Tell Your State Legislators to Say “NO” to Governor Newsom

by Brandon Dawson, Executive Director, Sierra Club California

Last month, Newsom introduced an infrastructure package that changes key administrative and judicial requirements of CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) and guts the fully protected species list codified in law, among other things. His rationale for introducing this package is that we need more clean infrastructure. You can see our press release here.  

Sierra Club wholly agrees that we need more clean infrastructure up and running, and we've asked Governor Newsom’s administration time and time again to finance and resource the permitting agencies to do so quickly. The problem is Newsom's current proposals have very little to do with clean energy projects and all to do with bad water projects and weakening CEQA—the legal foundation of much of our environmental protection work.

Despite saying that we need this package of bills because it would expedite clean energy projects, Newsom's office has not indicated what clean energy projects would benefit from his proposals. In fact, his office hasn't provided a single clean energy project that would benefit from this package, even when they were asked during legislative committee hearings last week. (You can read more about how those hearings went here).

The one project that his administration did admit would benefit from this package is the Delta Tunnel, a project Sierra Club California has continuously opposed because it would devastate the Bay Delta ecosystem, hurt salmon and other wildlife, adversely impact indigenous communities, and eliminate thousands of local jobs. We don't want the tunnel to benefit from this package, or at all. The Mercury just wrote an op-ed about it.

Instead of reaching out to the environmental community and other key groups who will be adversely impacted by the Delta Tunnel project, Governor Newsom is trying hard to rush this infrastructure package through, so there will be virtually no time for discussion and public input.

Our state legislators need to hear from you—constituents who oppose his proposals. The ask is that instead of focusing primarily on environmentally harmful and socio-economically unjust projects like the Delta Tunnel, he and the legislature need to work with environmental and social justice groups as well as impacted communities to develop better proposals, ones that will focus on projects that serve the public good. Look up your state legislators here to send the above message.

These are the key talking points when you write your message to your legislators:
1. Please do not support Governor Newsom’s attempt to bypass the regular legislative process to push through his anti-CEQA and pro-Delta Tunnel infrastructure package.
2. Please focus on working with your fellow legislators and the Governor—with input from environmental and social justice groups and those representing impacted communities—to come up with socially just and equitable proposals.