A coalition of environmental justice groups has filed a lawsuit against the California Air Resources Board challenging the agency’s recent amendments to the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard.
The suit, filed in Fresno County Superior Court, accuses CARB of prioritizing dairy industry profits over safeguards to protect communities from environmental and health harms. Petitioners include Central Valley Defenders for Clean Air and Water, Food & Water Watch, the Animal Legal Defense Fund and the Center for Food Safety.
At issue are the LCFS amendments approved last November. Dairy farmers narrowly escaped a move to limit the crediting period for anaerobic digesters. That frustrated environmental justice advocates, who have long sought to limit credits and grants for digesters through state and federal agencies as well as legislation.
In the lawsuit the environmental groups reiterated their stance that LCFS incentives encourage the expansion of large‑scale dairies and exacerbate air and water pollution in already overburdened communities.
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“For years, we have endured pollution and putrid odors, and we have raised our concerns with CARB time and again, only to be ignored,” said David Rodriguez, founding member of Central Valley Defenders. “CARB is encouraging the production of, and has failed to regulate, excessive dairy manure pollution at the expense of air, water and local communities. It’s beyond time for them to be held accountable.”
The groups made the same argument in a lawsuit last year against the LCFS program, before CARB approved the update.
The agency and independent experts have leaned into the concerns over the years but found the science lacking to tie the incentives to increased pollution. State budget analysts, meanwhile, have endorsed the digester incentives as one of the state’s most cost-effective climate programs.
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