Letters to the Editor: The CEQA is a powerful environmental tool. We can't afford to roll it back

To the editor: At LA Waterkeeper, the California Environmental Quality Act is one of our main tools for keeping this region’s water safe — forcing agencies and developers to take a hard, evidence-based look at a project’s environmental and public health impacts before it’s built, not after. Proposition 45 would gut that (“Californians back CEQA reform, reject AI data centers by huge margins, poll finds,” July 15).

In the last 60 days alone, a chemical tank crisis in Garden Grove and an ammonia leak at a Boyle Heights warehouse forced tens of thousands to evacuate. That’s exactly the kind of public health risk the CEQA review exists to catch before it happens, not clean up after. It only takes a few bad actors to spoil water quality for everyone downstream.

Weaken CEQA and it gets easier for industries pursuing polluting projects — data centers, warehouses, highway expansions — to cut corners across Los Angeles. Our rivers, coast and drinking water would carry the cost. Prop. 45 isn’t a reform, it’s a rollback we can’t afford to risk.

Kelly Shannon McNeill, Los Angeles

This writer is managing director of LA Waterkeeper, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the health of L.A.’s waterways.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.