California Fights Back on Trump’s Environmental Rollbacks

While the federal government continues on its path to push for less stringent environmental rules, California continues to push back and reach toward higher goals.

Two years ago, I shared the history of air pollution regulation and how great strides in technology and enduring leadership from California have significantly cleaned the air from the days of dense haze decades ago. The history of environmental legislation serves as a background to discuss the recent challenges from the federal government to strict environmental regulations, and now we can look to where we are now.

Two years later, where do things stand?

At the federal level, efforts have only ramped up to roll-back environmental laws and policies. One recent headline shows how these efforts are wide in scope: “Trump Administration Dims Rule on Energy Efficient Lightbulbs.” From fracking on public lands, expanding offshore oil leases, eliminating California’s ability to regulate vehicle emission standards, many of the proposed rollbacks would individually—not to mention collectively—result in substantial air quality impacts.

In response to many of the administration’s moves, the state of California has pushed back. Another recent headline highlights this from an interesting perspective: “Fastest litigant in the west: California’s on verge of suing Trump more than Texas ever sued Obama.” Close to half of the lawsuits California has challenged have been related to environmental rules; that pace has led to state Attorney General Xavier Becerra receiving an award from the Coalition for Clean Air.

Changing policy in California

The issue getting the most play relates to the administration’s desire to weaken vehicle emissions and fuel economy standards. These rollbacks would threaten California’s environmental goals and the state’s ability to be a leader on air quality and climate change.

At the local Air Pollution Control District level where I work, we have seen how proposals at the federal level could affect us at the local level in California. In terms of land use, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has discussed placing limits on the content and page length of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) documents, placing more impact analysis burden on state and local agencies and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) process for projects that involve federal permitting or agency oversight.

In terms of air quality standards, there have been moves to change the function and frequency of review panels for standards. We’ve also seen how the use of the term “climate change” has disappeared from the EPA’s website and goals. On the fiscal level, this administration has annually proposed to cut EPA’s budget—including grant dollars that go to local air districts to carry out our scope of work. However, to date, our grant funding has not been affected and remains consistent with the funding we’ve received for the last several years.

Taking action locally

In Santa Barbara County, we continue to see tremendous benefits from the state’s leadership on air quality, combined with my agency’s rules to limit pollution from the 1,000 stationary sources that we work with. The state’s push and support for cleaner gasoline cars and zero-emission cars—together with our local rules—has helped dramatically reduce our smoggy days. The days have been reduced so much that our county is now in a phase known as “nonattainment transitional” for ground-level ozone, meaning that we are on a path to meeting the state’s standard for ozone. That’s a big deal.

While there’s reason to cautiously celebrate our improvements on the ozone front, the particle pollution from wildfires is more concerning than ever. The last time I wrote this blog was before the Thomas Fire, which caused 13 days of unhealthy air quality in Santa Barbara County in the month of December and led to a tragic debris flow in Montecito.

At the time, the Thomas Fire quickly became the largest fire in modern California history—a rank that was just as quickly usurped by other devastating wildfires across the state. (You may recall that the administration threatened to withhold aid funds for communities devastated by some of the 2018 wildfires.)

The new normal

With climate change, scientists expect large, destructive fires like these to be the new normal. Because natural sources of pollution like these are outside of my agency’s regulatory control, this expected increase in wildfires means my agency needs to continue working with partners and community members to emphasize preparedness measures and preventative actions, including prescribed burns.

While the federal government continues on its path to push for less stringent environmental rules, California continues to push back and reach toward higher goals. It will be interesting to see what the next two years bring.