Nominee emphasizes public health, phased agricultural burning rules in San Joaquin Valley testimony

Dr. Tanya Pacheco Warner, the governor's nominee for the San Joaquin Valley Unified Air Pollution Control District board, said she brings scientific expertise and personal experience with wildfire-driven air-quality harms as she asked the Senate Rules Committee to send her nomination to the full Senate for confirmation. "My desire to serve really comes from a place not just from scientific and policy understandings, from my career as a public health researcher, but from the real life challenges that people in the San Joaquin Valley face every day to breathe clean air," Pacheco Warner said.

Pacheco Warner described a multi-year effort at the district to phase out agricultural burning in ways intended to limit economic disruption to growers. She said the board structured the phase-out to start with orchards and later address vineyards and worked with stakeholders on demonstration projects and technology options so growers would have feasible alternatives.

Vice Chair Grove asked how the district evaluates cumulative economic impacts on producers before imposing new rules. Pacheco Warner replied that the district used a phased approach, partnered with growers to identify appropriate technology and implementation timelines, and directed an ongoing evaluation of economic impacts and funding for alternatives to burning. She said the tractor-replacement incentive program is one example of a strategy that has been oversubscribed and produces measurable pollution reductions.

Committee members also pressed Pacheco Warner about the implications of recent federal actions that have affected California's mobile-source waiver authority. She said the district is developing a multi-pronged strategy that relies on state mobile-source incentives, district regulations already in force, and CARB-approved plans to implement new strategies when technologies become feasible. She emphasized the need to continue funding programs that replace older equipment and support growers.

Members asked about the AB 617 community-driven process and how the program has performed in targeted communities. Pacheco Warner said AB 617 has increased community participation, led to improved compensation and translation supports for participants, and produced lessons captured and applied across communities; she cited examples such as an electric school-bus charging yard funded through community plans.

After the public-comment period (no supporters or opponents were recorded for this nominee in committee public comment), Senator Ochoa Bogue moved to advance the nomination. The committee recorded a roll-call vote; committee minutes show the nomination was approved to move to the full Senate for confirmation (committee vote recorded in the transcript as 4-0 at the time of the motion and later recapped as 5-0). The nomination will next go to the Senate floor for final confirmation.

The committee left the item open for absent members to add on, consistent with the committee's practice of allowing late votes to be added to the record.