People Over Polluters: They Pollute. You Pay.
As parents, we send our kids to school trusting that the soil, the air, and the water around them are safe. Prop 45 puts that trust at risk.
Corporations want to rewrite California’s foundational environmental law, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), to make it easier to build polluting projects near schools, day care centers, and homes. That means more profit for them, and more toxic air, contaminated water, and health impacts for our children. Prop 45 is bad for Californians, and it’s bad for California’s kids.
Industrial Facilities Near Schools, Day Cares, and Homes
CEQA requires developers to disclose and take steps to reduce the harm their projects are likely to cause. This is especially important when projects are sited close to where our kids live, learn and play. Prop 45 weakens this protection. It makes it easier to locate industrial activity, including data centers and warehouses that depend on heavy diesel-powered truck traffic, right next to schools and communities. Picture a warehouse operation sending diesel trucks past an elementary school drop-off line every morning, or a data center’s gas generators running next to a playground, with little to no opportunity for parents and neighbors to weigh in before the projects are built.
Increased pollution has real impacts on children’s health and ability to learn. “Under Prop 45, school sites and children, along with nearby communities, could be exposed to toxic chemicals, polluted air, and contaminated water supplies,” said Diana Welsh of the Learning Disabilities Association (California Affiliate). “Studies show these exposures can be contributing factors that harm children’s developing brains and could result in future learning disabilities.”
School Siting Protections Eliminated
Prop 45 directly endangers our children by undermining hard-won protections for school siting. After discovering that many California schools had been built on contaminated properties, the California Legislature established special protections to make sure no child attends class on poisoned ground. Prop 45 directly weakens those protections, making it harder to catch and address contamination before a school is built. Once eliminated, these protections will be hard to restore.
Toxic Chemicals in Our Air and Water
Under Prop 45, communities can expect more projects that release chemicals like arsenic, lead, and benzene – substances linked to increased risks for cancer, birth defects, and learning disabilities. More pollution means more asthma, more emergency room visits, and more taxpayer-funded clean-ups, meaning that Prop 45 shifts the costs of pollution away from project developers and onto cities and taxpayers.
The Wall Street Journal cited H.4744 as evidence that Democratic-led Massachusetts was reconsidering its emissions targets. MOF and its allies helped send a different message: the people of Massachusetts were not cooperating with any rollback.
Health and Environmental Justice Groups Oppose Prop 45
Nurses, health advocates, educators, and environmental justice organizations across California are standing together against Prop 45, including:
- Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments
- American Lung Association
- California Nurses for Environmental Health and Justice
- Learning Disabilities Association – CA Affiliate
- California Communities Against Toxics
- Communities for a Better Environment
- Mothers Out Front
More than 400 Organizations Agree: Vote No on Prop 45!