On November 3rd, Californians will decide whether to give the corporations behind some of the state’s most toxic industries more control over what happens in our communities than residents have.
We are frontline families who live near refineries, ports, freeways, warehouses, and industrial zones. Our communities face the most risk from Prop 45.
Prop 45 would weaken the strongest tool our communities have available to protect ourselves from the worst health impacts before another polluting project is approved next door to our homes. Prop 45 would rewrite California’s environmental review process to make it easier for major polluting projects to move forward with minimal public oversight. It would severely limit the ability of community members to challenge developments that create air, water and noise pollution that threaten public health and safety of Californians.
Prop 45 does not exist in a vacuum. Californians have fought long and hard for the state and federal laws that keep our air breathable and our water drinkable. The Trump administration has shown how quickly those protections can be cast aside. As federal agencies weaken the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and other bedrock protections, state-level protections are more important than ever. California must step up and uphold the laws that protect our public health, air, land, and water. This November, Prop 45, if passed, will do the opposite. It suppresses California’s strongest defense against federal rollbacks at exactly the moment communities need that defense most.
Projects Covered by the Initiative
Prop 45 covers a wide range of polluting projects, including massive data centers, freeway expansions, landfill gas facilities, warehouses in mixed use developments, waste conversion facilities, and CO2 pipelines. These projects could be built next to schools, hospitals, and neighborhoods, with no restrictions on scale or siting, often in industrial and working-class neighborhoods first. These communities are already facing risks to clean water access, insufficient energy infrastructure, and real pollution costs. Adding to our communities’ already disproportionate burden is cruel and unjust.
Prop 45 Silences Community Voices
Communities have a right to know what is being proposed in our neighborhoods, be able to ask questions, and be included in project development decision-making. We should be able to ask and receive answers to questions like, “What will this project mean for our air? Our water? What changes could be made to make it safer before it is built?” Public input is how communities have secured key protections when projects like data centers, freeway expansions, and warehouses are getting ready to break ground. Public input has shifted truck routes to move emissions farther from schools, has resulted in better air filtration to keep homes safer for children and the elderly, and has led to investments in technology that reduce polluted runoff. Public input is how we keep our communities safe.
Prop 45 would limit that voice. For already-overburdened communities, environmental review is often our only defense against more asthma, cancers, and other health effects from toxic runoff and pollution.
Prop 45 Puts Corporations in Control
Follow the money. Oil and gas companies, data center developers, for-profit utilities, and tech companies are spending tens of millions of dollars in support of Prop 45 so they can build polluting projects with less public oversight.
California Communities Deserve Clean Air and Clean Water
If Prop 45 passes, corporations will get their profits while our communities get more pollution, more asthma, more emergency room visits, and dirtier air and water.
More than 450 environmental justice, good government, housing, health, Labor, conservation, civil rights, climate, and clean energy groups oppose Prop 45. Voting No keeps protections strong for our public health, land, and water. This November, protect community voices. Vote No on Prop 45.
Learn more and get involved at noprop45ca.com.
