Assembly Standing Committee on Natural Resources

Welcome to the Assembly Natural Resource Committee hearing. We're one member short of a quorum. So if you are assemblymember on this committee and you are seeing this or your staff is seeing this, please help us establish a quorum. The following measure has been polled. That's item 11, SB 675, Padilla.

There are two measures that are proposed for consent. Item four, SB 423. Is that it? There it is. Quorum's been established. So I'm going to shut up and let the secretary call the roll real fast.

[roll call]

Thank you so much. A quorum is established. We've got two measures proposed for consent. Item four, SB 423, Smallwood-Cuevas, and item six, SB 581 Pro Tem Mcguire. Do we have a motion on the consent calendar? Motion by the Vice Chair. Second by Mr. Zbur. Madam Secretary, can we call the roll?

[roll call]

Perfect. The consent calendar has been moved and adopted. There are 11. 11 bills to be presented today, starting with Senator Wiener. SB 71, whenever you're ready.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. First, I want to thank you and the Committee for working with us on this Bill. This is now my third time in this Committee on this particular CEQA exemption going back to 2020. And we always appreciate. Appreciate the engagement. I'm happy to accept the Committee's amendments. There are three of them.

One is changing the sunset removal to a 2040, January 1, 2040 sunset. The limited 2032 sunset for a subset of projects that was put in by Senate Environmental Quality will remain, but otherwise, the vast majority of the Bill will now be a 2040 sunset.

In addition, it will revert the definition of right of way to existing law, with some additional protections for utilities and then clarifying language around Tier 4, the Tier 4 diesel train exemption. So I believe those are the three Committee amendments that we are accepting today.

So SB71 will now extend the sunset on a statutory CEQA exemption that we originally created in 2020 as SB288, and that was extended two years later as SB922 and this exemption applies to sustainable transportation, certain light rail, rapid bus service, bike, pedestrian.

We're adding in some additional items, including micro transit, paratransit, shuttles, ferry projects and a few others. This has been a very successful, very successful exemption. I think we're at around 100 or so projects that have invoked it.

It's been particularly well used in San Francisco, Los Angeles and other parts of the state, and it expedites projects that we very much need to help people get around in a sustainable way and to be able to make that choice.

And I respectfully ask for your aye vote with me today to testify in support are Matt Robinson from our sponsor, the California Transit Association, and Marcus Barango, Transportation Planner at SFMTA.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Matt Robinson. On behalf of the California Transit Association, we are one of the co sponsors along with LA Metro, Spur and the Bay Area Council.

I want to echo the Senator's comments and really thank the Committee for all the work over the last couple of weeks to get us here today to a place that we are all comfortable with.

I'd also like to just note, as the Senator said, we are really making minor modifications to the law that's been around for five years. We continue to learn lessons from the agencies that have implemented this, issues that they may have run into definitions that need further clarification, et cetera. And that's primarily what this Bill does.

I will note, though, as the Senator said, we are adding some forgotten modes since the Bill was first passed in in 2020 and then again refined in 2022. And those include things like microtransit, buses, ferry services, paratransit, et cetera.

And with that, again, most of this legislation is simply clarifying work that is, as the Senator said, has been ongoing, has been done successfully by agencies up and down the state, local governments, public transit operators, et cetera, primarily for the benefit of our state's most disadvantaged as well as our bicycle and pedestrian community.

I'm happy to answer any questions on the legislation I've been doing this for. This is my fourth go round, three with the Senator and one with Assembly Member Lee. And with that I respectfully ask for your aye vote. Thank you.

Sorry. Good afternoon, Chair and Committee Members. My name is Marcus Barango and I'm an environmental review team planner at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. The SFMTA is a Department of the City and County of San Francisco that manages our public transit system, biking, rolling and walking infrastructure, para-transit and taxis.

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

In practice, it 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 allowed under this exemption.

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

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

Without this exemption in our toolbox, 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, including future projects that enhance our transit network and support the transition to a zero emission fleet.

It would be detrimental to our network, economic recovery and climate goals if we go back to a time when these types of projects are which have clear environmental benefits took months or years to complete CEQA review. SB71 would avoid that.

The SFMTA thanks you for your consideration this afternoon and Senator Wiener and the sponsors for their leadership and respectfully urge your aye vote on SB71. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Are there persons in the hearing room in support of this Measure?

Good afternoon Mr. Chair. Chris McKeley on behalf of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, LA Metro's proud co sponsor of the measure. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Chair and Members. Michael Pimtel here on behalf of number of organizations Caltrain, City and County Association of Governments of San Mateo County, Monterey Salinas Transit, Sam Trans, Santa Cruz Metro, SF Bay Ferry, SolTrans and Sunline Transit Agency all in support. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Mckinley Thompson Morley on behalf of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority and support.

Good afternoon. Steve Wallach here to express support on behalf of the Alameda County Transportation Commission, the Alameda Contra Costa Transit District, the. Golden Gate Bridge District, Foothill Transit, and the California Association for Coordinated Transportation.

Chair and Members Moira Topp, on behalf of the Orange County Transportation Authority, in support.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members. Sylvia Solis Shah, here on behalf of the City of Santa Monica, City of Goleta, the City of Los Angeles, CACTI, the California City Transportation Initiative and Metrolink, all in support. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Chair and Members. David Azevedo, on behalf of AARP, California in support.

John Mchale on behalf of the American. Council of Engineering Companies, California here in support. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members. Lauren De Valencia representing the American Planning Association and support.

Good afternoon. Chairmembers Kirk Blackburn, here on behalf of the San Diego Association of Government, SANDAG in support.

Michael Lane with SPUR co sponsor and strong support.

Clifton Wilson on behalf of the City and County of San Francisco. We'd also like to align ourselves with the Comments made by SFMTA. Thank you. Both in support.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members. Rosanna Carvacho Elliott, here on behalf of the City of Alameda, also in support. Thank you.

Somebody in the hearing room in opposition to this measure? Seeing none. Any persons in the hearing room who would like to register their opposition to this measure? Well done, senator. We'll turn it back to committee members. Motion by Mr. Schultz, second by Mr. Kalra. Questions, comments from committee members? Mr. Zbur.

Good- Good afternoon. So I'm basically supportive of the bill but had questions about some of the details. I said you mentioned that you, you were accepting three committee amendments and I was wondering if you could go into those a bit more because those were the issues that I had with the bill.

So on the, on the first one, the- the diesel powered heavy rail projects, what was that intended to cover?

That was a senate suspense amendment from the Appropriations Committee and it is being scaled back in this committee.

What does scaled back mean?

Thank you for the question, assemblymember. The language that came out of the Senate Appropriations Committee said that a tier 4 locomotive or the system operating tier 4 locomotives, which essentially the cleanest diesel locomotives you can get, those would also qualify for what had been a zero emission rail exemption in the bill.

After working with the committee and hearing some concerns about the addition or the expansion of these provisions to a diesel fleet, we worked to scale that back to make sure that those would only apply in certain air basins where essentially they meet various attainment slash non attainment levels.

And I believe the only agency in the state that would be left that operates a fully tier 4 diesel locomotive system is the Sonoma Marin Area Rapid Transit rail system.

But if others were to get to a fully tier 4 diesel system like Metrolink will someday and they can meet non attainment requirements, then they could also be subjected to the requirements or the permissions in the bill, I guess.

But aren't you incentivizing non tier 4 purchases with this? I mean, because it's not like the- it's not like the- it's not like the equipment is going to be eliminated in 10 years.

I mean, you're making long term purchasing decisions and I just have a lot of heartburn doing anything that's actually exempting from CEQA diesel powered heavy rail projects.

Right. We wouldn't. They would not. If you ran a tier 3 system, for example, you would receive no benefits from this bill. You would still have to comply with the California Environmental Quality act as it is today, meaning you would have to do all the analysis that's required into there, the EIR developments, et cetera.

The only locomotive system that would be allowed is a tier four fully, and that's just that, one rail operator.

But there still wouldn't be zero emission. They would not qualify. They would be. It's not zero emission.

Right. So. And in some instances, you might say it might incentivize folks to go to the cleanest locomotive type there is out there in a positive way, but you wouldn't be incentivizing folks to go backwards.

And why, why do you need that? I mean, why- why should not the public have the ability to understand whether or not diesel emissions going through their neighborhoods are going to have some kind of public safety impact that CEQA would provide?

As noted, this was Senate Appropriations Committee suspense amendment. Say that and I will. If a project is $100 million or more, which any route project is going to be, there are public meeting requirements in the bill as well.

Would you- would you- would you be open to just taking that, that part of the exam? I know that it came out of Senate Appropriations, but I mean, I'm not gonna be able to vote for this with this in it. On the one that's on the floor.

That was a appropriations suspense amendment. It was not an author amendment. And so I'm, I, that's not a, I get. That's not a commitment that I can make to you.

Okay. So the other, the other.

But I do want to just note that working with the committee, it was scaled back.

And I saw that. I think it's, it's better. So the, the other issue related to the right of way. So what is- what is the- what is the new language on the right of way?

So the, in 71, we proposed an expansion of the definition of right of way in the committee amendment. It's scaled back to the existing definition and existing law of right of way with some additional protection for utility assets. So it's a little more restrictive than existing law. Right.

The- the current bill would- would it, it would exempt bus lane sort of conversions. Wouldn't it?

Yes, that's exist- that's existing law.

I get that. But I'm getting comments from my constituents about this bill because they're concerned about the interplay between this and SB 79.

And what they're concerned about is that now we can actually go through that there's a CEQA exemption for bus lane conversion. And basically there would be no protection in, in bus lanes being converted to lanes with stops that would qualify for either the half mile or the quarter mile development authorization under SB 79.

And so I just want to flag that for me. I'm going to support this today, but whether I support this on the floor will depend on where SB 79 lands.

Yeah, I mean, cities, cities, transit agencies make public decisions about whether to build subways, whether to build light rail, whether to do bus rapid transit. And they have to go through the normal process of doing that and they have to allocate public money. And they're

either city councils or transit agencies tend to have elected officials in their governing board. And so those are public political decisions that are made about whether to create certain kinds of public transportation. And so that- that won't change.

Yeah, it won't change from this. But what's the process that allows the public to sort of weigh in on that? You know, if you basically can convert a bus lane in the community to one that now triggers an ability to sort of put in 65 foot buildings in the middle of certain neighborhoods, that's.

It doesn't sound like we're eliminating a lot of the public processes that allow the public to come in and have.

I mean, CEQA is not the only public process there. When- When- When an agency or a city is approving, especially something as large as a, you know, a big transit project that goes through its own public process.

And in addition to the fact that in this bill, if the project is $100 million or more, which these projects, unfortunately, I wish they were less than that, but they're not. There are public meeting requirements in the bill.

Yeah, well, I'm going to support the bill today, but I'm sort of flagging that. You know, looking at the totality of sort of what has moved through both of the houses and Legislature in this cycle, which have resulted in good goals to streamline housing and other things. The

combined effect of those is getting me very concerned about the lack of any kind of public process for people to express their views on things that may be impacting them. But given that most of this is already in place and with the concerns that I've expressed related to the diesel trucks in the public right away.

So the other thing on the right of way, it's. It's existing, so you wouldn't be able to use utility- utility rights of way.

Yeah. So what we had attempted to do was there are three sections in the Bill that all have different distinctions of what right of way the projects can be built on. For bus lane conversions, et cetera.

They need to be in the public right of way or the highway right away for rail projects need to be in the rail right away or the highway right away for utility projects need to be on land owned by the public agency or on land owned by a public or private utility.

We had attempted to make sort of a catch all that said, if you're doing one of these three buckets or one of the projects in these three buckets, then follow these right away issues.

The committee staff rightfully pointed out that there could be some issues here related to the massive amount of property that you utility zone that may be outside of those urban areas. We're trying to incentivize these projects.

And so what we did was we put everything back in place as it was or as it is today in the law, and then we conditioned that those utility sites must be in the urban area. So that's the guardrail that the senator mentioned on those. Great.

Well, I'm going to vote today, but reserve my right to take a look at it when it gets to the floor. Absolutely.

Mr. Muratsuchi.

Thank you. I wasn't going to speak, but following my colleague from West Hollywood's line of questioning. Yeah, I am getting increasingly concerned about all these CEQA exemptions. We passed a CEQA exemption for advanced manufacturing and now we're passing a CEQA exemption for diesel engines. I mean, where do we draw the line? Savvy?

We draw the line wherever the legislature decides to draw the line, is the answer. That is a very, very tiny piece of this bill. And as Mr. Robinson mentioned, it covers one rail system in the entire State of California. And in fact, that could change in the future. But that's the state of the world right now.

And the vast majority of this bill, this has been invoked about 100 times in the last five years. And it's been, you know, zero emission bus service, zero emission light rail service, you know, bike safety infrastructure, pedestrian safety improvements.

You know, if you look at what we're including now, bus shelters, just this is all these are all things that most people would say are really good and are very environmentally beneficial. And that's why the exemption was created. And this committee passed it out back in 2020. I think you were there at the time.

We go back a long way together in this committee. And then that's why it's been getting broad bipartisan support as well.

And I would just say, Assemblymember Muratsuchi, if you'd permit me, on the diesel locomotives, the diesel locomotives that are particularly called out in this bill, we're talking about only the passenger rail locomotives. So that's we're not talking about freight locomotives or anything like that. They are the cleanest of the clean.

In fact, a tier 4 locomotive would have put you on a compliance pathway in carbs and use locomotive regulation that's how clean those locomotives are. And frankly, that is what is at the disposal of the transit operators today. Because if you think about in your area. Right.

Putting overhead catenary on the entire Metrolink system, that is something that I know has been explored but is very costly. Very. That's going to be decades, if not centuries out. Right.

And so when we look at the options, that's where most agencies are going these days is purchasing those tier fours or piloting hydrogen locomotives or battery electric locomotives. But the delivery of those is years in the future.

And so it would be some time before you would have another public transit operator that would be able to take advantage of this. My guess is we would be at that 2040 sunset before that happened.

I just want to clarify for the record, I'm pretty sure I voted for the previous transit CEQA exemptions. You know, I even voted for Ms. Wick's housing CEQA exemption. Go figure that. But yeah, I just want to register my concern that we. It's the whole. What is it, cottage cheese analogy.

At what point do we have more holes than cheese?

For the record, the original version of my other CEQA bill was trying to deal with the cheese, not the holes. And there's a lot of pressure in this legislature in general in both houses to go towards exemptions instead of changing CEQA itself. And that just is what it is, just a dynamic.

Any other questions, comments from committee members? You sure, Mr. Ellis? Okay. Mr. Connolly.

Yeah, maybe just a clarification as well. It sounds like due to the amendments, this would only apply in air basins as well. Is that what does that mean? Yeah, if you can explain what that means.

I'm going to try to get this right, Lawrence. In order to use the tier 4 locomotive permission nature of the bill. Right. That says you can do stations or system improvements on tier 4 systems entirely, 100% exclusively used by tier 4 locomotives. You have to be in an air basin that is severely.

Or you can't be in an air basin that is severely. Extremely. And I forgot the third one. Lawrence, excuse me. Serious, severe or extreme as scored by the EPA.

Thank you.

Would you like to close? Senator, I think a lot has been said and I appreciate the conversation. Respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Thank you. Appreciate the senator and the senate's willingness to scale the tier 4 locomotives back quite a bit. Serious and severe. Extreme for folks who aren't sure exactly what that means. That means SQMD means Fresno.

It means some of the worst air quality spots across California, which were the places that we were, you know, consistent on protecting even through this process. This bill has a two pass recommendation from the chair. Madam Secretary, we have a motion and a second. Can we call the roll?

Motion is due pass as amended to Appropriations. [roll call].

Senator, that cheese is out.

Thank you. Thank you again, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Absolutely. Senator Stern, come on down.

Thank you.

Whenever you're ready.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Members, SB614 is a Bill on pipeline safety regarding carbon dioxide pipelines. We've been working actually with a similar vehicle in AB 881 carried by Senator Petrie Norris. And in a bicameral manner, we're trying to land a final deal here.

The bill really stems from a lack of leadership at the federal level where they've decided to rescind what were, we think very solid safety standards under the Pipeline Hazardous Safety Management Administration that were rescinded back in January of 2025.

And so the state really has to fill the gap to ensure that carbon dioxide pipelines transporting super concentrated CO2 at an intrastate level are subject to the strongest safety standards, not just in the state or the country, but in the world. That's how we do it here in California.

We know that this sector is going to be critical to meeting our climate goals.

And so what we've got here before you today is some direction to the state fire marshal to build upon the draft federal guidelines so we don't ditch the work done by the Biden Administration entirely, but that, that builds on it, that adds a little more detail.

So we want the fire marshal here to retain some discretionary ability to decide whether a project applicant is meeting those standards and the ability to also adopt additional safety standards.

But in the discussions around this vehicle, as well as AB881, which is going to be before the Senate Environmental Quality Committee this week, we've been working with those concerned about the Bill and the environmental justice community about enhanced protections within a planning zone area for health protection.

So a two mile planning zone and requirement for more granular information around potential exposure for anyone within a four mile range to the LEED CEQA agency.

The other item in discussion that I wanted to flag for you all is a carbon dioxide concentration assessment so that the most enhanced modeling would be used here to ensure that there is no risk to those in sensitive receptor sites. So those are some of the items that are still outstanding.

But I want to assure you and you, Mr. Chair, and the rest of the Committee that will be continuing to engage in good faith and should this Bill move forward today, aiming to align with whatever those enhanced protections are that are adopted on the Senate side.

So happy to answer any more questions here and respectfully ask for your eye vote. Turn over to lead witness.

Two minutes, sir.

Mr. Chairman and Member. Scott Wesch, on behalf of the California State Pipe Trades Council and the California Carbon Solutions Co Carbon Capture Solutions Coalition, I was very involved in budget trailer Bill SB905 by Senator Cavallero in 2022, which basically set up the permitting, uniform permitting and regulatory sort of framework at CARB for carbon capture and sequestration.

At the very last minute, an amendment was put into the Bill that put a moratorium on pipelines until the Federal Government under PHMSA could adopt those regulations. We were okay with that. We did, however, have a little hesitation that there's always problems that arise.

So additional language was added that directed the state fire marshal to do a report to this Legislature by February 30th of 2023, which they did, which said that the state Fire marshal was prepared and capable of issuing safety guidelines as well. The Biden Administration got the regulations sort of, you know, to third base.

And then with the last election, there's been a freeze on final adoptions of all regulations by the Biden admin without cleric getting this pipeline issue resolved. The sunset date, both on federal monies that are still available for carbon capture sequestration, as well as the 10 year sunset date on SB905 is going to run.

The scoping plan is looking to 1 million metric tons of carbon to meet our carbon goals, probably more now that offshore wind has kind of been put on the back burner. So this piece of legislation is absolutely essential for all the stated reasons above.

It puts the Biden standards in place, but then empowers the fire marshal to enhance those with with more stringent safety guidelines. So this is a classic example of not letting perfect be the enemy of the good. We have to do this in order to foster this whole development of this industry and to meet our climate goals.

So we would urge an aye vote. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Any persons in the hearing room in support of this measure?

Chair and Members. Bruce Magnani, on behalf of California Cement Industry, in support.

Thank you, Bruce. Any persons in the hearing room in opposition to this measure?

Good afternoon. Marie Lu, on behalf of the Central California Environmental Justice Network, who has an opposed unless amended position on here. We remain opposed to this Bill as well as identical Bill AB 881, as this Bill does not yet address protections that are critical to consider when pipelines are cited near people.

Regardless of your position on CCUS, the issues, the siting and safety issues of pipelines is a separate issue. CO2 pipelines are hazardous.

In a leak, they would create a dense heavy cloud of CO2, that can pose asphyxiation risk that can travel even a mile away from the rupture site. In Satartia, Mississippi where there was a large spill in 2020.

Residents lost consciousness, had seizures and emergency vehicles would not operate because there was not enough oxygen in the air to run their internal combustion engines. These are not pipelines that you want near a school, near a hospital, yet this Bill does not yet have those restrictions.

We've provided the author with language that require additional safety provisions based off of sighting. Those provisions have not yet been accepted. We appreciate that we are having conversations with Ms. Petrie-Norris as well as Senator Stern. But until those issues are resolved, we believe this Bill is not yet protective enough of communities. Thank you.

Any persons in the hearing room in opposition to this measure.

Good afternoon. Gabriela Facio with Sierra Club California, in opposition.

Asha Sharma, on behalf of Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability, aligning our comments with those of CCHN. We are opposed unless amended. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Raquel Mason with the California Environmental Justice Alliance. In opposition, also asked to register for the Center for Biological Diversity.

Thank you. We'll now turn it back to Committee Members. Questions, comments, concerns. Mr. Ellis.

Thank you. Mr. Chair. I'd like to ask a question of the person in opposition. Are you familiar with present safety procedures in gas and oil and water pipelines that are implemented throughout this country, IE, Security measures, cybersecurity measures, quantum key distribution, et cetera, et cetera.

Cybersecurity measures on those pipelines?

Yes, as in detection - as they relate to detection.

No, I am not. I will say for the draft PHMSA regulations for carbon dioxide pipelines, the PHMSA regs only require that leak detection mechanisms exist without any specific requirements of what that the accuracy or the reliability of those leak detection mechanisms are it's very vague.

Even under the draft PHMSA regulations which are intended to be more restrictive or more protective than carbon dioxide pipelines. The Satartia, Mississippi spill showed that actually there needs to be different - the carbon as you probably no better than me. The properties of carbon dioxide require different regulations and different safety standards than other hazardous liquids.

Yeah, I appreciate your comments. I would just tell you that because of the, because of that there are a lot of detection, new developments and it's forthcoming. Thank you.

Mr. Muratsuchi.

So, Senator Stern, I usually associate you with the opposition. Why are you in this Bill.

I appreciate that and I like that Association. Without this Bill, we default to no regulation. We default to what the Trump Administration has proposed, which is a total rescission.

And I think, I hope the opposition would agree with me that it's not so much the Bill doesn't allow the state fire marshal to adopt those sort of health protection zones or those sort of setbacks. It's that it doesn't specify exactly the number in it right now.

So it doesn't preclude, as I mentioned at the outset, that two mile planning zone or even a four mile range on leak detection or enhanced modeling doesn't preclude any of that. But I think what they're looking for, and I appreciate it, is real specificity.

We were thinking that it made sense for the fire marshal to go through that public process and get that feedback and sort of use the evidentiary process to really drill down, if you will, on exactly what that number ought to be. So right now it's a discretion in statute versus do you pick a number in statute, disagreement.

I hope I'm characterizing that right. I defer to the opposition, but I think that's really the tension point right now. I think there's - I think some consensus that the state does need to step up and adopt safety standards. Exactly what those are, and do we do that in statute or by Reg is the dispute.

Is part of your reason for carrying this Bill that the IPCC is recognizing that we do need to have carbon capture and storage in order to reach our goals of carbon neutrality.

Yeah, I do believe that there's a role, and I'm not saying for things like enhanced oil recovery, but when it comes to cement production, if we don't have a way for a pipe to carry that captured CO2 somewhere, cement industry is going to just keep polluting like they always do.

So I actually think when it comes to things like carbon removal and you know areas that we need to make immediate progress on, we've got to get some safety standards in place. And I also think we could drive safety standards across the country too, because this is happening elsewhere, it's not happening here.

But if we were able to drive the industry and say, you know, doing enhanced fluid dynamic modeling, Marie will know then how you describe that kind of modeling. But if we were to deploy that kind of technology here first, that scales, you know, these are the kinds of things that I think is a good thing.

It's an awkward place to lean in because this is not everyone's favorite climate mitigation strategy. But I actually think this is one where we've got to sort of be brave and step in and own the space. So that's why you find me on this, in this awkward spot.

So, Ms. Lu. You know, if we're going to do it, shouldn't we have safety standards rather than no standards.

Yeah, I think actually our organizations definitely agree that we would like there to be state, you know, state regulations in, especially with the lack of federal action here. But this is our opportunity here is that we are looking at a large number of pipelines being built in California in order to meet our climate goals.

These are very, very difficult pipelines to retrofit, to meet to safety standards. So we're in the position where you can actually set it right. And so that's where we can start with strong regulations. Especially as we figure this out. The state fire marshal's office has never regulated CO2 pipelines separately.

They have been treated in the past the same as hazardous, other hazardous liquids, which we have discovered has been insufficient. This is new regulatory territory. So the desire is to make sure that we start off in a place that we are particularly protective of people.

As we figure these things out, we will have a better understanding as we build more carbon pipelines of what are the most critical points in the safety standards. And we can make adjustments. But it's really important for the communities who are going to be impacted by these pipelines that we start with something very, very strong.

And so while we appreciate the desire for the state to develop regulations, we can't just leave it to the state fire marshal's office and assume that they'll do a good job when it comes to oil and gas. You know, this is a different issue area, but the state fire marshal has not necessarily been the most protective.

And so that's what we're looking for in this Bill, is to have enough specificity in how the state fire marshal introduces its first regulations to make sure that they are as protective as they can be for the communities who will have these pipelines running nearby.

But isn't this codifying the Biden administration's regulations.

That is the starting point. While that was a good starting point. There are things that are unspecified in those regulations that we believe need to be specified. Specifically, PHMSA is, is prohibited by Congress to get into siting issues. They don't have jurisdiction here. We in California are not restricted to those same, to those same jurisdictional issues.

We can have the state fire marshal get involved in inciting issues and we believe that we should, because otherwise, you know, I would like to firmly believe that these, these companies don't want to look for pipelines. They are not looking to cite a pipeline under a daycare or a school or anywhere near.

I assume that's the case. So let's have standards here to just be assured that that's, that's going to be the situation.

If I might, Ms. Marisucci, I have great respect for my colleague, but this is a bit of obfuscation here.

First of all, in the next five years, there's not going to be a slew of pipelines that are going to be cited that are going to be permitted, that are going to go through CEQA and be ready to go.

There's going to be more than ample time for the state fire marshal to adopt additional standards in addition to the Biden standards, while all of the aforementioned processes are going forward. Okay. It's not like tomorrow this Bill passes and my Members are going to be out digging ditches and laying pipe. Okay, that's three or four years.

But these projects are economically very intense. They take a lot of investment. They take a huge amount of planning. And so this allows that to go simultaneously while we await the state fire marshal to add these things.

And frankly, given the technical aspect of what we're discussing here, we think that the regulatory process is going to be, is going to be the appropriate venue to have a robust sort of investigation and weighing of all these. And then I finally just mentioned that the Biden Administration initiated this whole process as a result of Mississippi. Okay.

And I don't think anybody's going to accuse the Biden Administration of being too cozy with the oil and gas industry or the carbon industry. There was a very robust process at PHMSA. We participated in it. And there will be a robust process at the state fire marshal. But again, this is not going to happen overnight.

These take long term planning.

Sandra Stern, to that point, I'm not aware of a CEQA exemption for carbon dioxide pipelines. No, sir. Thank you.

Any other questions, comments from Mr. Zbur.

I think following on and comments my colleague from Torrance mentioned. I was looking at the environmental community letter, and they made a couple points. One is that carbon dioxide pipelines are dangerous and under regulated. So the regulations that would come out of this process, would they apply to both new and existing pipelines.

Yes. There aren't any existing pipelines of supercritical CO2 transport in California, to my knowledge. I'll turn to.

But the Senator's absolutely correct. There are obviously opportunities to take existing pipeline, natural gas pipelines, and potentially convert them into carbon, but they would have to be go through just like a new pipeline. They'd have to go through all through the permitting review, environmental review, to do that, and in the regulations would address that.

But as they're going through CEQA, then, I mean, the downside of not having. So the recommendation that the environmental groups had was the best course of action was to leave SB 905, the moratorium in place, and for California to issue guidelines after the federal rule is complete. Now, where is the federal rule. Is that ever gonna be complete.

Now, the Trump Administration, just without prejudice to these regulations I just did, has adopted a moratorium on all regulation. He did it in Executive order, like his first week in office on all Biden Administration rules. So they're just, they're frozen and, and they're not going to be resurrected.

So the things that protect the public would be CEQA, and we don't have an exemption for that. So that's good.

It seems to me, you know, setting aside the arguments that, that the opponents are making, which you know, I support actually having more things spelled out in, in the Bill, if possible, but if you don't have regulations, we're not going to have federal regulations to start as a floor.

So if you'd have no state regulatory body, you don't even have actually a backdrop against which local agencies, or state agencies that are actually permitting pipelines for them to actually gauge them against, because we don't have a federal rule, we don't have federal regulations, and without this Bill, we wouldn't have any state regulations.

And I assume that where we would start is, you know, would be that the fire marshal would basically start with the PHMSA.

And on that point about having a lack of regulation if this doesn't go forth, I thought Senator Weber Pierson made the most eloquent environmental justice argument for this Bill and Committee in the Senate.

She said, look, in my district, there is no location to sequester carbon, but I have plenty of manufacturing facilities and other facilities that create a lot of carbon.

And if I don't have the ability, if my district, we can't capture that carbon and put it into a pipeline so it can be sequestered at an appropriate location, there's going to be carbon islands. And she said, so the pipeline is actually an essential to a district like mine.

Can I just clarify that currently the moratorium in 905 still stands. You can't actually build Intra State Pipelines until. It's not quite a matter of that there's no regulations right now. It's that you can't build them.

And so what this Bill would do is, would lift the moratoriums to say go ahead and build them with these regulations in place. And so we, we agree on the, if you are going to lift the moratorium, that you should have these regulations in place. But the, the current situation is that there's a moratorium.

So it's not as if you don't have this. And we agree that the moratorium is a little shaky, but the situation is right now is that there is a moratorium. And so the alternative to this Bill is no build versus build without regulations. No, I get that.

The alternative though, I think is that we don't meet our climate goals. Right. I mean, because I think what this means is leaving the moratorium in place and waiting until after a federal rule is complete means that basically we put a pause on everything for an indefinite period of time and probably at least the next three years.

Isn't that, isn't that correct.

Yes, I would say so.

Okay. I mean, I'm glad that you're continuing to talk to the opponents. I think it would be good to actually continue that dialogue and try to strengthen the Bill and I'll see how this turns out and we'll take another look at it when it comes to the floor. Thanks.

Thank you. Seeing no other questions, comments from Committee Members. Senator Stern, would you like to close.

The opposition, I continue our collaboration here. Yeah. We wanted to clarify in the closing that this does apply to newly constructed and not the existing pipeline conversions. Am I saying that right.

You can't use the Bill, thanks to the Committee. You cannot use pipelines that are built for other purposes. You can't use them for carbon dioxide.

So, so those, those are the one, that's the one circumstance where maybe what we're saying doesn't apply is that if there was a way to get around the moratorium from an existing pipeline, you could sort of sneak around safety standards. This puts a safety standards in front of that too.

And establishes what we think is a really public process, and very open to more specificity in the statute itself. We'll certainly be working closely with the chair.

Not going to try to get ahead of you here sir, and want to come back to you, especially if we end up landing on particular numbers around planning zones, health protective zones. I still believe that some discretion is important here. I think that this. This work is a critical part of us moving our climate solutions forward.

I get that, it maybe is an uncomfortable space for some and certainly anything dealing with the oil and gas sector. But just keep in mind, this is not just oil and gas. Right? This is about. This is about making limestone out of cement production.

This is about direct air capture and what you actually do with that CO2 when its moved from one site to another. So I especially appreciate this Committee scrutiny here, and I'll continue working with the opposition. We respectfully ask for your, aye vote.

Thank you, Senator, for your close. This is a complicated issue, an awkward issue, if you will. But I think, you know, I remember when we passed that legislation putting the moratorium in pending federal rulemaking. These were draft rules by the Biden Administration, and the Biden Administration became no more.

We don't expect good federal rules to come, but I think opposition's made a good point about what comes from the Federal Government is certainly the floor and not the ceiling. And we're California, and we're allowed to push to make sure we do things right, because everywhere else will follow us, if we do things right.

I trust the Senator and take him at his word that he'll continue to work with us through this process. And I think I would always prefer an ally in an awkward position than someone that may not have the best intentions trying to do something this heavy. So thank you, Senator, for stepping into this challenge.

Has a Do Pass recommendation from the chair. Madam Secretary, do we have a motion and a second motion. Motion by Mr. Second by Mr. Hoover. Can we call the roll.

Motion is Do Pass to Appropriations. Chair Bryan. Bryan, aye. Alanis. Alanis, aye. Connolly. Connolly, not voting. Ellis. Ellis, aye. Flora. Garcia. Haney. Hoover. Hoover, aye. Kalra. Kalra, aye. Muratsuchi. Muratsuchi, aye. Pellerin. Pellerin, aye. Schultz. Wicks. Zbur. Zbur, aye.

That Bill is out. Senator Argan, come on down, brother. Whenever you're ready.

Well, thank you, Mr. Chair, Members, for the opportunity to present Senate Bill 304.

This bill would temporarily lift the public trust use restrictions for Civic specific land in Jack London Square, which would allow the Port of Oakland to lease this land for any use, but we will be required to meet certain conditions as part of that lease process. This is a District Bill.

The bill before today represents an agreement between the Port of Oakland and the State Lands Commission. I want to thank the Port and the Commission for their ongoing collaboration to ensure that Jack London Square can be a vibrant neighborhood for everyone.

SB304 seeks to address the ongoing challenges in my district at Jack London Square that have been created due to a decline in customer foot traffic, the Covid 19 pandemic and the departure of Oakland's professional sports teams. The current situation in Jacqueline and Square is dire.

Approximately 52% of the neighborhood's ground floor space is currently vacant, which accounts for 183,000 commercial square feet.

By providing a narrow and temporary lifting of the use restrictions at Jack London Square, we have the potential to revitalize the neighborhood and facilitate the public's use enjoyment of the shoreline and the waterfront and to meet the the mandates of that public trust doctrine.

The lifting of the trust would affect less than half a percent of the Port's overall granted lands and would require the Port to report to the State Lands Commission on an annual basis on the overall economic health and performance of Jack London Square.

In addition, the Port must meet certain conditions when they lease properties for non trust uses, such as ensuring that non trust uses do not impair or harm existing public trust uses and that such leases promote the use and enjoyment of the waterfront.

With me to testify and support the bill is the Honorable Kevin Jenkins, the President of the Oakland City Council, and Diego Gonzalez, Government Affairs Manager for the Port of Oakland. At the appropriate time, respectfully ask for your Aye vote.

All right, so thank you so much, Chair Bryan and Members of the Committee. My name is Kevin Jenkins. I'm the President of the Oakland City Council.

I'm here today to express my Strong support for SB304, which represents a first step towards giving Oakland the tools we need to reactivate Jack London Square and bring meaningful change to our waterfront. We embrace our maritime legacy. It's part of who we are. But we also recognize that the Port of Oakland is more than a shipping gateway.

It's one of the most valuable assets that the City of Oakland has and we must ensure that it can serve the evolving needs of the public. Oakland continues to face challenging circumstances, high commercial vacancies and uneven recovery from the pandemic and a shifting economic landscape that demands more flexible, responsive solutions from all levels of government.

So my hope is that this bill is not the end of the conversation, but the beginning. It's the first step towards reimagining a waterfront that works for all of Oakland while preserving oversight and staying true to the principles of public stewardship.

So I want to thank Senator Ericu and the Port of Oakland for their willingness to work closely with the State Lands Commission on the language before this Committee, their collaborative spirit and their shared desire to find solutions and what made this legislation possible. So we hope this effort becomes a model for success.

One that can be built upon to realize the long term vision of a fully activated, inclusive and accessible Oakland waterfront. I respectfully ask for your support. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you Chair Bryan and Members of the Committee. My name is Diego Gonzalez and I'm the Port of Oakland's Government Affairs Manager. I'd like to start off by thanking Senator Adein and Committee staff for the work on this bill. SB 304 addresses a clear and urgent challenge.

Jack London Square, vital public waterfront district with a mixed use history that goes back nearly a century, is experiencing over 50% ground floor vacancy in large part due to outdated land use restrictions that no longer reflect the real world conditions Oakland currently faces.

The bill creates a structured time limited solution allowing for limited expanded uses on specific portions of Jack London Square without removing those lands from the public trust. When many of the states, downtowns and public spaces are struggling post Covid.

This legislation takes a deep look at the public assets we currently have and how we can unlock their potential. This approach is transparent and accountable with strong oversight from the State Lands Commission, public findings and annual reporting to ensure alignment with the public trust. But this is the first step.

It opens the door to ongoing conversations about how we can fully revitalize Jack London Square and make it a vibrant, welcoming destination on Oakland's public waterfront. And the ultimate goal here is to allow a broader range of uses that bring more people across communities, backgrounds and incomes to the waterfront.

Activating public spaces, supporting local businesses and creating a more inclusive, vibrant and accessible shoreline that reflects the needs and energy of the entire community. This legislation helps lay that groundwork to get there. So I want to thank Senator Edeghuin. Again, we respectfully ask for your Aye vote and I'm available to answer any questions.

Both of you under two minutes. Well done persons here in the hearing room in support of this measure.

Honorable Chair, Nicolo DeLuca, here on behalf of the Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee and strong support. Thank you.

Please, please give our best to the Mayor.

Chair, Members Jentez With Fumun strategist on behalf of Alameda County support.

Thank you, sir. Any persons here in opposition to this measure? Seeing none. Anybody in the hearing room who'd like to register opposition? Seeing none. We'll now turn it to Committee Members. Seeing no comments.

Seeing a comment from Mr. Zbur.

So I want to thank the. The author and the leadership of the city for your leadership. I look forward to visiting Jack London Square and I. I'm sure it's going to be something that we can all be proud of here in the State of California. So I'll be proudly supporting the bill today.

Seeing no other comments by Committee Members outside of the Vice Chair.

Real quick.

Yes, sir.

I'm looking forward to all the improvements.

We have a motion by Mrs. Zbur, a second by Mr. Alanis. Senator, would you like to close?

Thank you. You know, this is, I think, a critical step to provide more flexibility. There are guardrails in place. There are conditions that you met. There's ongoing reporting and transparency. The goal is to make sure that we have flexibility to fill these vacancies, to create commercial activity to address the public safety issues while also respecting the public.

The public trust doctrine or respectfully ask your Aye vote.

Thank you, Senator. Thank you, Mr. Council President, for coming down and spending some time to persuade and inform this Committee. This has a due pass recommendation from the Chair. Madam Secretary, can we call the roll?

Motion is do pass to appropriations. [Roll Call]

The bill is out.

Senator, you've got one more bill for us, right?

I do, yes.

My witnesses are joining us. Mr. Chair, may I begin?

Yes, sir.

This is another district bill and I want to thank the chair members for the opportunity to present SB 830. This bill will establish a CEQA streamlining process for Sutter Health's new hospital campus in Emeryville. It would designate the City of Emeryville as the lead agency for C Corp. Review.

I want to thank the committee for its thoughtful engagement and the work with my office to make amendments that we are accepting today and that will be reflected in print.

And after almost a decade since Sutter announced that it's intended to close the full service hospital in the City of Berkeley, which I served as the mayor for eight years, Sutter and myself and the community have been in conversations over the future of healthcare access in the East Bay community and I appreciate Sutter's commitment to make sure that the East Bay continues to have high quality health care that its residents need and deserve.

I'm happy that this bill, SB 830 would enable the construction of a new medical center in Emeryville to replace all the services that Alta Bates Berkeley currently provides. Ensuring that patients will be able to conveniently reach comprehensive care within a 15 minute drive from home or work.

And putting this in context, the East Bay Area, which I am proud to represent, has a number of hazard risks from wildfire risk, the Hayward Fault going through a portion of the City of Berkeley. In addition, the closure of other medical facilities in the area has created increased strain on health care facilities in the area.

Doctors Hospital and City of San Pablo closed in 2015 and the closure of the Alta Bates Berkeley Hospital will add further strain on existing medical services.

If we don't do something, we'll create a hospital desert in a large portion of the East Bay, leaving my constituents without the access to a full service acute care hospital and emergency room.

Sutter's proposal to build a new medical center not too far from the existing Berkeley hospital will ensure that this project is built and can provide a continuation of health care services.

SB 830 is critical to make sure that we can expedite the CEQA process like we've done for other economic development projects, stadiums, other- other- other- other facilities in California. Creating a streamlined CEQA process to ensure this project can be built without delays or obstacles. Ensuring that East Bay communities are left without a hospital.

In order to receive CEQA streamlining, Sutter must meet certain conditions such as utilizing a skilled and trained workforce, creating at least 500 new construction jobs resulting in an investment of $1 billion and that the project is an urban infill project.

There are other sustainability metrics that Sutter would also have to meet as part of this streamlining tool as well. Sutter has made a commitment to me that it will continue to engage the various bargaining units representing the health care workforce at the Berkeley Hospital and that there will be plans to transition them to the new Emeryville campus.

Protecting the existing workforce and ensuring that my constituents have full service acute care that is accessible and where people can get high quality healthcare services is a top priority for me and this bill will help facilitate that.

With me to testify and support is Cynthia Lee, the Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy and Growth Development Officer at Sutter Health, and Preston Young, senior director of State Government Affairs at Sutter health as well. Two minutes each.

Thank you Mr. Chair and committee members. My name is Cynthia Lee and I'm the Chief Strategy and Growth Development Officer for Sutter Health. Thank you for your time today and I also want to thank the senator for his support and partnership in the development of this bill. I'm here today to state my support for Senate Bill 830.

Sutter Health is a nonprofit health care system nationally recognized for the quality of care that we provide, serving proudly Northern and Central California. We are investing heavily across our service area to maintain access to care by reimagining existing care sites as well as opening new ones.

A central piece of this plan is our new medical campus in Emeryville. This campus will offer outpatient comprehensive services at two existing but now vacant buildings and also at the heart of the project.

Sutter will be constructing a new hospital to replace the services currently provided at the Alta Bates Ashby campus in Berkeley to comply with SB 1953 seismic requirements. In addition, the Ashby campus in the future will be repurposed into an outpatient comprehensive facility, allowing that area to continue to access patient care.

SB 830 will help keep these projects on track so these Bay residents can access care that they need. The bill would designate Sutter's Emeryville Hospital as an Environmental Leadership Hospital Campus project. The designation will require CEQA litigation to be adjudicated in 270 days, including appeals.

This would allow litigants to retain their rights while simultaneously ensuring that this vitally important hospital project doesn't get delayed due to litigation. In order to obtain this leadership designation. Sutters agreeing to mitigating efforts typically seen in ELDP projects, including greenhouse gas footprint reductions.

As a current resident of the East Bay, I can attest to the serious need in this region to not only preserve hospital capacity, but to expand it, as the Senator has noted, along the I80 corridor from Oakland to Vallejo.

Thank you. Thank you. Two minutes.

Alright. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and committee members. I'm Preston Young. I'm the Senior Director of State Government Affairs at Sutter Health. First and foremost, thank you to the committee staff and the committee for the work that's gone into this bill. It's much appreciated in the dialogue, certainly helpful.

Also, the author, Senator Arreguin, and his staff have been diligent in working with us on this bill, so we certainly appreciate it. Ms. Lee made all the points and certainly agree with them.

I don't want to unnecessarily take up time, but the one issue that I would like to put a touch of emphasis on is how important it is that the Emmerville Hospital be up and running as soon as possible. Without intervention, our Ashby campus in Berkeley will not meet the state's 2030 seismic requirements.

But thankfully, we have this replacement facility coming in Emeryville. Now, the goal is to build the Emeryville Hospital as quickly as possible to replace Alta Bates.

So in the event that our Emeryville project does encounter a CEQA lawsuit, SB 830 will be an important tool that ensures the project doesn't get stuck in litigation for years on end, preventing the East Bay from accessing the care and treatment that they need. So for these reasons, we're in support of SB 830 today and urge yes vote.

So thank you very much.

Fantastic. Minute. Persons in the hearing room in support of this measure.

Mr. Chair, Chris Micheli on behalf of the Civil Justice Association of California in support of the measure. Thank you.

Honorable Chair, Nicolo DeLuca on behalf of the City of Emeryville, and strong support. And grateful for the author, thank you.

You can give that mayor our best as well.

Good afternoon. Caitlin Dean, on behalf of the California Hospital Association in strong support.

Thank you.

Any persons here in opposition to this measure? Seeing none. We'll now turn it to committee members. No questions, huh? We have a motion by Mr. Zbur, a second by Mr. Hoover. Senator, would you like to close?

Well, the reason we're having this expedited process is because we're facing a 2030 timeline for acute care facilities that have to meet seismic mandates. And so there's a very limited duration between when the Berkeley Hospital has to close to meet that 2030 time and when we have to get the new hospital online.

And so by implementing this streamlined process, which was established under AB 900 and has been used for as the committee announced notes, 30 projects to date. This will ensure that we have a state of the art full service hospital with a variety of specialty health care services.

That it will exceed sustainability environmental standards, that will have good paying union jobs, and that we can continue to provide critical healthcare services for this part of the State of California without a respectfully asked for an aye vote.

Thank you. Senator, just a little bit of background on this. Confirming with Lawrence the retrofitting for hospitals requirements came out when I was four years old, I believe, and hospitals have had a lot of time to get in compliance. But I understand that that is still a challenge around the state and something worth talking about.

In those projects that you saw in that list, senator, very few of them got streamlining the first time that they were tried. Some took multiple authors and multiple attempts. I say that to say that this committee appreciates all of your work and we were willing to step in to this with you.

This is important and I think access to care is one of the most vital things our communities need. Thank you for this bill. It has a do pass recommendation from the chair. Madam Secretary, can we call the roll?

Motion is do pass to Judiciary Committee. [roll call].

The measure's out.

Thank you.

Yes, sir. Senator Cabaldon.

Which measure would you like to start with?

I just have one. Right, Mr. Chair. S 346.

Oh, yes, that's. That's- That's Caballero.

Oh, my God. I'm not prepared.

Yeah, how about we do that one?

Let me take the easy one first, if that's all right. This is my pepper jack cheese bill. No holes, just a little spice. So, let me start—so, SB 486, and thank you, Mr. Chair and Members, for allowing me to present the Bill today.

SB 486 is a bill intended, at its core, to make real the promise of the master plan for higher education, that every single Californian, if they are able to reach the top one third of the high school graduating class or the top 1/8th that they are fully entitled to go to UC or CSU. That has been launched in exciting policy since 1960.

I mean, it's a bedrock of what Californians expect from their government and from the state. And it's for good reason, because there are very few things that guarantee skipping a social class. Almost 100% guarantee of skipping a social class.

If you come from a low-income neighborhood in urban California and you go to UCLA, to Berkeley, to UC San Diego, maybe UC Davis in my district, it's almost for sure that you and your family will permanently skip a social class. We crack that nut in California now, 65 years ago.

And yet we have found a way to make that available only to basically the same proportion of California that we did back then. In part, the rest of the country has moved on. Ohio State, 80,000 students. Michigan State, close. University of Minnesota, close. Our institutions are premier institutions that are basically guarantees of class skipping.

We've kept around 30,000 students ever since. And that's in part because for purposes of CEQA and some jurisprudence, we've treated campus enrollment as though it is a local decision.

We've acted as though UC's overall enrollment and their commitment to the master plan is somehow you call—like the President calls up—the Chancellor at UCLA, says hey, how many students you gonna take? And then how many, how many are you gonna take at Berkeley?

And then, they just, all the President does is add it up and that's the master plan. Well, that's not the master plan. The master plan is state policy. It's UC and CSU policy. And every year in the budget, the Legislature says what the enrollment's going to be.

So, the enrollment at the UC and CSU are not local decisions. They are not campus decisions. They are statewide concerns that the people of California are strongly vested in, and we hear that all the time in terms of public support for higher education as well. My kid cannot get into Berkeley, we say, well, go to Merced.

Merced is a fine institution, but for a large number, particularly of low-income families in urban LA and in Urban Bay Area who cannot relocate because the vast majority of students attend a school within their, in their, in their home region, they cannot relocate.

So, it's not a real fulfillment of our promise in the master plan to say, just go to a different, an entirely different region of the state because you happen to live in a place where we've settled, where we've let the, we've let activists in Westwood, La Jolla, Berkeley, and Davis decide what enrollment is going to be for UC, CSU.

So, that's the backdrop of the Bill. Having said that, there are no swiss cheese here because it's a modest Bill. This Bill is not a CEQA exemption. It simply says that projects—that no project alternative—which is to say, hey, you know, we're not going to serve more students, that, that does not have to be considered in a local project analysis because it is not a local determination as to whether or not to grow.

Now, we have, I don't want to say solved, but we made a lot—you have made, because I wasn't elected yet—a lot of progress on the housing side of the equation where we have done this.

But a dorm room doesn't make any difference if you can't get admitted because there isn't classroom space, there's no room in the counseling center, there's no parking for the faculty, there's no electricity on the campus.

All of the campus's facilities are necessary in order to make that real. Just a few years ago, Mills College in the Bay Area in Oakland announced it was no longer a viable enterprise.

At the time, the Chancellor at UC Berkeley was very interested in acquiring or merging with that campus in order to add thousands of seats to the, to the nation's most prestigious public University. Sorry, UCLA. They're pretty close. I went to both.

We'll be calling a brief.

I just lost four votes.

A recess.

So, to add thousands of seats at once to one of the two campuses, maybe one of the five in California that everyone knows is a guaranteed economic opportunity—game changer. And so, the Chancellor there was prepared to move forward in that. Now here's the problem. It wasn't because nobody planned on this.

It wasn't in the long range development plan for the campus. It wasn't in the campus's 10 year master plan. It couldn't be.

And therefore, as the Chancellor was trying to negotiate this process, one of the principal barriers was the statute that said that they had to consider the impact that this would have on enrollment growth, which it certainly would. It's exactly what we want here in Sacramento, which is for Berkeley and these other campuses to grow.

But we have, up to this point, we've treated students as though not just in their housing but in their classes themselves, they are pollution.

So, the Bill merely says that projects, if they are consistent with the regional sustainable communities plan, so, what the MPOs develop for transportation, circulation, and climate, if they are consistent with that plan, that they do not, and the enrollment matches what the enrollment is that's been submitted by the President of the University of California to the region, that they don't have to conduct the no project alternative.

The what if we don't grow alternative. That's the, that's the purpose of the Bill. Now, before I close, on the flip side of this, the Bill also requires for the first time ever the University to participate in those plans. I Chaired—I've chaired five sustainable communities plans. They're done every five years.

So, you know how long I was mayor in my own city, I've chaired five of them. And at each time, there's no shade on my home on one of my home campuses. But the UC Davis would send their Director of Public Affairs to the opening to the launch of the planning process for the, for the regional transportation and climate system.

And we never saw them again until it was all done. The University systems have not uniformly participated for real in those regional sustainability and climate and transportation plans, and they have not aligned their own plans to match them.

This Bill says you must participate, both in the data, so that enrollment can be fully modeled at the regional scale, not just as though every student's going to live in La Jolla, because they won't, but in the San Diego region. Number one, so the data.

And then, number two, your projects, in order to take advantage of SB 486, will have to be consistent with the Sustainable Communities Plan that all of the region's local governments and MPO agree to. So that's—that's the Bill in a nutshell.

And appreciate that we work closely with the Committee to try to, try to continue to improve it, refine and make sure that it accomplishes what it does while also not opening up a whole lot of cheese. But appreciate the Committee's consideration. Would ask for an aye vote.

Thank you, Senator. I also want to thank Mr. Muratsuchi for opening up the cheese committee today. Yeah, I think we're going to go for a minute on that. Two minutes each.

Good afternoon, Chair Bryan and Members of the Committee. My name is Josiah Behari.

I'm the Chair of the UC Graduate and Professional Council, Student Regent Emeritus of the UC Board of Regents, a Ph.D. student at UC Merced, and a proud member with Power California Action, where we organize young people in Central Valley who are impacted by the state's housing and education policies.

In a region that was once offered prisons as its primary economic opportunity, UC Merced has brought over 2.6 billion in regional economic impact and expanded access to higher education in one of California's most under resourced areas. But today, that impact is being limited by the lack of coordinated housing and infrastructure planning.

Between 2017 and '23, Merced rents rose more than 25%, far outpacing local wages. The result for UC Merced students was predictable overcrowding, displacement, and interrupted education. We've already seen what happens when planning and growth fall out of sync. The UC Berkeley enrollment freeze in '22 blocked over 3,000 students, not always because of the lack of classroom space, but because CEQA was used to challenge housing development tied to enrollment.

Right now, UC Merced is building a new medical education center to train much needed health care professionals for the Valley.

But if the region fails to plan for what those students will live, learn, and train, we jeopardize the pipeline before it even begins. SB 486 makes scenarios like this avoidable. Our public university systems are state directed engines of growth for the communities they're in. Students don't just attend the school, it's where they begin their future.

Yet they're excluded from the very planning process that determines where housing, transit, and services will be. That disconnect weakens our ability to meet the state's climate, housing, healthcare, and education goals. We cannot keep treating student populations as invisible in regional plans. Enrollment growth is real, student housing needs are real, and the consequences of delaying are real.

For this reason, I urge you to vote here—aye vote—on SB 486. Thank you.

Thank you and thank you for being here.

Mr. Chair and Members, Michael Lane with SPUR, a public policy think tank in the San Francisco Bay Area. SB 486 is a targeted and practical planning bill that will help to integrate public university and regional planning efforts and increase coordination to accommodate student enrollment.

Deliberate inclusion of detailed university enrollment forecasting in the regional sustainable community strategies will help plan for regional housing and transportation demand. Campus-related plans and projects would still be subject to environmental review and a range of alternatives would still be considered in this process. We respectfully request an aye vote.

That's what I'm talking about. Any persons in this hearing room who would like to be heard on this measure? You coming? Yeah, opposition. Come on down. Two minutes, whenever you're ready.

Opposition. Good afternoon, Chair and Assembly Members. Matthew Baker with Planning Conservation League, PCL, and I personally have great respect for the Senator and his work in this area and others.

But it pains me then to have to be here today to try to argue to you that part of this Bill we think is a big mistake and will have consequences unintended by the Senator. First of all, we totally support the provisions that would accommodate more comprehensively student enrollment changes in the SES land use forecast.

We think that's a very good idea. But we don't understand the association with the provisions where that would then allow the University to not have to conduct a no project alternative analysis for the long-range development plan. We have great concerns with that. We appreciate the Committee's attention to that concern.

I'm still really unclear where negotiations about that language are right now, and if there are ongoing negotiations about what a potential amendment could be, I hope that we are able to be a part of that.

But I want to make clear that we would not be able to remove our opposition unless it was clearly made clear that the long-range development plan is still obliged to do the no project alternative analysis.

And the reason why that's important, you have to understand what the no project analysis really is, and I don't think it was quite characterized correctly here. The no project isn't to say, oh, what if we don't add students? Or what if we just don't build anything? There's not going to be any environmental effects.

Rather, the reality is that the student body is growing and you have to measure the effects of not building in light of a growing student body or other changes.

So, if you have a growing student body, what is the effects on the functioning of university or the community if we don't add dining, or parking, or provide more transit to campus, or importantly, housing? What are the effects, we have a growing student body, if we don't build more housing on the surrounding community? What are the housing stressors?

What are the displacement pressures that you're inflicting? What are those impacts on the community? The no project analysis is where you measure those things. And if you remove the University's obligation to do that accounting, you're really taking them off the hook for taking responsibility for those impacts.

We think that is just shedding the responsibility to build that housing on the surrounding jurisdictions and we think that this measure would ultimately result in less housing, not more. So, for the Bill that's before you today, very respectfully ask for a no vote.

We were generous with three minutes. Any persons in the hearing room in opposition? Seeing none.

Before we turn it and open it up to Committee Members, the Senator and I have been talking all through the weekend and all through today, including a one-on-one session with Lawrence throughout the day, to see if we could land this plane in time for this hearing of the amendments that are written in the Committee analysis.

The Senator, and correct me if I'm wrong, Senator, is accepting amendments 1 and 2. We are working through the final amendment, and I apologize for that, Committee Members. We've got some draft language that I believe all of you have just been sent.

But even in that, I don't believe in—the Senator and I don't believe that we've kind of reached a final spot yet.

But the Senator has been working in tremendous good faith and I believe comes from a very righteous place and I think that we can continue this conversation going into the Appropriations Committee and get somewhere that makes sense to try to accomplish these goals and respects the true intents of the Bill.

So, I know I've talked to many of you about that, but I just want to be clear about that before I open it back up to conversation from other Members. Any questions, comments? Mr. Zbur, the Member from Westwood representing the number one public University in California.

What would that be?

So, I don't actually think that eliminating the no project alternative in this circumstance is all that bad a thing because in every case under CEQA, you still have to analyze the impacts compared to the existing condition on the campus.

And typically, what would end up happening in all these cases would be that you actually have a paper analysis of a no project alternative and then, basically, it doesn't meet the project objectives, which would be to accommodate more students.

And so, you're basically requiring the University to go through this paper exercise where, where that's not something that they're ever going to do because it would just be rejected based on not meeting the project alternative. So, help me understand why that's such a bad thing. I just don't see where the beef is, I guess.

Well, I appreciate the question. It's different between a specific project, like say you're proposing a housing project and the, the overall long range development plan for the entire campus. So, yeah, if you're proposing a housing project, then it's, you know, yeah, we're trying to build a housing project.

So, like the no project alternative isn't necessarily like a real valuable exercise there. I guess I would acknowledge that.

But for the long range plan where you have an overall growing student body and overall need for facilities and housing, you know, if you're not building that in your long range—into your long range planning—you know, the no project alternative analysis is where you measure the effects on the long range plans of the, of the campus and on the community around it.

I don't know how to explain it.

Yeah, I guess, I guess I would understand if you were talking about a municipality where you actually have sort of indigenous population growth and you know, the, the City of Santa Monica is growing. Right?

And, but this is some case where your long reach development plan is about sort of enrollment that the University has control over and you're really, you know.

Can I give you an anecdotal example if you—like, right here in Sacramento, we had a big, a very large expansion that's going on right now on the UC Davis Sacramento campus.

Aggie Square Project, that maybe you've heard about, expanding the campus by the—campus population—by 5,000 students and professors and professional researchers and stuff, in the middle of a historically underserved, rapidly gentrifying community of Oak Park.

Everybody wanted the project, but with that 5,000, that growth of 5,000 in the campus population, they were only proposing to build 150 units. And so, the community protested that and said you need to accommodate mitigation of the housing stress that you're putting on the community and build more housing.

And so, like the no project alternatives where we had a secret discussion about that and you know, it ended up, you know, there was litigation but it was settled and there was ended in a very good community benefits agreement which resulted in funding going to more affordable housing and local hire and a whole bunch of good stuff that came out of that.

But the no project alternative analysis is where the University should be held to account for what those impacts are in the community, if they're not building enough housing. Does that sort of illustrate?

I just don't understand why you're not getting to that by looking at the significant impacts compared to the existing conditions. It just seems like that would be happen as part of the document anyway.

And you're just basically requiring the University to go through a lot of analysis which is not a whole lot different than actually analyzing the project against existing conditions.

Well, the no project analysis is the, is the comparison for what the project is proposing to do with what would happen if you didn't do the project. I mean, that's what the new project analysis is. You have to...

Yeah, but you still have to—he's not, I don't think the Bill is required, is changing the other provisions of CEQA, right? So, basically, the requirements of CEQA is that you actually have to compare your project and all the alternatives, a reasonable range of alternatives, against the existing conditions.

And so, I don't sort of see the difference between what the no project alternative is and the existing conditions.

But that is the no project alternative. I mean, that is exactly what you're describing. That's what the no project alternative is analysis does. So, if you take that away, then you are taking away a sort of fundamental tenet of CEQA where you compare the effects of your project against the effects of not having the project.

Yeah, I don't want to spend too much time and go back, but I don't think that's what the author is intending to do. I mean, you can't actually undertake the CEQA analysis unless you're comparing your project to something and the current law is you have to compare it to existing conditions.

And of course, there's a lot of debate about what that might be in different kinds of projects.

Well, I admit I'm still unclear on what the author is intending to do with this, but I don't.

Okay. Well, anyway, you know, I trust that there's some, some—that the author will continue working with you. I, I don't really see, you know, I understand how important it is that we build housing. I actually concur with the Senator's views that we should be doing everything we can to expand enrollment on our campuses.

It is the path to upward mobility for our kids in this state and for families. And I do think that the existing tenets of CEQA, in comparing the impacts of the project and a reasonable range of alternatives against the no project alternative is a, is, you know, will raise all these issues you're talking about.

And I don't think that the Bill would prevent the lead agency from deciding to do a no project alternative on its own as part of their determination of what the regional rates of alternatives are, if that, if there was a lot of community input as part of the scoping of the EIR.

So, anyway, I don't want to go back and forth because I know we're out of time, but I'm prepared to support the Bill today and, and prepared to move it. And thank you very much for working with the opposition.

Just want to thank my colleague from Westwood who represents the number one public university in California. Any other questions? Come to Mr. Connolly.

Thank you, Chair. And I'll just note I did actually attend the number one, which happens to be in Northern California.

Thank you for your comments, Mr. Connolly.

No, really appreciate the intent spirit here. Had a question that I did want to at least briefly weigh in on because it sounds like we have not resolved this issue, which, but there will be ongoing work. So, the question is how are "projects that are required to meet each campus's share of the system wide enrollment" defined?

How would you actually define this project?

So, these are—that's a regental determination because, because enrollment and the assignment of enrollment is, excuse me, is a decision. The top level is a joint decision between the regents essentially and the Governor and the Legislature because we all, we put that in the budget directly.

But then, secondarily, in terms of projects to meet that meet those target numbers, those are determined by the regents of the President.

Okay. And then on the no project alternative, I guess where I was a little bit confused as well, just somewhat going to the opposition's point, I mean, usually a no project alternative analysis, that generally doesn't necessarily mean nothing gets done. Oftentimes, that analysis shows that by doing nothing there is actually more environmental harm caused.

So, it could lead to an alternative project going forward. So, I guess I would love the fact if you could continue to work with the Chair, perhaps with opposition, kind of better clarify what you're trying to accomplish with that, without unintended consequences, that would be appreciated.

So, overall, I'm going to go up on it today with the expectation there will be more work done.

Thank you, Assemblymember. Any other questions or comments? Seeing none. Senator, would you like to close?

Yeah. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair and the Members for the—I, I recognize how this, you know, how challenging this can be. And I, and I do, and I really appreciate the, the colloquy as well around this because, you know, I've done a thousand EIRs as Mayor as well.

And for these, for the kinds of cases that you're describing, we would always be electing to do a no project alternative, even if we didn't have to, for the reasons that Mr. Zbur mentioned.

If it's like the world crashing down, if we don't do this project and we need some way to say it, we could do a no project or we could just put it in the main analysis of the EIR as well. So, I do think we can get there on that piece.

Having said that, I realize the concern, the legitimate concern, about the implications of no project as the path forward.

I think it's, you understand, kind of what we're trying to do here, which is to not have not have not, neither have the universities do paper exercises, but more importantly, not create the basis for litigation threats around is the no project alternative good enough?

And all of that that will block these campuses, especially the number one, the number one and the number one in the San Joaquin Valley from being able to expand and meet the needs that we're expecting of them.

So, I'm absolutely committed and appreciate the leadership of the Chair on this, absolutely committed to making this work and landing this properly and to continue to work with the opposition to find the right instrument mechanism in order to accomplish that goal. And appreciate you.

Thank you, Senator. We take you fully at your word and are looking forward to those conversations. Do we have a motion? We have a motion and a second. And as the Chair, I get the final word.

And I just want to say that the students at UCLA and the faculty at UCLA and the people who live near UCLA and are part of that vibrant community—I see we have the Senator from UCLA in the room as well—they are watching this kind of legislation looking to see us continue to make progress.

And I want to thank you for attempting to step into this space. Madam Chair, we have a second by—a second by Mr. Ellis and Ms. Pellerin. Madam Secretary, can we call the roll?

[Roll Call]

We'll leave it open for absent Members.

I'm going to make the second bill a two year bill, if you don't mind.

Well played. Well played. Senator Durazo.

Whenever you're ready.

Hi. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Members. I want to begin by thanking the Committee staff for your thoughtful analysis and I accept the proposed Committee amendments. SB629 is one of 13 bills in the Senate Fire Response, Recover, rebuilding and prevention package. Following the devastating Los Angeles firestorm.

And as California continues to face a year round fire season, it is clear that we must harden California's defenses against future disasters. So this Bill does three things.

One, it applies the Woodland Urban Interface Building Code and defensible space maintenance requirements, as well as other fire safety regulations to areas that burned in a wildfire to make sure that our reinvestments in those communities are resilient in a future fire.

It directs the state fire marshal to include modeling for urban conflagration conflagrations in the next update of the fire maps to address gaps in their current process. Three, it ensures that defensible space inspections occur annually for each property in fire prone areas to ensure that property owners are taking action to protect their community.

I want to thank the staff again for their engagement as well as the various stakeholders that have engaged in this proposal. The most recent amendments greatly simplify the process in the Bill, make it easier to implement the policy it advances, applying the mitigations that we know work for fire safety to areas that need them the most.

They address the biggest issues of the local governments that are on the front lines and ensure the integrity of the science underlying the current fire hazard maps. By having the state marshal do the mapping of areas that need to comply, it takes the politics out of the mapping process at the local level. I will be clear.

This is not an easy Bill. Makes everyone fire agencies, cities, counties, state homeowners and builders stretch a little further in service of a goal that we all know is the right thing to do. That's why you don't see much in the way of support or opposition in Committee today that highlights the balance that this Bill strikes.

Everyone must do their part to keep Californians safe from wildfire. I respectfully ask for your Aye vote.

Thank you. Senator, two minutes, just here. Well, thank you for being here. You sure? Any thoughts on the number one? No. Any persons in the hearing room in support of this measure?

Hi, Good afternoon. Chair and Committee Members. Molly Corcoran with Axiom Advisors on behalf of CBIA in support. Thank you to the author for her leadership and addressing our feedback. Thank you.

Do we have any. Any primary witnesses in opposition? Seeing none. Do we have any? Okay. Do we have. Do we have any others in opposition?

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. Sean Bellack, with the California Association of Realtors. We're not opposed to this bill. In fact, we support the effort that the Senator is trying to do here. The only concerns that car has is. Is the cost that this might impose. Particularly to middle class and also working families.

There's a provision in the bill for an annual fee. So we're working with the author staff and also the Senate Local Government Committee on some language to actually just contain the cost to the actual cost of. The inspection and keeping that reasonable. So with that, that's nothing further and. We look forward to working with the author.

Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, open up to the Committee, Mr. Muratsuchi.

So, Senator, the. The basic idea is that if you had a wildfire, you're more prone to have future wildfires. And so we need to hard put more effort to harden the homes here.

Yes.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Anyone else? I have a motion.

Move the Bill.

Second. Okay. Moved by Assembly Repellin. Seconded by Assembly Member. Mayor Sutci. You want to go ahead and call the roll?

The motion is due pass as amended to Appropriations. [Roll Call]

We'll go ahead and put that on call. Okay. Next.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Senator. Next up, we have SB 615. Senator Allen makes sense.

Thanks so much. Senator Allen, proud to represent UCLA in the State Senate, but also UC Berkeley law school grad. So go Bears. Go Bruins. We're all in it together. And that's what brings me to this bill, which is about EV batteries and recycling and trying to make sure that we come together to.

To address a major challenge, which is the fact that we have a desire to really grow the number of EVs on the market. And yet there's a major challenge associated with making sure that those batteries, which are a real opportunity for recycling, get recycled.

So this bill would establish a program under the Department of Substance Control to ensure proper management of end-of-life EV batteries, promoting a more sustainable circular economy and avoiding problems created by mismanaged hazardous waste. I've worked on recycling issues in circularity for a long time.

The great thing about this particular product is that there is a real market associated with the component parts of EV batteries. We know that recycling end-of-life batteries from electric vehicles reduces the demand for raw materials, thereby avoiding the negative social and environmental impacts of mining.

In some instances, batteries can be repurposed for energy storage, further extending their useful life. But the problem is California lacks a policy framework to ensure these beneficial outcomes, which will become more problematic as more EVs and EV batteries reach their end of life.

And it could create a hazardous waste crisis if clear pathways for management are not already in place. We're already seeing evidence of this growing problem, including the complications that burned EV batteries posed in the cleanup of the LA fires.

And his local household hazardous waste facilities are starting to take in EV batteries into their facilities a few years back. You know, some of our Republican friends have repeatedly raised concerns about the all the challenges associated the social challenges associated with mining for some of the component parts of EV batteries.

And then Assemblymember Brian Dahle passed AB2832 back in 2018, which called for an advisory group to develop recommendations to the Legislature to ensure that as close to 100% as possible of lithium-ion batteries in the state are reused or recycled at end of life so as to reduce the strain on international mining of lithium.

So this bill is a direct response to the report that came out of Assemblymember Dahle's legislation. Countless hours of stakeholder feedback over the past few years, and it's all about ensuring that EV batteries are properly handled and eventually recycled at the end of their useful life. And it encourages reuse, repair, and repurposing whenever feasible.

It brings the EV battery suppliers into with regards to proper management, recycling of end of life batteries under warranty, and other batteries offered back to the appropriate battery supplier, including associated costs of collection. The bill also holds entities that remove a battery from a vehicle, such as an auto shop or dismantler, responsible for proper management.

That could mean returning the battery to the manufacturer. That could mean selling the battery to be used for battery storage or selling it to a battery recycler.

The flexibility of this structure is particularly important since, unlike other materials we've sought to manage at the end of life, EV batteries contain critical minerals cobalt, lithium, nickel, which make them very valuable in growing and robust recycling market. I mean, as you know, I've worked a lot in plastics.

Not an easy area to create a market for the resale of recycled plastic material because it's so cheap. In this case, these are valuable minerals and metals that actually do have a potential and a viable market.

So the bill seeks flexibility so as to allow for the highest and best use with regards to resale or reuse of those minerals and materials in the battery.

But it also is designed to include producer responsibility as a crucial backstop if the recycling market and the value of the battery material changes over time, so as to ensure proper end-of-life management continues. Remember, members, we are all paying the cost of the dysfunction of the system. When a battery, you know, when a car.

EV goes to a regular car dismantler, and the EV battery is not properly disposed of, not only is it a massively lost opportunity for reuse, it also creates new toxicities and challenges associated with a crushed battery that then impacts the environment.

It increases cleanup costs, increases management costs, and we all as rate payers and taxpayers are paying the cost of that. So this was actually. Yeah. So with me today to speak in support of the bill, we have Michelle Canales from the Reunion Concerned Scientists, and also Alexis Georgen, who's here with Redwood Materials.

You have two minutes.

And I want to thank both of them very much for their work on this.

Yeah.

Good afternoon, Chair Members. Michele Canales, on behalf of Union of Concerned Scientists, in support of SB615. We have been advocating for the broad deployment of electric vehicles for years because of their clear public health and climate benefits. With the increase of EVs on the road, we need to ensure that the clean transportation future is also sustainable.

Over the next decade, EV battery retirements are estimated to increase by 450% in California. This wave of retirements will include batteries that are damaged, dispersed, and those that contain fewer valuable minerals and are therefore less profitable to recycle. Without policy intervention, batteries might end up in hazardous waste landfills or abandoned.

To avoid this and reduce the need for newly mined material, we need SB615. So specifically, there are three provisions that make this bill effective. First, producer responsibility is critical so that when manufacturers put their vehicles out for sale, there's a clear plan to have their batteries responsibly managed when they retire.

Producer responsibility is not a new concept for California. And both the European Union and New Jersey have passed such policies concerning EV batteries. Second, tracking and reporting requirements in the bill will make sure batteries are not getting lost in the shuffle.

And if they do, these requirements will provide the legislature and state agencies with the information needed to identify and rectify any problems, including insufficient mineral recovery rates. Finally, SB615 seeks to prevent batteries from being processed with harmful and inefficient recycling technologies to ensure methods are safe and sustainable.

We're grateful to Senator Allen and his staff for their tireless efforts on this bill, and we respectfully request your aye vote. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair and members of the committee. My name is Alexis Georgeson. I'm the Vice President of Government Relations at Redwood Materials. Redwood strongly supports SB615 as a thoughtful policy framework that recognizes the value of EV batteries at end of life and the significant market opportunity that they represent.

Redwood is building the first fully integrated U.S. battery supply chain. Today, we receive more than 20 gigawatt hours annually of end-of-life batteries.

That's the equivalent of about 250,000 electric vehicles, vehicles that come through our door, and we are able to recover about 95% of those critical minerals and return them to the supply chain. Through our new business, Redwood Energy, we are already deploying repurposed EV battery packs as well into stationary storage applications to meet surging electricity demand.

In fact, just last month, we commissioned what is now North America's largest microgrid made entirely out of second-life EV batteries.

We partner across the battery value chain from major automakers and cell manufacturers to dealers, dismantlers, refurbished, and metal recyclers to identify EV packs at end of life and put them into their best possible use, either through repurposing or recycling and reclaiming their critical minerals.

SB615 wisely rejects a pro model better suited to negative value waste streams and instead relies on the market-driven partnerships already working across the battery value chain.

It ensures efficient recovery of critical minerals by defining and leveraging advanced battery recyclers, balancing responsibility through clear roles for producers, secondary handlers, and secondary users without unnecessary middlemen, and elevates the second life by prioritizing repurposing before recycling. At a time of utmost importance for critical mineral security, supply chain resilience, and surging energy demand.

SB615 is a smart forward looking policy, and we thank Senator Allen for stakeholdering it so well. I urge your aye vote, thank you.

I've never heard stakeholdering as a verb. I like that.

Do we have any, any members of the public here in support?

Thank you, Chair and members. Kassidy Heckmann, on behalf of the California Automotive Wholesalers Association, we are in support of the bill and wanted to thank the Senator for working closely with us on this version and last year's version to address our concerns. Thank you.

Shaun Flanigan, on behalf of LKQ, in support, and wanted to thank the Senator and his staff's work on this bill. Really appreciate it. Thanks.

Caitlin Loventhal, with the California State Association of Counties, in support.

Good afternoon, Shanta Paikian, on behalf of the Ford Motor Company, in support.

Sara Olson on behalf of Environmental Defense Fund, Enviro Voters in Sierra Club, in support.

Tony Hackett, Californians Against Waste, in support

Brandon Wong, on behalf of CALSTART. A little bit of a tweener right now. Really appreciate working with the author right now. We're support if amended.

Anyone else? Okay. Do we have any primary witnesses in opposition? Okay. Seeing none. Do we have any members of the public in opposition?

Good evening. Lizzie Cootsona here on behalf of Tesla, respectfully opposed for the reason stated in our letter. Also asked by Rivian to share their opposition. Thank you.

Kasha Hunt with Nossman on behalf of the Motorcycle Industry Council. And we have an opposed unless amended position as we are small manufacturers that produce motorcycles and ATVs, and water sports, and this bill puts a huge burden on our small manufacturers. We have an opposing unless amended position. Asking to be excluded from the bill. Thank you.

Thanks.

Sarah Bridges, on behalf of the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, in respectful opposition. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Jon Kendrick, on behalf of the California Chamber of Commerce. Opposed as currently constructed. Thank you.

Thank you. Bring it back to the committee. Somebody remembers.

Thank you very much, Senator, for your continued great work in this space. I, I'm just curious. You had the exact same numbered bill last year.

I know. I saw that, too.