Op-ed: Developers get the profits with Prop. 45 — we pay the price

When we read a development proposal, we look beyond the property line. What will neighbors hear at night? What will children breathe? Where will the water come from? What happens to the birds and wildlife already living there?

One of us teaches environmental studies at San Jose State University, grew up in San Jose, raised her family here and lives in East San Jose. The other advocates for birds, wildlife and habitat with the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance. Our work connects community health with the protection of birds, wildlife and habitat. For both of us, these questions are deeply personal.

We share a conviction: communities deserve clear information and a meaningful voice in decisions that affect their lives, including the power to demand safer alternatives. And wildlife needs a voice too.

Proposition 45 would weaken our voices.

Prop. 45 is being sold as a way to make California more affordable and speed up project approvals. But behind that promise is a sinister bargain: weaken the California Environmental Quality Act, the law that requires public agencies to examine environmental harm and listen to residents before approving projects.

Follow the money — billionaires, for-profit utilities and warehouse and data center developers are funding Proposition 45. They degrade our environment. They get the profits. We pay with our health and our pocketbooks. Communities need answers before projects are approved.

Even with our professional backgrounds, finding project documents and getting clear answers takes time. Our neighbors must fit that work around long shifts, school pickups and caring for aging parents. Most cannot hire consultants and lawyers to investigate the risks.

Imagine a transmission project near schools, homes and sensitive wildlife habitat, serving growing electricity demand that also includes data centers. Families want answers about noise, air pollution and harm to wildlife.

Under Prop. 45’s streamlined review, residents would have less time to comment, developers could offer just one alternative and courts would face limits on stopping the entire project even if its environmental review broke the law.

Families deserve answers and enforceable protections before construction begins — not a fight for relief after the harm is done.

We will not be able to count on our lawmakers to restore environmental protections and oversight because Proposition 45 expressly bars changes that go against its purpose. Their hands will be tied. The responsibility is ours as voters. Let’s not hand the foxes the keys to the henhouse.

Workers and environmental advocates stand together. San José’s electricians’ union IBEW Local 332 joins firefighters, nurses, California’s state building trades council, the American Lung Association and affordable housing advocacy group SV@Home in opposing Prop. 45.

The Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance stands alongside Green Foothills, Keep Coyote Creek Beautiful and Mothers Out Front Silicon Valley. Santa Clara County also opposes Prop 45, as do Assemblymember Ash Kalra and Santa Clara County Supervisor Betty Duong.

We want good jobs, affordable homes and healthy neighborhoods. Achieving them does not require silencing residents or weakening environmental protections.

Families need homes they can afford, close to jobs, schools and services. California law already provides broad exemptions from environmental review for housing in developed urban areas.

Prop. 45 goes further, speeding approvals for housing that spreads development into open space and farmland. That can mean longer commutes and costly extensions of roads and utilities, while destroying wildlife habitat. Yet the measure does not require affordable rents or prices, or require developers to pass savings on to renters and buyers.

Ada E. Márquez, AICP, teaches in the Environmental Studies Program at San Jose State University. The views expressed are her own. Shani Kleinhaus, Ph.D., is the environmental advocate for the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance. The organization, based in Cupertino, works in Santa Clara County.