PLAYA DEL REY, Calif., April 21, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — The Ballona Wetland Land Trust, a non-profit environmental group, has raised concerns that the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission, a California state agency, voted last Thursday to delete all references to the phrases “climate change”, “ocean acidification”, and “environmental justice” from its work plan, which will be submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency with a request for federal funding. Numerous environmental groups, and several members of the Commission, opposed the changes. However, a majority of Commission member entities, including Heal the Bay and a prominent UCLA climate scholar, reasoned that the replacement of established scientific and policy terms with what Commission staff called “alternative language”, was justified to preserve $850,000 in funding. The move was in response to vague “informal guidance” from EPA.
A written statement from Gabrielle Crowe, co-chair and secretary of environmental sciences for the Gabrielino-Shoshone Nation of Southern California, was read by Commission staff, stating: “Climate change is an issue that impacts all communities, but particularly the same disadvantaged and underserved communities and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities that you are erasing from your work plan.” Crowe argued that if without a written commitment to tribal engagement and inclusion, the Commission would lack accountability.
E.J. Caldwell, general manager of the West Basin Municipal Water District and alternate to District President Gloria Gray, was especially vocal in his opposition to the proposed deletions. Caldwell was supported by Hermosa Beach Mayor Dean Francois. “The informal guidance, to me, is insufficient to really make these changes,” said Caldwell. In response, an EPA employee acknowledged that she could not say which phrases might cause grant applications to be rejected, adding that “I don’t think I’m going to be able to give you a satisfactory answer.”
The Ballona Wetlands Land Trust, a local non-profit that first discovered and publicized the proposed language changes, indicated that it is exploring a potential legal challenge. “The willingness of a California environmental protection agency to bend so easily on replacing scientific language with ‘alternative language’ poses an existential threat to all environmental protection efforts,” said the Land Trust’s President Walter Lamb. “We can’t effectively address the impacts of climate change by going silent on the issue. The Commission is ignoring the Clean Water Act.”
More information, including documentation, is available at www.ballona.org/climate.
Contact: Walter Lamb, 310-384-1042, [email protected], www.ballona.org/climate
SOURCE BALLONA WETLANDS LAND TRUST