state upfront too, the scope of this bill is very limited.

We will not impact existing commercial operations, nor do we want to. We need those facilities to be in place and be financially successful.

We simply want to use and utilize our own compost as much as possible, especially in these once-in-25 or 30-year situations, and sell any excess compost that we can't use up to these proposed limits. I again want to state what we're talking about here. These are not commercial, continuously operating facilities.

We don't have this amount of biomass being contributed or generated every single year. These are just once in a few year times opportunities. So the ability to produce and sell compost, even at this very small amount will help ag producers to improve air quality, improve soil health and remain financially viable until the next full crop is produced.

And with that, we would urge you to support this bill to help agricultural operators such as my growers, survive until the next crop can be produced. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Anybody else in the room in support? Yes. Come on forward. Please state your name, organization, and position.

Good morning. Rebecca Marcus in support of SB 279 on behalf of the California Climate and Agriculture Network, the California Certified Organic Farmers, and California Alliance of Family Farms. Thank you.

Good morning again, Madam Chair and Members. Aaron Norwood representing the Almond Alliance, proud to be in support of this measure. Thank you.

Kai Cooper on behalf of People, Food, and Land, a proud co-sponsor of the bill, also in support.

Good morning, Chair and committee. My name is Alison here on behalf of the Climate Center, Central California Environment Justice Network, Central Valley Air Quality Coalition, Carbon Cycle Institute, Santa Cruz Climate Action Network, Salona Center for Environmental Innovation, California Nurses for Environmental Health and Justice, and Friends Committee on Legislation of California in support. Thank you so much.

Margie Lie, Sampson Advisors on behalf of the California League of Food Producers in strong support.

Good morning, Chair, members. Danny Merkley with the Gualko Group on behalf of the California Association of Wine Grape Growers and support.

Good morning, Madam Chair and members. Noelle Cremers with Wine Institute in support.

Chair and members, Steven Fenaroli with the California Farm Bureau in support.

Cynthia Cortez with Restore the Delta in support.

Chair and members, Carlos Gutierrez here on behalf of the California Fresh Food Association and the American Pistachio Growers in support.

Good morning, Chair and members. Lauren Bright of Desert Compost of Palm Springs in support.

Hey, Andy Schrader, former Environmental Policy Director for LA City Council Member Paul Koretz, who's the author of Regenerate LA. The regenerative agriculture and community compost effort in LA. In strong support.

We appreciate the Senator's leadership on this and I'm here to tell you that LA City Council Member Bob Blumenfield just right now in real time, introduced a resolution of support for this bill to the City Council. And the staff asked me to mention that. Thank you.

Good morning, Madam Chair and members. Jacob Evans with Sierra Club California in support. Thank you.

Good morning Chair and members. Courtney Brown, California Alliance for Community Composting and in support. Thank you.

Good morning. Keisha Ernst from Catalyst Bio Amendments in support.

Hello. It's a real pleasure to be here for the first meeting of the new look of Senate EQ 2025. I'm Will Brieger for Climate Action California. And we support this bill. Thank the Senator.

Casey Ernst, Soil Matters in Grass Valley in support.

Dennis Albiani on behalf of California Pear Growers, California Cherry Growers. We support.

Jana Little on behalf of Resoil Sacramento in support.

Sophia Daniels on behalf of Green Restaurants Alliance of Sacramento in support.

Thank you everybody who came today to express support. We will now move to opposition. Lead opposition witness. Welcome.

Good morning Chair Blakespear and members. I'm Neil Edgar on behalf of the California Compost Coalition representing commercial composters handling green and food materials from the growing collection programs in jurisdictions across the state. Few people have spent more time advocating for expansion of composting and sensible regulations than I have, both in California and across the US.

My work with the US Composting Council in the last 23 years, I've been put in the very awkward position of having to oppose this bill. As the sponsors have said, many of the proposed elements of the bill are nonnegotiable. We desperately need to expand composting infrastructure across the state to meet the challenges of SB 1383.

But this is not a reasonable way to go about it. The bill does three key things that we find problematic. It provides an exemption for agricultural operations for an undefined large biomass event. We need to better understand what that means.

But allowing these events to define an ability to become a deregulated commercial composting operation is significant to my members who invested heavily in environmental protection measures. Indeed, these agricultural operators are allowed to already receive, compost, and use unlimited amounts of agricultural materials. What this bill does is allow them to become active participants in the market.

5,000 tons a year is about 125 full truckloads of compost. And every one of these operators would now be a participant in that market, but unregulated. It allows food materials at loosely regulated sites creating risk of environmental impacts and cost inequity for permitted operators who must mitigate those impacts.

Food materials represent significant risk to environmental and public health and are the primary reason we collect solid waste to minimize vectors which carry disease. Small and medium-sized composting operations are also not equipped to deal with the large volumes of contamination that are typically found in collection programs.

And thirdly, it establishes a five-fold increase in the allowed exemptions for any regulation or for small facilities. The regulatory intent of these lower permitting tiers and exclusions is based upon their minimal threat. 12,500 cubic yards weighs 5,000 tons. 10% of that is food. That's 500 tons. That's 1 million pounds of food.

And we would all agree that 1 million tons of food at one site in one location at one time is a lot. There's a potential risk to that even at 500 cubic yards if 10% of that material is food. 20 tons of food at a small site is risky.

For many of us, just managing that small bucket of food material on your kitchen counter is risky. We're talking about 20 tons of material at very small sites. In all these cases, unregulated or under-regulated operators, creating environmental impacts is not a recipe for success. I'll describe this permitting equity as such.

Across the state, 35 facility operators and their ratepayers who use their services have made massive investments into regulatory compliance and mitigation measures. Do I think those compliance measures are fair? No, I think it's a bit overregulated. But that is also appropriate given the concern of potential risk. Deregulation strands investments.

It threatens the viability of these operations given their reliance on agricultural markets. In Yolo County, the county and Northern Composting have partnered on a facility that by the end of this year will have cost $70 million, almost all of it in requirements for Water Board and air district compliance.

That $70 million investment will be stranded to some degree because they sell 100% of their materials to nut orchards and vineyard managers.

Kern County is currently, and too bad Senator Hurtado is not here, currently building a $30 million composting facility at Shafter Wasco that will be marketing materials entirely into agricultural markets there and will be able to manage a lot of the materials that are being generated by orchards and vineyards. Hillary County is doing the same.

Merced County is also building a composting operation. And many of these facilities are also in the Senator's district who already have sunk cost into environmental compliance that will now be challenged by this bill. I thank you for your time, and I hope that we can come to some constructive dialogue around this bill and provide some solutions.

Well, thank you very much. Anybody else in the room in opposition, please come forward and state your name, organization, and position.

Christy Pistani, on behalf of Northern Recycling and Yolo Compost, Napa Recycling and Waste Services Compost, Quackenbush Compost, Upper Valley Recycling Compost and Pacific Organics in Mendocino County. Thank you. Opposed.

Good morning, Chair and members. Larissa Cespedes here on behalf of the California Waste Haulers Council, we align our comments, our position with Mr. Edgar. Thank you.

Good morning, Madam Chair and members, David Craeger for Waste Connections, also in opposition.

Good morning. John Moffatt on behalf of Waste Management, in opposition.

Good morning, Chair and members. Chris Zgraggen with Capital Advocacy on behalf of Republic Services. In opposition.

Thank you. Anybody else in the room in opposition. Okay. Seeing none. I'd like to bring it back to the members, and then we'll turn back to the author. Anybody? Yes, Senator Menjivar.

There we go. My question would be for the proponents of this, can you... You said that this would only be required for a biomass event that occurs 25 to 35 years, every 25 to 35 years. So in my understanding that this bill would only be applicable for once every 25 to 35 years. And to the opposition saying to define that, could you elaborate?

I can take this one. I agree that the one time every 25 to 35 years can be a little loosely defined in this bill. And I think it's something that we're willing to discuss. But we haven't received anything from the opposition giving us the opportunity to discuss that.

And there hasn't been anything, no amendments given to us that I'm aware of or to the author's office that would remove their opposition based on that. But, I mean, we are talking about the removal of these, you know, large parcels of land, and it's not something that happens every couple of years.

They're widely spaced out for every grower. And I'm sure Roger can speak to this a little more, but it's not something that would be an ongoing operation. These are things that happen rarely. And also being able to compost that material is really valuable for these growers.

And you've mentioned there's a lack of capacity for, and this is to anybody, for the current permitted facilities, is there a cap in their capacity? And if there is a cap in their capacity, couldn't we just increase the cap for the permitted facilities?

Yes, we can. Most of the facilities have permitted limits. And in many cases, in the Yolo County facility for an example, they've expanded, they're expanding that facility and they are actively expanding a lot of these. But I would add that this one time event concept is really problematic.

Last year the almond industry alone removed 83,000 acres of almond orchards out of the 1.6 million acres across the state. That's about 4 to 5 million tons of, of orchard material. And you could go segment by segment. The vineyard management, you know, 40,000 acres of vineyard we removed last year. This is a lot of material. This is about as much material in agriculture as our entire composting system manages across the state. So this is not a small one time nebulous event.

Could I comment on that a little bit? We're in the business of producing nuts. We're not in the business of producing compost. If we were to pull out 83,000 acres a year every year, we would no longer be in business. That's not our goal. And quite frankly, once it's removed, that's it until the next orchard comes in.

And that's 20-25 years down the road. And so it is an infrequent event. These aren't, it's large when you look at the whole scale of it. But let's take almonds for example. 70% of the almond growers are 100 acres or less. We're not talking huge operations all coming out at the same time.

These are very small operations coming out infrequently. Yes, over the last three years because it's been unfortunately a perfect storm of sigma, low commodity prices, and ag burning being going away. But it is not something that's sustainable going forward. If this has happened to us every year.

And maybe you Senator or someone, if the primitive facilities, there's additional oversight accountability of them, how are we going to hold the unpermitted facilities accountable for how they take in, how they store compost? Who's going to keep an eye on these patients?

I'll turn that over to Erica.

Yeah, the operations that fall under the excluded tier under CalRecycle, if there were an odor impact or a complaint from a community member or even even a neighboring farmer, they have the ability to report that to the local enforcement agency who can come out and inspect these sites and make sure that they're operating under best management practices.

It's rather a responsive approach versus a maintenance ongoing approach like permitted facilities.

Yes. And the next sort of tier in CalRecycle's structure is the notification tier, and that's where you tell them that, that you exist and they have like an annual inspection. But really, you know, and I think Roger can probably confirm this as well. It doesn't make sense to have growers who are doing this infrequent large biomass composting to be treated as a waste facility. What they're trying to do is find alternatives to manage their waste appropriately and sustainably. And that's really what this bill is doing. We're not trying to compete or, or infringe on the...

I will say that there have been significant investments in this composting capacity, but quite frankly it's not enough to manage the capacity we have right now and certainly not enough with the ban on agricultural burning and the influx of additional material that we're going to have.

I can see how that hindered your ability to come up with options for how to deal with this with this waste. So I agree with that. I have heard in this committee the lack of capacity that exists in this infrastructure to address compost. I just have concerns with the...

Some are going to be permitted, some are not going to be permitted, creating this unfair playing field. And I'm not ever going to be a fan of putting the onus on constituents to file a complaint if something's going on. I'd always want us to be more on top of the situations.

I still have a lot of concerns on this bill. I can recognize perhaps that the opposition has not notified the proponents of these concerns early on. I do recognize this is the first policy committee, and ensuring that those conversations happen is going to be beneficial.

Senator, there's nothing in this bill that would prevent responsible management of the local composting sites. They're still going to be responsible to uphold the law and comply by the law in terms of the health and benefit of the facility. Moreover, they'll be able to use the compost because the farmers are struggling right now, especially the nut growers and vineyards are struggling right now. So anything we can do to help them maintain family farms, I think is going to be beneficial to the community. I certainly don't want to see family farms shut down in my district.

No, I agree. I see the problem. I'm just worried about the solution that we're getting to.

Okay, anybody else? I'll go ahead and make a few comments. So first, I want to thank the author for embracing composting as a topic in your first year and as your first bill in front of this first committee. So I think that composting is really important for us to be spending more time on, and I appreciate the many years Mr. Edgar has put into this and all of the expertise we have in the room and, of course, the supporters. So I would like to increase our ability to compost on site. I think that there's...

It's really important to recalibrate a conversation around if there is a large orchard and there are thousands of acres and some hundreds of them are being taken out or changed over to a different type of crop. So you hear of almonds being taken out and something else being put in because of just changing preferences from consumers and also climate change and other reasons. Being able to keep that all 1,000 acres on site instead of hauling it to a facility that is some miles away.

To me, that seems like it makes a lot of sense. And really those trees or the vineyards are a resource. You know, they really are not a waste, and they should be going right back into the soil. So this bill, the committee amendments tidied it up a little bit, saying that if there are off site agricultural material like manure that's being brought on site to mix with the woody material that it has to come from farmers, it has to come from an agricultural site.

So I think it's important to distinguish between composting that's managing food waste from people's yards, from restaurants, from the green materials that are all mixed together that are heavily contaminated with plastic, including the one I visited in Yolo County, heavily contaminated with plastic. That there's, you know, keeping an agricultural site, agriculture, not mixing it in with composting, that we're very much struggling with the plastics issue in compost.

To me, that is something we should be aiming toward. So I recognize that Mr. Edgar wasn't able and his group and supporters weren't able to get specific amendments suggested that would remove opposition. But I hope that you do do that, because the idea of reducing regulation on composting facilities and making large scale composting of orchards and vineyards more practical is something I think we should be aiming toward.

So, and recognizing that we have a severe shortage of composting operations and that the ones that are in existence are just not able to handle the supply. I think, you know, we have to acknowledge that when we're talking about protectionism, so the perspective of these are going to be stranded assets or stranded facilities.

You know, I think that I fear we're focusing too much on a protection when we really need to be expanding the total pie. So, you know, I encourage continuing to work toward that, but reducing unnecessary barriers, deregulating where needed and where possible.

To me, this is all very smart and practical, and so I'm very much supportive of this bill moving forward. And I hope that you're able to make it across the finish line. It does seem like it's going to have a bit of a rocky road possibly with a lot of the different concerns. But the particular issue of where to set the thresholds, I think that is important.

And I'll also just say in closing that I was very involved in one of my, the elementary school from K to 3 establishing the garden program and then trying to compost the stuff that came from the garden, plus the apple cores and orange peels that would come from the cafeteria and the enormous difficulty with the county regulations. This was one school site, so, you know, that had only K through 3. And we were not able to compost any of that food material from the cafeteria. We're not talking about meat and buns.

We're talking about just the produce that was put in a separate area that they were managing and making sure was uncontaminated without a large intervention effort. And so I recognize the importance and I think urban farms, school gardens, those are all areas that we should be trying to keep the short supply chain on site, composting on site. So again, thank you for working on this and to the author for carrying it, and I will be supporting it today. So with that, would you like to close?

Yes, Madam Chair, I would like to close. First of all, I want to say that this is a common sense bill. We've seen elimination of open burning and, at the same time, an insufficient supply of composting of commercial composters. Our ag folks need this kind of program to be able to survive in today's environment. And I appreciate the comments of both sides. Our office is open to working with the opposition if amendments or comments are produced. With that, I would ask for an aye vote.

Okay, thank you. Is there a motion? Okay. The Vice Chair moves the bill, so will the Committee Assistant please call the roll.

SB 279, the motion is do pass as amended to Appropriations Committee. [Roll Call]

Okay, it's 3 to 0, and we will keep it on call. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. And next we will go to Senator Wiener's bill, SB 71, 71. And if you are here in support or opposition as lead witnesses, please feel free to come up here to the table. And this is file item five.

Yes, go ahead. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Madam Chair, Colleagues, thank you for hearing Senate Bill 71 today.

I want to start by saying that I accept the Committee amendments outlined in the analysis, specifically creating a 2032 sunset date on the exemption for projects supporting near zero technologies like computer press, natural gas and Low NOx, and also excluding TNCs from another aspect of the Bill. So we do accept the Committee's amendments.

In addition, recent author amendments expand the exemption to include bus shelter and lighting, micro transit, paratransit, shuttle ferry projects, transit comprehensive operational analyses and transit infrastructure maintenance. Maintenance? Sustainable transportation projects ranging from rapid bus service to light rail to bike and pedestrian projects. The signal modifications are beneficial to communities and to the environment.

Unfortunately, over the years we have seen situations where CEQA, in terms of the EIRs and studies involved, in addition to appeals litigation, have made it longer and more expensive. To deliver these projects which improve people's lives, we need to do things more expeditiously. I authored Senate Bill 288 in 2020 to create this exemption.

We reauthorized it after the two year sunset in 2022 via Senate Bill 922. We've seen nearly 100 projects statewide invoking this exemption that's been very successful so far and we want to keep that success going.

And it's also important for agencies to be able to plan ahead and not take it right up to the sunset, but remove the sunset, mostly remove the sunset ahead of time. There are all the various guardrails contained in SB922 remain in the Bill. In terms of some of the public participation and analysis that's required.

We need more public transportation in California. As we work in the budget and otherwise to make sure that we don't have service cuts to public transportation in California, we need to be empower our agencies to actually expand this service and give people more and more options in terms of how to get around and this will do that.

So I respectfully ask for your I vote with me today to testify as Jenny DeLumo, an environmental review manager at the SF San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, and Laura Tolkoff, a Transportation Policy Director at Sports.

Great. You're welcome both of you to speak for two minutes.

Hello Chair Blakespear and Committee Members. My name is Jenny DeLumo, the environmental review Manager at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. The SFMD is a Department of the City and County of San Francisco that manages our public transit system, biking and walking infrastructure, paratransit and taxis.

I'm here to testify in support of SB71, including sharing some of the successes of its predecessor, SB288 and SB922. Prior to these bills, it could take months or years to evaluate greenhouse gas reducing transportation projects under CEQA and it now takes us weeks.

In practice, this means that after a project has been designed and vetted through extensive community engagement, the SFMTA uses a checklist to quickly evaluate whether it fits into any of the project types that are allowed under this exemption.

Since SB 288 was passed, the SFMTA has used the exemption to quickly Deliver More than 40 community supported projects such as transit only lanes and prioritization projects on key routes, Vision Zero and Quick build projects that enhance safety for people walking and biking, and most recently a biking enrolling plan to create safer and better connected and more accessible streets.

The sfmta, like other transit agencies, is facing fiscal challenges and as our city's Chief economist has stated, if we don't have a solvent transit agency, we will never have economic recovery. This requires us to be thoughtful and creative and nimble in our solutions to ensure our network gets people where they need to go safely and reliably.

Without this exemption, the SFMTA would spend money and time on the review of climate friendly projects that could otherwise be invested in performance and recovery enhancing transit projects which ultimately saves the agency precious operating dollars. San Franciscans are looking to the SFMTA to deliver the network they need and want.

This includes projects that enhance our transit network and support our transition to a zero emission fleet. We can't go back to a time when these types of projects which have clear environmental benefits took months or years to complete CEQA review and SB71 would help us avoid that.

So I thank you for your consideration this morning and Senator Wiener and the sponsors for their leadership and respectfully urge your I vote on SB71. Thank you very much.

Go ahead. Good morning Chair Blakespear and Members of the Committee. My name is Laura Tolkoff. I'm the Transportation Policy Director for spur, a nonprofit urban policy organization rooted in the Bay Area.

As you know, California's over reliance on on cars is contributing both to our climate crisis and our high cost of living, since transportation is the second largest cost for most Californians.

Yet public agencies that seek to build the very infrastructure that make it safe and convenient for people to walk, bike and use transit regularly sorry, use transit regularly face significant challenges during the project review and permit process.

When projects cost too much and take too too long, we get fewer of them and the public loses trust in the government's ability to deliver on its promises.

In recent years, the Legislature has taken several steps to reform the permitting process for sustainable transportation infrastructure, including passing SB71's predecessors, SB288, SB922 and AB 2503, which exempt certain types of sustainable transportation infrastructure from CEQA. The exemption takes a very surgical approach to modernizing CEQA.

Eligibility for the exemption is limited to projects that reduce climate pollution and make it safe and convenient for people to walk, bike and use transit. And with great respect for ceqa, there are strict guardrails on the exemption.

In order to safeguard the environment and human health, for example, projects must be located in an existing public right of way way and only in urbanized areas so as not to facilitate leapfrog development or habitat loss. Additionally, lead agencies are required to complete racial equity analysis and specified public engagement for the larger scale projects.

The good news is the CEQA exemption for sustainable transportation works and it's working as intended in a policy brief published last week for surveyed exemptions filed with the Governor's Office of of Land Use and climate innovation between January 2021 and August 2024 and found that public agencies are using the exemption to accelerate 92 sustainable transportation projects across the state.

The projects are located across the state, with the majority of them in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and Alameda counties.

The most common uses for the exemption are for active transportation, traffic calming, safety improvements and sidewalk repairs, signal modifications to get buses out of traffic, and investments to shift to zero emission fleets in compliance with CARB's ICT rule. And these are precisely the types of projects that the state needs more of.

SB71 extends this proven strategy to deliver the infrastructure that we need faster, better and at lower cost without compromising our environment and our health. SB71 is really a no cost infrastructure accelerator for the state and it will help transit agencies do more with less, which is so critical as my colleague described.

And so for all of these reasons, we are proud to be a co sponsor of SB71 and encourage your I vote on this Bill. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, all the me toos, please state your name, organization and position.

Thank you Madam Chair Matt Robinson, Legislative Advocate for the California Transit Association. Very quickly, I would just like to thank your staff Bryn Cook for all the work she put in on this Bill with us and we respectfully ask for your I vote today. Thank you.

Alex Sharz on behalf of the Bay Area Council, proud co sponsor and support.

Madam Chair and Members Michael Pimdell here on behalf of a number of individual transit agencies, CalTrain, Monterey, Salina, Sam Trans Santa Cruz Metro, sunline Transit Agency and the San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority all in support.

Thank you Madam Chair. Chris McKayley on behalf of LA Metro, a proud co sponsor as well.

Thank you. Seamus Garrity, Lighthouse Public affairs on behalf of Streets for All and Movela in strong support. Will Brieger on behalf of Climate Action California in support.

Thank you Chairmembers, Chris Strong with Capital AVSI on behalf of the California Hydrogen Business Council and support.

Steve Wallach on behalf of the California Association for Coordinated Transportation, also known as calhac, in support.

Good morning. John Moffitt on behalf of the American Council of Engineering Companies of California in support.

Good morning. Keith Kulich on behalf of AARP California in support.

Charles Watson on behalf of BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit District in support thank you.

Good morning. Moira Topp on behalf of Orange County Transportation Authority in support.

Madam Chair Members. Andrew Antwee with Charioter Antwee, Schmelzer and Lang here today on behalf of the. City of Santa Monica and the city. Of Goleta in strong support with thanks to the author.

Good morning. Chris Lee, on behalf of the San Mateo County Transportation Authority and support.

Well, thank you for all the supporters who came today. Anybody in opposition? Do we have any lead witnesses in opposition? All right, seeing none. Anybody who would like to express their opposition? Who's in the room? All right, seeing none. We'll bring it back to the Committee.

Does anybody have any comments they would like to make on this Bill? Yes. Senator Menjevar.

I'm going to turn the question because you mentioned this specifically. You mentioned that I wrote this down. Public engagement will still happen for large projects, or did I understand that it's only going to be for large projects?

Public engagement is. Well, most cities have a public engagement requirement and all types of projects. And every project that uses the exemption also has to be approved by the board of the agency in a public format. And. Yes. So in a public board meeting. And there are usually public engagement requirements that each jurisdiction has.

We specified for the larger projects that there would be more public engagement knowing the extent that those projects might be in people's communities.

So there's, there's always like two types, right? The public Board Meetings that happen nowhere near the area that these projects are going to happen, and then actual public hearings or public meetings that occur in the area that these projects are going to happen. Does this then remove the ladder? Like. No.

Public meetings will occur in areas the projects are going to occur? No.

Okay.

Okay. And then the analysis gave one example regarding San Diego, and I want to see if I understood this correctly. The exemption was given for something to create like a hub for Metro, and that was completely swiped. And then instead employee parking was created on that site. Does this create scenarios or.

I mean, I know there's a current exemption. Now we're continuing to create scenarios where a project is given the exemption and it can be scraped and something else will be created instead.

I mean, in General, for SQL, if you get SQL clearance for some, for a project, whether it's an exemption or an EIR or anything. And if you then say, zero, I'm doing a completely different project, that's a different project. So I don't. That's just with CEQA in General.

Okay.

So then I'm guessing. I read it.

Yeah.

I don't know all the details of that project. But like if I, you know, if they get a ceqa, whether it's an exemption or any other form of SQL clearance for, you know, a rapid bus line. And then they decide, you know, we're going to instead, you know, make it a truck thruway, like that's a different project.

And Senator, I'd like to get your response. There was comment in the analysis from the Committee regarding consideration of just an extension allowing legislative oversight.

I know we got some data of how many projects per approximately 100 projects have utilized this exemption, allowing us or taking away our ability to continue oversight if we're not doing just an extension.

I, I, there's always oversight. For example, the CEQA statute itself does not have a sunset and there's continual and we could argue whether, you know, you could argue all laws should have sunsets. There's an argument for that. But we, we typically do that, especially with newer, with new laws.

We do a sunset to see how it's going to work and then we make it permanent if we like it. And so here this law was, we enacted this in 2020. It's been pretty heavily utilized so far and it's had a lot of successes. And so we think it's appropriate just to make it permanent.

That doesn't remove, but it's adding additional.

Projects or way bigger projects.

No, in terms of the biggest projects, you know, the light rail, light rail, rapid bus, those are, those have always been in there.

There are some expansions with constraints on them, but you know, there will still be, the Legislature can always come back and say something happened that we didn't like, so we want to change something about it. That happens all the time. And at the request of the Committee, we did keep a sunset.

The 2232 for certain, near zero type of vehicles. So I think, you know, after the, been around for about five years now, it's been successful. I think it's appropriate to largely, as we're doing, remove the sunset and the Legislature can always step back in and make changes.

Can I, maybe I need clarification from the chair. My question was the inclusion of additional projects. I gave one example from Metro's Next gen bus plan, which is 80 lane miles. Are those currently included in this exemption that exists now or is that an additional.

I think that's current, I believe. Please, maybe Ms.

Tolkoff, may I offer a little bit and then I'll turn it to my colleague here. So the Next gen bus plan was initiated in 2018. Some of the lanes were approved prior to SB288 and some of them were approved after SB288 and under SB922, and it's a suite of transit priority projects under this plan.

So things like addressing hotspots of delay at key intersections and other improvements to make the buses faster.

I'm familiar with the plan. I know it very well. I just want to confirm if that's already included. You can imagine my constituents.

Yeah, that has been NextGen. Bus has been there since the beginning. So since the original Bill, SB288, that's when they begin taking advantage of the exemptions that are created under state law.

Helpful. Thank you. Okay. Any other comments or questions from Committee? I want to thank the author for working with the Committee staff and with me directly on this Bill. I think it does strike the right balance, and I think it's appropriate to try it out for a few years, as has been done.

92 Projects is a lot to have already gone through this and utilized the exemption. I think it shows the need for it. And we do have the reality that projects take too long and cost too much.

And so figuring out how we can have processes that protect the environment, create mitigation when needed, have public input, but also move forward in a timely way is a really important goal. And I think we're still working to make our processes achieve that goal better.

So to me, this is forwarding that goal, and I am very much in support of it, and I thank you for bringing it. So with that, I will invite you to close.

I respectfully asked for an aye vote. Thank you.

Okay, we have a motion from Senator Padilla and it's due. Pass, as amended.

Okay. SB $71. Pass, as amended. To Transportation Committee Senators Blakespear. Aye. Blakespear. Aye. Validaris. Dahle. Dali. Aye. Gonzalez. Hurtado. Menjavar. Menjevar. Aye. Padilla. Padilla. I. Perez.

It's 4 to 0, and we will leave it on call. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Colleagues.

Okay, do it. Zero. Okay. Senator Padilla, are you prepared and ready?

She went back to chair, local governance.

And we have visuals behind you.

I was going to say, Madam Chair, my lead witnesses have exhibits with the consent of the commission of the Committee.

Consent is granted.

Thank you.

And you may proceed.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Members. I am pleased to present SB 45, which will reduce plastic litter and increase recycling rates in California by requiring the largest beverage manufacturers to implement the same tether cap on plastic bottles that has been implemented across the European Union, a market composed of residents of more than 400 million people.

I want to be clear that we have crossed amendments in this bill, which has substantially narrowed the scope of the bill. And to be clear, what is exempt are PET single use plastic containers that contain alcohol beverages. Certainly, aluminum's obviously excluded. Juice beverages that are 100% juice. This applies to content volume that is less than 2 liters.

So it is narrowly scoped. It also does not apply to the production side where producers of these single use products produce less than 16 million units of product per year. That is an effort to exclude some of the potential impact on smaller businesses on the production end here while still capturing more than 93% of the issues at hand. So to that. Plastic bottle caps, as many of you know, are some of the most ubiquitous and preventable sources of plastic pollution in California.

What's interesting is when the caps become separated from the bottles, they are never fully biodegradable. They are unable to be captured in existing infrastructure and put into the recycling waste stream. They shed microplastic, they leach toxins, they in the waste streams, rivers, in the ocean.

They also ultimately enter the food chain and can end up as microplastics in our bodies and impact public health. We are only just now beginning to understand the extent of this problem. They consistently rank in California in the top five most frequently... Excuse me, found litter on California beaches. To be clear, according to CalRecycle's 23-24 assessment 47%.

Only 47% of the bottle caps of these single use products are actually recaptured for recycle. Although 70% of the total bottle product is captured, only 43% of the caps are. They are deadly, as you know, for marine life. They are mistaken for food. And again, they enter the food stream.

On the question of cost, the committee analysis, and I will reference your analysis at page 10, paragraph 1 cites a NOAA marine debris economic study looking at one county, Orange County, between the periods of June and August as early as 2014 estimated that a reduction of just 25% would save that county over $32 million in public cost and consumer costs just in that period alone. When caps, as I said, are separated from the bottles, they are nearly impossible to recycle.

Because of their configuration and size, they are not able to get captured in existing machinery and end up as residuals and end up in landfills, in addition to the other problems that I cited a few moments ago. When they are remaining attached, they are less likely to be ending up in those dispositions. I want to be clear that this legislation will not increase, contrary to what may have been asserted, it will not increase the amount of plastic into the waste stream.

Berry Global's redesigned bottles and caps for Coca-Cola companies have resulted in a 10% weight reduction from the cap and a 20% reduction in overall litter package volume and weight. That's the empirical evidence that's been experienced now in the markets where these standards are actually being implemented as we speak.

Germany based Krones, which produces plastic bottles and caps for several large beverage companies including Coke and Anheuser-Busch, have reported reducing plastic packaging by 39,000 tons with their cap and bottle redesigned to include tethers. Moreover, this cap has already been introduced, as I referenced, on some bottles in California's market at no cost to the consumer.

This bill is not new. When the EU introduced tethered caps in 2018, legislation in California at that time proposed the same. Beverage industry at the time defeated that legislation with the promise of public information campaign and education to address the problem.

Today, seven years later, the problem remains the same, only there are 2 billion more plastic bottles and plastic bottle caps being generated here annually. This issue is not going away. A similar bill has been introduced in the Illinois Legislature and in local ordinances across the nation from Massachusetts to California.

SB 45 is necessary for California to reduce plastic consumption, increase recycling rates, and protect wildlife, human health, and our natural environment, not to mention the direct and indirect financial and human costs we are already paying with the status quo. With me today are Miriam Gordon from the Story of Stuff Project and Mark Murray with Californians Against Waste.

Honorable Chair Blakespear and Committee Members, thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony today. I'm Miriam Gordon. I'm the Reuse Director at the Story of Stuff Project and one of the original proponents of the Leash the Lid Bill in 2017. We are here in strong support of this measure.

As Senator Padilla said, plastic caps are among the top five littered items on California beaches based on 30 years of coastal cleanup data. Over 16,000 tons of plastic caps are littered and landfilled annually in our state, and plastic harms marine wildlife and ecosystems in myriad ways.

Wildlife mistake bottle caps for food, leading to choking and starvation and a variety of diseases related to ingestion of plastic and the chemicals impact embedded in them. Degraded plastics pollute our air and water. We eat, drink, and breathe microplastics and they're accumulating in our bodies. They've been linked to increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and death.

Micro and nanoplastics are found now in all major organs, including the brain. A recent study found an average of 10 grams of microplastics in the human brain, the equivalent of two teaspoons of sugar. That's an average. The policy was adopted by the EU finally in 2019. It's enforced in all 27 countries. Californians understand the need for this.

My friend said to me the other night, are you kidding me? I've traveled all over Europe and bottle caps are tethered. How can California not pass this bill? Bottling facilities replace their capping equipment every five to 10 years, so they invest in upgrades regularly.

In closing, the technology exists, beverage companies are using it, and the environmental benefits are undeniable. Not one of the arguments of this highly profitable industry is more important than protecting the health of your constituents and the planet. We thank Senator Padilla for his leadership on this bill and respectfully urge your aye vote.

Madam Chair and Members, Mark Murray with the environmental group Californians Against Waste. Excellent analysis in terms of focusing on this unique and substantive problem for this very small, little product. I love the line in the analysis, despite their relative minor volume, plastic caps punch above their weight in terms of litter pollution.

While most of these PET beverage containers get recycled, in California, we're doing a good job of recycling the container. The vast majority of the bottle caps are not getting recycled. The proponents and opponents of this legislation agree that the only way this cap gets recycled is if it stays with the bottle.

They get recycled at the end of the line, not at the beginning of the line. And if people... This little cap that I bought in this container I bought at Raley's this morning, it has public education on it. Recycle bottle with cap on. If this goes through the recycling system and I've got the cap on it and this gets compacted, it gets bailed, what do you think is going to happen to that cap? It's going to shoot off, it's going to pop off. It's not going to stay in the recycling system.

This is the same bottle sold in Europe with the tethered cap. This is all we're talking about is putting these little tethers. Probably can't see from here, but this cap is smaller than this cap I bought today on the same product. It's 1 gram smaller, about 10%.

And that's been the experience in Europe. When this measure failed passage in California in 2017 and then in 2018, we didn't have the experience of Europe. We're hearing the same arguments from the beverage industry today that we heard in 2017 and 2018. This is going to cost too much, it's going to increase the volume of plastic, and why don't we try public education.

The experience of Europe is that this didn't increase. It actually reduced. Examining the caps, redesigning the caps to include tethering reduced the volume of plastic, not just in the cap, but in the entire bottle. In terms of cost, one of the beverage producers was kind enough to share with us the cost of this tethered cap compared to this is a whopping 2/10 of a cent per container. I'm taking a look at this picture.

I'm taking a look at the volume of plastic caps that are being littered and disposed in California. And even if the price is 2/10 of a cent per container, that seems like a price that is worth paying to reduce the volume of this plastic litter. I haven't heard a single argument from the industry in the last month that isn't the exact same arguments they made in 2017 and 2018.

None of those arguments came to fruition. I still don't understand what this unspecified concern is over small businesses and jobs. Haven't indicated exactly how that's going to transpire. We know that this is working in Europe. 45 billion containers already have this. Public education, it's on the cap.

And yet we still have a predominantly low recycling rate for the caps. In 2017, the beverage industry was saying that 87%. They were claiming 87% of the caps stayed with containers. No basis for that, no study of that. Today I think they're saying 83%. Both of those numbers are bogus. The caps are not staying with the containers.

They fall off throughout the recycling system. We could get every single consumer to screw these caps back on and these caps are still not going to make their way all the way through the recycling system. This is a common sense measure. It's working in Europe. We urge your aye vote.

Thank you very much. Others in the room wishing to express support?

Good morning, Madam Chair and Members. I'm Elizabeth Espinosa, here today on behalf of the County of Santa Barbara in support. Thank you.

Jennifer Clary, Clean Water Action, in support.