{"id":407938,"date":"2026-07-22T13:27:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T13:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/407938\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T13:27:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T13:27:07","slug":"ceqa-is-a-powerful-environmental-tool-we-cant-afford-to-roll-it-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/407938\/","title":{"rendered":"CEQA is a powerful environmental tool. We can\u2019t afford to roll it back"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>To the editor: At LA Waterkeeper, the California Environmental Quality Act is one of our main tools for keeping this region\u2019s water safe \u2014 forcing agencies and developers to take a hard, evidence-based look at a project\u2019s environmental and public health impacts before it\u2019s built, not after. Proposition 45 would gut that (<a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/politics\/story\/2026-07-15\/poll-shows-most-californians-support-becerra-for-governor-ceqa-reform\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cCalifornians back CEQA reform, reject AI data centers by huge margins, poll finds,\u201d<\/a> July 15).<\/p>\n<p>In the last 60 days alone, a chemical tank crisis in Garden Grove and an ammonia leak at a Boyle Heights warehouse forced tens of thousands to evacuate. That\u2019s exactly the kind of public health risk the CEQA review exists to catch before it happens, not clean up after. It only takes a few bad actors to spoil water quality for everyone downstream.<\/p>\n<p>Weaken CEQA and it gets easier for industries pursuing polluting projects \u2014 data centers, warehouses, highway expansions \u2014 to cut corners across Los Angeles. Our rivers, coast and drinking water would carry the cost. Prop. 45 isn\u2019t a reform, it\u2019s a rollback we can\u2019t afford to risk.<\/p>\n<p>Kelly Shannon McNeill, Los Angeles<br \/>This writer is managing director of LA Waterkeeper, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the health of L.A.\u2019s waterways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To the editor: At LA Waterkeeper, the California Environmental Quality Act is one of our main tools for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[4440,10174,9350,23150,2072,11078,163590,48,52,51,78251,47,50,49,63,163591,1506,163589,16425,14880,646],"class_list":["post-407938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ai-datum-center","tag-ceqa","tag-coast","tag-drinking-water","tag-editor","tag-garden-grove","tag-highway-expansion","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-la-waterkeeper","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-powerful-environmental-tool","tag-project","tag-public-health-impact","tag-river","tag-warehouse","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}