Senate Environmental Quality advances package of bills on landfill safety, composting, geothermal, solar recycling, CO2 pipelines and school policy

The Senate Committee on Environmental Quality voted to advance a group of environment and energy bills after multi‑hour testimony and negotiation among authors, local officials, industry groups and environmental and labor advocates. The hearing ranged from extended public testimony about the burning Chiquita Canyon landfill and local health impacts to technical debates about permitting, worker training, and waste recycling.

The most prominent public testimony focused on AB 28 (Assemblymember Schiavo), a bill prompted by the Chiquita Canyon landfill fire and community pleas for faster state coordination and corrective action. Residents and environmental justice groups described multi‑year health and nuisance impacts near the landfill; industry representatives and local government witnesses pressed for careful rulemaking rather than immediate, prescriptive statutory mandates. The committee adopted amendments and advanced the bill to appropriations as amended.

Other bills advanced as amended included: AB 411 (authorizes limited on‑farm composting of livestock mortalities under specified safeguards), AB 531 (allow geothermal projects to use an existing one‑stop permitting pathway), AB 864 (exempting nonhazardous PV modules transferred to qualified recyclers and directing DTSC to set standards), AB 881 (direct the State Fire Marshal to adopt pipeline safety rules so California may lift its temporary CO2 pipeline moratorium under specified guardrails), AB 1111 (temporarily allow districts receiving EV bus incentives to transfer serviceable decommissioned buses to districts in need), AB 1207 (direct CARB to consider the U.S. EPA 2023 social cost of carbon in setting market ceilings), AB 1264 (phase‑out of specifically identified “particularly harmful” ultra‑processed foods from school meals by an implementation date after a science review), and AB 1156 (updates the solar‑use easement process for water‑constrained Williamson Act lands). Committee votes were recorded and the bills were placed on Appropriations or otherwise advanced as shown in the committee record.

Why this matters: The package reflects the committee's effort to juggle immediate public health and environmental justice crises (the Chiquita landfill fire), agricultural and rural economic realities (farm land, rendering and composting), the state's climate and grid‑reliability goals (geothermal, utility‑scale solar, carbon removal), and growing waste‑stream issues (PV recycling). Committee members and stakeholders repeatedly urged regulators to use technical rulemaking to refine standards rather than rely solely on statutory direction; in several cases the committee adopted amendments that push detailed standards or trigger thresholds to agencies such as CalRecycle, CARB, DTSC or the State Fire Marshal.

Votes at a glance (committee action) - AB 28 (Schiavo) — landfill elevated‑temperature/response: Passed as amended to Appropriations; committee adopted multiple amendments to add multi‑agency coordination, thresholds and enforcement language and to place some implementation details into CalRecycle and local enforcement agency processes. Outcome recorded in the committee as advanced (motion carried; bill kept on call at the committee).

- AB 411 (Pappan) — on‑farm composting of livestock mortalities: Passed as amended to Appropriations after extensive testimony from ranchers, environmental health officials and rendering industry representatives. Amendments narrowed volume and added oversight/imported recommended best practices; bill sponsor and several public‑health bodies support it; unionized renderers requested additional amendments.

- AB 531 (Rogers) — add geothermal to one‑stop permitting program: Passed as amended to Appropriations…