Groups Sue CARB Over Environmental Impacts of Flagship Climate Program

Today, environmental justice and environmental groups sued Governor Newsom’s California Air Resources Board (CARB) over its failure to adequately address the health and environmental impacts of its recently approved amendments to one of California’s flagship climate programs – the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS).

The LCFS incentivizes pollution in communities across the nation already overburdened with factory farm pollution, including those in California’s San Joaquin Valley, through lavish financial incentives for so-called “biogas” produced from manure. Petitioners seek to force CARB to disclose, analyze, and mitigate the significant environmental impact caused by the LCFS amendments as required by the California Environmental Quality Act. Californians have a right to know how their government’s decisions harm their environment and quality of life.

“CARB must acknowledge the environmental and public health harms caused by its prioritization of pollution-heavy practices over sustainable solutions,” said Defensores del Valle Central para el Aire y Agua Limpio representative María Arévalo. “In the Central Valley, we live near 90% of cows in California and some of the largest dairy operations in the entire world. We raise time and time again that the conditions and impacts in our communities are getting worse as dairies are getting bigger and dairy digesters are installed. Despite our ongoing advocacy from the local to the federal level, but more than anywhere at CARB, our concerns have been ignored.”

“It is more critical than ever that Governor Newsom gets it right on climate, but on the issue of factory farm climate pollution Newsom is prioritizing corporate profits over protecting the health and welfare of Californians,” said Food & Water Watch Staff Attorney Tyler Lobdell. “Governor Newsom’s CARB is taking California in the wrong direction, incentivizing dirty factory farm biogas buildouts to pay factory farms to pollute. Our climate and communities deserve better. CARB must acknowledge and address the environmental and health impacts of factory farm biogas by prioritizing people over profits.”

“CARB’s amendments to the LCFS leave no doubt that the agency is doubling down on its factory farm biogas scheme, further entrenching and greenwashing industrial animal agriculture with publicly funded incentives under the guise of fighting the climate crisis,” said Animal Legal Defense Fund Senior Staff Attorney Christine Ball-Blakely. “In reality, this decision enriches the factory farming industry and factory farm biogas developers at the expense of everyone else. It intensifies the exploitation of farmed animals, fans the flames of the climate crisis, and worsens the already severe environmental and health harms to communities occupied by factory farming, especially in the San Joaquin Valley. This decision is not only unconscionable — it is also unlawful.”

“Increasing data supports what CARB refuses to acknowledge — perverse incentives in the LCFS for fuel derived from manure at factory farms exacerbates severe environmental impacts, causing cascading harm to communities in California and beyond,” said Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability co-director, Phoebe Seaton. “State law requires CARB to analyze, evaluate, and mitigate these impacts, which it has failed to do despite numerous warnings from environmental justice and environmental groups through the LCFS rulemaking process and numerous calls from communities to correct course.”

California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard has been the nation’s primary driver of factory farm biogas development, both in California and beyond. By rewarding methane production on factory farms, the LCFS incentivizes the concentration of animals and animal waste production and exacerbates the negative health impacts of industrial factory farming, including mortality risks, kidney diseases, respiratory conditions, blood pressure elevation, and low birth weight. These impacts disproportionately fall on communities of color and low income communities.

Petitioners are Defensores del Valle Central para el Aire y Agua Limpio, Food & Water Watch, and Animal Legal Defense Fund. Defensores is represented by Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, the Law Office of Brent Newell, and Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP.

An environmental justice organization filed a second, separate lawsuit against CARB on its flawed environmental review that locks in billions of subsidies for biofuels from food crops like soy and corn.