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Alternatives assessment is a methodology used to identify, evaluate, and compare potential chemical and nonchemical solutions with a substance of concern. It is required in several chemicals management regulatory frameworks, with the objective of supporting the transition to safer chemistry and avoiding regrettable substitutions. Using expert input from symposium presentations and a discussion group hosted by the Association for the Advancement of Alternatives Assessment, four case examples of the use of alternatives assessment in regulatory frameworks were evaluated and compared: (1) the US Environmental Protection Agency Significant New Alternatives Policy (USEPA SNAP), (2) authorization provisions in the EU REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals) regulation, (3) the California (CA) Safer Consumer Products (SCP) Program, and (4) the Safer Products for Washington (WA) Program. Factors such as the purpose of the alternatives assessment, the timeline of actions, who completes the assessment, the role of stakeholder engagement, and the regulatory response options for each policy are outlined. Through these presentations and expert discussions, four lessons learned about the use of alternatives assessments in regulatory policy emerged: (1) the goal and purpose of the regulatory framework significantly affects its ability to result in safer substitution, (2) existing frameworks struggle with data access and insufficient stakeholder engagement, (3) some frameworks lack clear decision rules regarding what is a safer and feasible alternative, and (4) regulatory response options provide limited authority for enforcement and do not adequately address options where alternatives are unavailable or limited. Five recommendations address these lessons as well as how the application of alternatives assessment in regulatory settings could have greater impact in the future. This synthesis is not meant to be a comprehensive policy analysis, but rather an assessment based on the perspectives from experts in the field, which should be supplemented by formal policy analysis as policies are implemented over time. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2024;20:1035-1045. © 2023 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC)., (© 2023 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC).)

This paper examines the relationship between the early adoption of new technologies, the probability of firm survival, and environmental regulations through a case study of dry cleaners in the South Coast Basin of California (SC Basin). Most dry cleaners use machines that use the toxic chemical perchloroethylene (PERC) to clean garments. PERC vapors are emitted into the ambient air during the dry cleaning process and can cause cancer in people who live and work nearby. In 2002, the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) required all dry cleaners in the region to purchase a costly alternative machine that used a non-toxic cleaning solvent by the year 2020. Using bivariate and multivariate analysis, we found that the timing of the early adoption of non-PERC machines among dry cleaners was optimal, ceteris paribus, and adopting early did not have a negative effect on the probability of surviving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Policy Studies Journal is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, we ask how the written composition of public policies structure an environmental governance system. We answer this question using semi-automated text analyses of 22 state-level policies governing oil and gas development in California between 2007 and 2017. The findings portray an environmental governance system that is both partitioned and connected into different focal areas (called "targeted action situations") through certain actors, issues, and rules. We conclude with substantive insights about California's oil and gas governance system, as well as theoretical and methodological contributions for analyzing the composition of public policy to advance knowledge about hybrid governance., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

A comprehensive assessment was conducted of California's Used Oil Program, which was established in 1992 to reduce the illegal disposal, and promote the reuse, of used lubricating oil. This paper summarises selected key findings of the assessment and discusses them in the context of designing and implementing policy instruments for promoting environmentally responsible waste management. The approach known as 'community-based social marketing' is identified as a promising option. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy directed at managing automobile pollution is complicated by the concern for legitimate means of control over urban populations. Especially in regions where vehicle diversity is extensive, uniform policies of in-use vehicle emissions control are not always effective, but any stratified regulatory effort that concentrates on "weeding out" those vehicles that are the worst offenders can result in an awkward administrative predicament involving public accountability. In California, this challenge is particularly serious since automobile culture is pervasive to the point of being the most significant aspect of the urban experience. The history of automobile pollution control in the state demonstrates that in imposing rules on vehicle owners concerning emissions, regulators have had to tread cautiously on the issue of "driving fights" by invoking a public awareness of risk in order to gain consent to their intrusions on the private spaces of driver-citizens. Disproportionate restrictions o,n older vehicles with malfunctioning or poorly functioning emission control systems could not only challenge the doctrine of fairness and point to a problem of social justice but also raise additional problems concerning individual rights in liberal democratic societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precisely what is the relationship between the developing jurisprudence of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the most renowned “baby” NEPA? What is the societal and environmental value of the current legal structure of these two statutory behemoths both individually and conjunctionally considered? Endeavoring to answer these questions, this study analyzes all published opinions from the First, Ninth, and Eleventh United States Circuit Courts of Appeals during a fifteen year study period (1997 to 2012), where plaintiffs challenged the validity of a federal agency’s compliance with NEPA. It reveals not only that CEQA jurisprudence has strayed from that of NEPA, despite being modeled after it, but, even more astounding, that NEPA jurisprudence of the Ninth Circuit, the federal appellate court that includes California, is following CEQA’s blatant divergence from NEPA as practiced in the rest of the country, creating a fundamentally different version of NEPA applicable only to the Western states. The study concludes by calling on the Council on Environmental Quality to update its NEPA regulations to provide a more clear explanation of the statute’s mandates, including clear direction on how federal agencies should accomplish these mandates.Environmental Practice 16: 329–334 (2014) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses about the 1970 US Clean Air Act and market-based environmental policy in the United States affected pollution disparities between communities. Topics of discussion includes the data collected from California and Texas on the locations of facilities that sold permanent rights to emit a specific amount of pollution and the locations of facilities that purchased these rights that presents different marginal abatement costs.

The 27 oil and gas platforms offshore southern California will eventually reach the end of their useful lifetimes (estimated between 2015 and 2030) and will be decommissioned. Current state and federal laws and regulations allow for alternative uses in lieu of the complete removal required in existing leases. Any decommissioning pathway will create a complex mix of costs, benefits, opportunities, and constraints for multiple user groups. To assist the California Natural Resources Agency in understanding these issues, we evaluated the potential socioeconomic impacts of the 2 most likely options: complete removal and partial removal of the structure to 85 feet below the waterline with the remaining structure left in place as an artificial reef-generally defined as a manmade structure with some properties that mimic a natural reef. We estimated impacts on commercial fishing, commercial shipping, recreational fishing, nonconsumptive boating, and nonconsumptive SCUBA diving. Available data supported quantitative estimates for some impacts, semiquantitative estimates for others, and only qualitative approximations of the direction of impact for still others. Even qualitative estimates of the direction of impacts and of user groups' likely preferred options have been useful to the public and decision makers and provided valuable input to the project's integrative decision model. Uncertainty surrounds even qualitative estimates of the likely direction of impact where interactions between multiple impacts could occur or where user groups include subsets that would experience the same option differently. In addition, we were unable to quantify effects on ecosystem value and on the larger regional ecosystem, because of data gaps on the population sizes and dynamics of key species and the uncertainty surrounding the contribution of platforms to available hard substrate and related natural populations offshore southern California., (© 2015 SETAC.)

This article describes the overall decision framework for eventual decisions about decommissioning the 27 operating oil and gas platforms offshore southern California. These platforms will eventually reach the end of their useful lifetimes (estimated between 2015 and 2030, although specific dates have not been determined). Current law and regulations allow for alternative uses in lieu of the complete removal required in existing leases. To prepare for eventual decommissioning, the California Natural Resources Agency initiated an in-depth process to identify and investigate issues surrounding possible decommissioning alternatives. The detailed evaluation of alternatives focused on 2-complete removal and artificial reefing that included partial removal to 85 feet below the waterline. These were selected after a comparison of the technical and economic feasibility of several potential alternatives, availability of a legal framework for implementation, degree of interest from proponents, and relative acceptance by state and federal decision makers. Despite California's history of offshore oil and gas production, only 7 decommissioning projects have been completed and these were all relatively small and close to shore. In contrast, nearly 30% of the California platforms are in water depths (as much as 1200 feet) that exceed any decommissioning project anywhere in the world. Most earlier projects considered an artificial reefing alternative but none were implemented and all platforms were completely removed. Future decisions about decommissioning must grapple with a more complex decision context involving greater technological and logistical challenges and cost, a wider range of viable options, tradeoffs among environmental impacts and benefits, and an intricate maze of laws, regulations, and authorities. The specific engineering differences between complete and partial removal provide an explicit basis for a thorough evaluation of their respective impacts., (© 2015 SETAC.)

The 27 oil and gas platforms off the coast of southern California are reaching the end of their economic lives. Because their decommissioning involves large costs and potential environmental impacts, this became an issue of public controversy. As part of a larger policy analysis conducted for the State of California, we implemented a decision analysis as a software tool (PLATFORM) to clarify and evaluate decision strategies against a comprehensive set of objectives. Key options selected for in-depth analysis are complete platform removal and partial removal to 85 feet below the water line, with the remaining structure converted in place to an artificial reef to preserve the rich ecosystems supported by the platform's support structure. PLATFORM was instrumental in structuring and performing key analyses of the impacts of each option (e.g., on costs, fishery production, air emissions) and dramatically improved the team's productivity. Sensitivity analysis found that disagreement about preferences, especially about the relative importance of strict compliance with lease agreements, has much greater effects on the preferred option than does uncertainty about specific outcomes, such as decommissioning costs. It found a near-consensus of stakeholders in support of partial removal and "rigs-to-reefs" program. The project's results played a role in the decision to pass legislation enabling an expanded California "rigs-to-reefs" program that includes a mechanism for sharing cost savings between operators and the state., (© 2015 SETAC.)

This paper introduces a series of 6 additional papers in this issue that describe an in-depth analysis of options for decommissioning oil and gas platforms offshore southern California. Although current leases require lessees in both state and federal waters to completely remove all production facilities and restore the seafloor to its pre-platform condition, other options have emerged since these leases were signed. Laws and regulations in other jurisdictions (particularly in federal waters) have evolved to allow a number of other uses such as aquaculture, alternative energy production, and artificial reefing. In response, the California Natural Resources Agency initiated an effort to investigate the issues associated with these and other decommissioning alternatives. The papers in this series are the result of the second phase in this process, a broad investigation of the engineering, economic, and environmental costs and benefits of the most feasible and likely options. In addition to the project's final report, the authors produced an interactive mathematical decision model, PLATFORM, that enables users to explore the implications of different decommissioning projects and options, as well as the effects of different approaches to valuing the associated costs and benefits., (© 2015 SETAC.)

Objective: To compare the use of water, energy, pesticides and fertilizer to produce commodities for two dietary patterns that vary in the content of plant and animal products., Design: A unique analysis using 'real-world' data was performed, in contrast to previous analyses which applied simulated data. Consumption data from the Adventist Health Study were used to identify two dietary patterns with a markedly different consumption of several plant and animal products. State agricultural data were collected and applied to commodity production statistics. Indices were created to allow a comparison of the resource requirements for each dietary pattern., Setting: California, USA., Subjects: None., Results: The diet containing more animal products required an additional 10 252 litres of water, 9910 kJ of energy, 186 g of fertilizer and 6 g of pesticides per week in comparison to the diet containing less animal products. The greatest contribution to the difference came from the consumption of animal products, particularly beef., Conclusions: Consuming a more plant-based diet could to an extent alleviate the negative environmental impacts related to food production. As a method to feed ourselves more sustainably, behavioural adjustments appear to be a very important tool.

Groundwater is a vital resource in California, and the concept of "sustainable yield" is an attempt to determine a metric that can ensure the long-term resilience of groundwater systems. However, its meaning is ambiguous and quantification is challenging. To provide insight into developing a working definition that encompasses the inherent uncertainty and complexity of the term, this paper examines how sustainable yield in groundwater is interpreted by (1) scientists, (2) the courts in groundwater adjudications, (3) state agencies, and (4) local water practitioners. Through qualitative interviews, this paper identifies problems that local water agencies in the state encounter in engaging with sustainable yield as they incorporate the term in groundwater management practices. The authors recommend that any definitions make explicit the human dimensions of, and assumptions embedded in, the use of these terms in groundwater management practices, and they point to the value of participation in this process., (© 2014, National Ground Water Association.)

Examines the process of environmental policy making in Los Angeles, California. Characteristics of urban environmental politics; Analysis of the land-use policies that regulate Los Angeles River; Policies on air quality management in the South Coast.

• Comparative analysis of environmental federalism approaches to EIA policy. • Detailed legislative and regulatory evolution in all four case studies. • Lessons learned and policy reforms for EIA in Brazil, Paraná, US, and California. The literature on environmental impact assessments (EIA) tends to focus on national case studies, while neglecting subnational EIA systems. Federalist countries represent 40 % of the world's population and by their design link national and subnational governments in institutional arrangements that delineate or share power across administrative and sectorial areas. Therefore, the study of institutional arrangements' influence on the conduct of environmental policy such as EIA is important in evaluating its effectiveness. This research aims to contribute to this area by examining the national and subnational EIA systems in two federalist countries, Paraná, Brazil and California, United States (US). This involved a literature review of the scientific and grey literature as well as legislation and regulations of each case study. This analysis was organized along operational, legislative, administrative, and procedural characteristics building upon existing methods from the EIA literature. The results show each federal country presents different approaches to EIA policy. Brazil represents a more centralized top-down approach based on a licensing system, which offers broader coverage of projects and in theory more standardized implementation. In the case of Paraná, there has been a recent shift towards decentralizing the EIA process for smaller projects to municipalities, although there remain institutional and technical challenges. The US EIA system covers only public projects and therefore is considerably limited in its coverage. California presents the most institutionally and technically competent EIA system of those compared in this study. However, it still suffers from problems of inconsistent implementation and litigation abuse. All case studies are facing increasing political pressures to streamline their processes, often with the proposal of arbitrary timelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

California occupies a special place within contemporary American climate fiction and environmental history. It provides the key setting for cli-fi novels such as Edan Lepucki's California (2014), Claire Vaye Watkins's Gold Fame Citrus (2015), T.C. Boyle's When the Killings Done (2011) and A Friend of the Earth (2000), Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife (2015), and Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower (1993). California also plays a key role in fostering the contemporary environmental movement with its stringent, groundbreaking environmental policies and history. California offers a defining trope and shorthand for climate change in the United States and beyond. This survey of California-based cli-fi places California as a flashpoint location for climate change catharsis within the American and global environmental imagination, offering a paradoxical productive and torpifying release. I argue the depictions of California highlight how the climate crisis is always experienced locally, but like ecological or tropic cascade, Californian cli-fi demonstrates repercussions beyond its individual bioregions. As a flashpoint for national climate change catharsis, California inspires change and problematically keeps climate change's impact at a distant frontier, at least for those who do not live within its borders or who do not have the means to escape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing numbers of homes are being destroyed by wildfire in the wildland-urban interface. With projections of climate change and housing growth potentially exacerbating the threat of wildfire to homes and property, effective fire-risk reduction alternatives are needed as part of a comprehensive fire management plan. Land use planning represents a shift in traditional thinking from trying to eliminate wildfires, or even increasing resilience to them, toward avoiding exposure to them through the informed placement of new residential structures. For land use planning to be effective, it needs to be based on solid understanding of where and how to locate and arrange new homes. We simulated three scenarios of future residential development and projected landscape-level wildfire risk to residential structures in a rapidly urbanizing, fire-prone region in southern California. We based all future development on an econometric subdivision model, but we varied the emphasis of subdivision decision-making based on three broad and common growth types: infill, expansion, and leapfrog. Simulation results showed that decision-making based on these growth types, when applied locally for subdivision of individual parcels, produced substantial landscape-level differences in pattern, location, and extent of development. These differences in development, in turn, affected the area and proportion of structures at risk from burning in wildfires. Scenarios with lower housing density and larger numbers of small, isolated clusters of development, i.e., resulting from leapfrog development, were generally predicted to have the highest predicted fire risk to the largest proportion of structures in the study area, and infill development was predicted to have the lowest risk. These results suggest that land use planning should be considered an important component to fire risk management and that consistently applied policies based on residential pattern may provide substantial benefits for future risk reduction.

Historians often understand the 1970s and 1980s in terms of a declining New Deal order, in which an antistatist right as well as a conflicted relationship between public interest movements and administrative authorities undermined the notion of an effective federal government. Nowhere was the erosion of federal administration seemingly more apparent than in the West. An examination of the regulation of off-road racing in the California desert, focusing on everyday administration rather than on elections and lawsuits, reveals how federal agencies actually worked more collaboratively and productively with different interest groups than familiar narratives about these polarized decades would suggest. Contrary to depictions of federal agencies as administrating from afar, and of environmental organizations as overly litigious and out of touch, regulatory work in the California desert happened locally and through relationships shaped by new laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development and promulgation of sediment quality criteria represents a substantial challenge for water quality agencies. Unlike water quality programs that rely on individual chemical thresholds to assess water quality, the complex processes affecting contaminant bioavailability in sediments preclude the use of contaminant concentrations to independently assess impacts or identify cause. Various multiple line of evidence approaches (e.g., sediment quality triad) have been developed for sediment quality assessment, but such frameworks are rarely fully incorporated into statewide regulatory programs due to a lack of standardized and validated tools. In 2003, California's State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) initiated development of sediment quality criteria and an assessment framework that required the developers to resolve many challenging technical and policy related issues to the satisfaction of stakeholders, scientists, and the general public. The first part of this multiyear effort has been completed and resulted in the development and validation of an integrated collection of tools, thresholds, and a data interpretation framework for assessing sediment contamination impacts on benthic community condition. The State Water Board's narrative sediment quality criteria and assessment framework became effective in 2009, following US Environmental Protection Agency approval. The results of this effort are described in a series of 6 articles published in this issue of Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management. The articles describe: 1) a multiple line of evidence framework for data integration and assessment, 2) calibration and evaluation of sediment quality guidelines for predicting toxic responses, 3) development and evaluation of sediment quality guidelines with respect to benthic macrofauna responses, 4) selection of toxicity test methods and thresholds, 5) identification and characterization of benthic community assemblages, 6) the effect of sampling methods on benthic community assessment, and 7) recommendations on improving the assessment of contaminant exposure in sediment quality assessment. This collection of articles illustrates the steps needed to improve the scientific foundation for sediment quality assessment in regulatory applications., (Copyright © 2012 SETAC.)

The invasion of the aquarium strain of the green alga Caulerpa taxifolia and subsequent alteration of community structure in the Mediterranean Sea raised awareness of the potential for non-native seaweeds to impact coastal communities. An introduction of C. taxifolia in southern California in 2000, presumably from the release of aquarium specimens, cost ~$7 million for eradication efforts. Besides C. taxifolia, other Caulerpa species being sold for aquarium use also may have the potential to invade southern Californian and U.S. waters. Surveys of the availability of Caulerpa species in southern California aquarium retail stores in 2000-2001 revealed that 26 of 50 stores sold at least one Caulerpa species (52 %) with seven stores selling C. taxifolia. In late 2001, California imposed a ban on the importation, sale, or possession of nine Caulerpa species; the City of San Diego expanded these regulations to include the entire genus. To determine the effectiveness of the California ban, we resurveyed Caulerpa availability at 43 of the 50 previously sampled retail stores in southern California in ~2006, ~4 years following the ban. Of the 43 stores, 23 sold Caulerpa (53 %) with four stores selling C. taxifolia. A χ(2) test of frequency of availability before and after the California ban suggests that the ban has not been effective and that the aquarium trade continues to represent a potential vector for distributing Caulerpa specimens, including C. taxifolia. This study underscores the need for increased enforcement and outreach programs to increase awareness among the aquarium industry and aquarium hobbyists.

Biofuels have received legislative support recently in California's Low-Carbon Fuel Standard and the Federal Energy Independence and Security Act. Both present new fuel types, but neither provides methodological guidelines for dealing with the inherent uncertainty in evaluating their potential life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions reductions are based on point estimates only. This work demonstrates the use of Monte Carlo simulation to estimate life-cycle emissions distributions from ethanol and butanol from corn or switchgrass. Life-cycle emissions distributions for each feedstock and fuel pairing modeled span an order of magnitude or more. Using a streamlined life-cycle assessment, corn ethanol emissions range from 50 to 250 g CO(2)e/MJ, for example, and each feedstock-fuel pathway studied shows some probability of greater emissions than a distribution for gasoline. Potential GHG emissions reductions from displacing fossil fuels with biofuels are difficult to forecast given this high degree of uncertainty in life-cycle emissions. This uncertainty is driven by the importance and uncertainty of indirect land use change emissions. Incorporating uncertainty in the decision making process can illuminate the risks of policy failure (e.g., increased emissions), and a calculated risk of failure due to uncertainty can be used to inform more appropriate reduction targets in future biofuel policies.

Habitat loss is a major factor in the endangerment and extinction of species around the world. One promising strategy to balance continued habitat loss and biodiversity conservation is that of biodiversity offsets. However, a major concern with offset programs is their consistency with landscape-level conservation goals. While merging offset policies and landscape-level conservation planning is thought to provide advantages over a traditional disconnected approach, few such landscape-level conservation-offset plans have been designed and implemented, so the effectiveness of such a strategy remains uncertain. In this study, we quantitatively assess the conservation impact of combining landscape-level conservation planning and biodiversity offset programs by comparing regions of San Diego County, USA with the combined approach to regions with only an offset program. This comparison is generally very difficult due to a variety of complicating factors. We overcome these complications and quantify the benefits to rare and threatened species of implementing a combined approach by assessing the amount of each species' predicted distribution, and the number of documented locations, conserved in comparison to the same metric for areas with an offset policy alone. We found that adoption of the combined approach has increased conservation for many rare species, often 5-10 times more than in the comparison area, and that conservation has been focused in the areas most important for these species. The level of conservation achieved reduces uncertainty that these species will persist in the region into the future. This San Diego County example demonstrates the potential benefits of combining landscape-level conservation planning and biodiversity offset programs.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) increasingly is seen as a potent tool for studying and addressing urban environmental health problems by linking place-based work with efforts to help effect policy-level change. This paper explores a successful CBPR and organizing effort, the Toxic Free Neighborhoods Campaign, in Old Town National City (OTNC), CA, United States, and its contributions to both local policy outcomes and changes in the broader policy environment, laying the groundwork for a Specific Plan to address a host of interlocking community concerns. After briefly describing the broader research of which the OTNC case study was a part, we provide background on the Environmental Health Coalition (EHC) partnership and the setting in which it took place, including the problems posed for residents in this light industrial/residential neighborhood. EHC's strong in-house research, and its training and active engagement of promotoras de salud (lay health promoters) as co-researchers and policy change advocates, are described. We explore in particular the translation of research findings as part of a policy advocacy campaign, interweaving challenges faced and success factors and multi-level outcomes to which these efforts contributed. The EHC partnership's experience then is compared with that of other policy-focused CBPR efforts in urban environmental health, emphasizing common success factors and challenges faced, as these may assist other partnerships wishing to pursue CBPR in urban communities.

The article offers information on the climate policies in California and New York. It mentions the role played by politicians in the two states why their policies were considered as stronger in the U.S. along with the usefulness of the process and structural theories in the policy adoption of the two states. It discusses certain structural advantages and constraints that contributes to development of strong climate policies in California and New York. It highlights the similarities of the climate policies of the states and the reason why California's policy was stronger compared with New York's.

We explored how air quality management processes associated with Assembly Bill 617 (AB 617) in West Oakland, California, represent a shift in power relationships between government agencies and communities toward the goal of addressing legacies of environmental injustice. We drew from a statewide assessment of community engagement in AB 617's first year, and an analysis of the West Oakland AB 617 process. The first comprised 2 statewide surveys (n = 102 and n = 106), 70 key informant interviews, observation of all AB 617 first-year sites, and analysis of related planning documents. The second comprised 2 rounds of interviews (n = 22 and n = 23, with a total of 19 individuals) and extensive participant observation. Several factors are necessary for pursuing environmental justice: (1) invest in community partnerships and collaborations, (2) honor community knowledge and data, (3) ensure that community constituents share power in environmental governance, and (4) adopt explicit racial justice frameworks. Although still a work in progress, AB 617 offers important lessons for community and policy organizations nationwide engaged in environmental justice. ( Am J Public Health . 2022;112(2):262-270. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306592).

The discussion of how to manage air-quality in a heavily polluted area like Los Angeles (LA), California, in an era of shrinking public budgets and a trend towards deregulation has led to the introduction of a new environmental policy tool: a trade able emission permit approach (the so called RECLAIM-program) to reduce SO- and NO-emissions from stationary sources was introduced in 1994. This paper is an attempt to analyze and evaluate the first three years of the program, based on the official thre e year program audit (SCAQMD, 1998) and on a written company survey and personal interviews with experts, as well as administrators active in air quality management in Los Angeles (conducted by the authors between May 1996 and May 1998). x [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes and explains why the state of California has long played a leadership role in adopting innovative and stringent environmental standards. It argues that critical roles have been played by the state's attractive natural environment, the extent of threats to its environmental quality, the material interest of citizens in protecting the natural environmental around where they lived, and the support of business interests who stood to benefit from protecting the state's many environmental amenities. These dynamics are illustrated by several historical examples, which have laid the basis for the state's current environmental policy initiatives. It concludes by generalizing from the experiences of California in order to explore the role of politics and public policies in promoting more sustainable business practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights California's tri-partite statutory structure aimed at the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, linking air quality, transportation, and sustainable land use through regional and local planning. It examines laws to prevent global warming and greenhouse gas emissions by linking air quality, transportation, and sustainable land use1 through regional and local planning.

Restoration ecology struggles to mitigate human‐caused ecological damage. Non‐native species are a particular challenge. This article describes two restoration attempts following introduced species in California and then makes a radical culling proposal. Environmental regulations, legal protections, and restoration projects are necessary to preserve ecosystem services, but such policies are often unpopular. Restorers often struggle when public opinion opposes evidence‐based practice, and this occurs particularly when the interventions involve killing mammals. Therefore, restoration efforts may benefit from more attention to how individuals perceive the acceptability of environmental policies and how to communicate policy options effectively for individuals to make informed decisions. Restoration ecology can follow the recent shift of medicine away from imperatives and toward informed patient choice. Restoration projects may benefit from recent advances in psychology and communication that help individuals make policy decisions that align with their personal values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, states have exhibited remarkable leadership in environmental policy. This leadership is threatened by federal ceiling preemption, which prevents states from adopting regulations that exceed federal standards. While environmental law scholars have argued that the rise in federal ceiling preemption will undermine environmental policy, these critics have failed to take the arguments in favor of preemption seriously. Specifically, they have not addressed the risk that states may adopt tough environmental regulations because they can externalize costs to other states, or that a single, large, pro-regulatory state like California could effectively dictate excessively stringent national standards. This Note presents a more principled case against federal ceiling preemption in environmental law and contends that the cost-externalization argument's practical application is limited. It illustrates this primarily through an extended case study of California's regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles. The Note argues that state regulations that provide manufacturers with sufficient flexibility to meet standards without disrupting economies of scale can largely avoid externalizing costs to out- of-state consumers. It further contends that states may have to consider the interests of out-of-state producers when issuing regulations because, among other reasons, compliance costs will be partly internalized by in-state consumers and shareholders. The Note concludes that the merits of the cost-externalization argument must be carefully weighed against the benefits of decentralized policymaking in order to yield optimal environmental policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of a comparative study of environmental policy making in Toronto and Los Angeles. The study was intended to explain how social formations at the urban scale play an increasingly important role in constructing environmental policy and practice as articulated in documents, rhetoric and political actions. It is suggested that environmental policy is embedded in broader and more long-term political goals, and that ecological discourse is not only about the environment but also brings together various social projects under the environmental protection flag. The four case studies— in Toronto, contaminated soil and the Don River were examined, and in Los Angeles air pollution and the Los Angeles River—revealed considerable variation but all reflected an agenda of ecological modernisation. In particular it was found that demands for maintaining or improving environmental integrity and coherence have lost legitimacy to concerns for efficiency, competitiveness, marketability, flexibility and development. Similarly, market driven regulation and an openness to civil society have played a major role in transforming policy making apparatuses. In contrast, the cases revealed that relationships between nature and society go beyond those expected in ecological modernisation theory and include both social ecology and urban ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the relationship between environmental policy and the social construction of place in two neighboring California counties. We examine two counties with dramatic geographic and sociodemographic differences that drew on similar place narratives in order to justify collaborative solutions to agricultural-environmental conflicts. Each narrative trumpets the importance of agriculture to each county's place character and praises the ability of well-intentioned county residents to work together. Our cases illuminate two processes through which place is socially constructed with regard to extralocal factors: place comparison allows residents to highlight potential risks by contrasting their own places with others while place meta-narratives allow actors to draw on culturally available notions of types of places. We conclude by discussing the relationship between place narratives and other factors that can affect policy choice, and therefore, shape the landscape itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author argues how California is a place that floods, fires and the earthquakes and the droughts tend to dominate the headlines and the popular imagination, sure. It reports that the rains also bring chaos and destruction here. The wet winter of 2017, for instance, wrecked hundreds of homes along Northern California's Russian River, caused landslides in Big Sur, and trapped dozens of motorists in floodwaters on Southern California freeways.

Copyright of Review of Policy Research is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)