Senate Environmental Quality Chair Provides Update on Efforts to Curb Incentives for Methane Pollution
SACRAMENTO – Senator Ben Allen today issued the following statement regarding a measure intended to ensure that we not incentivize greater emissions through the growth of industrial dairy operations.
“Yesterday, I asked the Senate Appropriations Committee to park Senate Bill 709, which I authored to address apparent negative impacts of the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) on local communities living near factory farms and to seek to ensure that the implementation of the LCFS is living up to its promise.
SB 709 states unequivocally that, in operating one of California’s flagship climate programs, the state can and must promote both effective climate change policy and environmental justice. I appreciate the early support for this effort from my colleagues Senators Gonzalez, Limón, Menjivar, and Skinner in the Senate Environmental Quality Committee.
Many of us take for granted that clean water comes out of the faucets in our homes and our kids’ schools, and that when we step outside or open our windows, the air will not negatively impact our quality of life or health. For decades, residents who live near factory farm dairies in the San Joaquin Valley have struggled for these basic human needs.
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is in the midst of a much-needed update to the LCFS. I am parking SB 709 to give CARB an opportunity to make the necessary changes to the LCFS through their existing rulemaking process to ensure the integrity of livestock methane emissions strategies and protection of communities that may be impacted by factory farms and large dairy and swine operations.
We should not have to sacrifice the well-being of communities to achieve our climate goals. It is the Legislature’s responsibility not only to set the course of California’s climate policy, but to correct course when policies are creating unintended consequences. I plan to engage in the rulemaking process and will ask my legislative colleagues to join me.”
# # #
Ben Allen represents the 24th State Senate District, which consists of the Westside, Hollywood, South Bay, and Santa Monica Mountains communities of Los Angeles County.
