The Brief

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Solar farms stretch out mile after mile along Interstate 10 around Palm Springs, creating one of the densest areas of solar development in North America in the heart of California’s Colorado Desert. But the area’s success in meeting the state and the nation’s renewable energy goals is running up against the Southwest’s biggest climate challenge: Having enough water.

Local wells in the area have gone dry since the construction of multiple utility-scale solar projects near Desert Center—threatening the only water source for hundreds of people and a handful of local businesses. Solar farms typically don’t use much water when operating, but during construction, the law requires developers to mitigate dust—which can spread health problems like Valley Fever. That requires water.

The projects are being built on public land overseen by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management. The federal agency knew the construction of the solar projects could impact local wells and may even be over-drafting the aquifer beneath them, according to former BLM staff, studies on the basin and public documents from the agency’s environmental assessments of the projects.

While the communities around Desert Center are small, the sunshine is nearly endless and it has all the infrastructure a solar project would need: transmission lines to distribute the power, roads for workers to get to the projects and a major highway nearby that allows the easy transportation of construction materials. When the nation began looking to transition away from the fossil fuels driving climate change, no place was better suited for solar energy development.

Under the 2012 Western Solar Plan created by the BLM, 298,321 acres of public lands were divided up and labeled as “solar energy zones”—areas perfect for developing the resource. Nearly half of them are in the Riverside East zone, where Desert Center lies. That plan to “help accelerate and continue momentum for the clean energy economy,” is now being reviewed by the BLM, according to the agency, and has the potential to open up areas for solar development in five more states and across even more public land in states that are already being developed.

Lake Tamarisk, a man-made lake in Lake Tamarisk Desert Resort in Desert Center, California, on Monday, May 8, 2023.

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Seven utility-scale solar projects stretching out across nearly 19,000 acres of mostly public land have been approved by the BLM near Desert Center, with more projects under consideration. Together they would provide close to 3,000 megawatts of electricity—enough for around 2 million homes.

If solar companies’ use of groundwater dries up local wells, the BLM requires them to reduce their pumping until the aquifer returns to levels that allow wells to resume operations and cover the expenses for replacing equipment and wells. But local well owners say they have received no help so far.

Limited data exists about the aquifer—the Chuckwalla Valley Groundwater Basin—but studies over the past decade showed what was being pumped out likely exceeded what was going back in. Bringing in water from elsewhere would be too costly, so developers rely on groundwater during construction.

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Demands on a scarce resource

Across the drought-stricken Southwest, the importance of groundwater is coming to the surface. The resource has propped up development and agriculture in parts of the region lacking a diverse portfolio of water resources, leading to overuse of groundwater that has led the land beneath homes to sink and wells to run dry.

In Desert Center and similar California communities, underground aquifers are the only source of drinking water. Across the border, Arizona announced this month that the Phoenix area would no longer be allowed to grow on groundwater alone. New developments will have to rely on other sources approved by the Arizona Department of Water Resources.

But, unlike a lake or river in which the water is visible, monitoring groundwater levels is challenging. “It’s all happening beneath your feet,” said Jason Melady, a principal hydrogeologist at Summit Water Resources, a water resource management consulting company contacted by a local resident. Having data is key to assessing how a development will impact the resource, said Melday and other groundwater experts, but it can be hard to come by.

The BLM reported there was enough groundwater for the most recently approved projects from Intersect Power and Clearway Energy Group in its environmental assessments of the proposed developments, but also found data was limited and the basin could already be overdrawn. Even if it wasn’t being overused, the project “may adversely affect operation of nearby wells,” the assessment stated.

A different proposed solar project from Intersect Power would require another 1,000 acre-feet of water during two years of construction, and yet another proposed development would need a water supply, likely from the aquifer, but how much has not yet been determined. One acre-foot typically provides enough water for two households in a year.

The water assessments for each recently approved project found the recharge of the aquifer from rain could range from 206 to just over 20,000 acre-feet a year.

“That’s not a great information basis for your planning,” said Andrew Ayres, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy Center. In recent years, he said, other aquifers in the state have had to religiously document the recharge rate of their basins, how much water was being extracted and where it goes under California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, passed in 2014.

But none of that has been done for the Chuckwalla Valley Groundwater Basin. While the law requires basins in overdraft to form agencies that regulate the groundwater and restrict water use to avoid long-term issues, Chuckwalla Valley is designated as a low-priority basin that doesn’t have to do any of that. The law also doesn’t apply to federal lands, which is where most of the solar projects are being built.

Construction crews use water tanker trucks to spray the dirt to mitigate dust kicked up by the construction of new solar developments near Desert Center, California, on Monday, May 8, 2023. Alex Gould / Inside Climate News

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The main complication of water issues in these projects is the disconnect between state and federal policies, said Dustin Mulvaney, a professor in environmental studies at San Jose State University whose research focuses on sustainable and just transitions to solar power.

“It’s a consequence of a public lands project,” he said, noting that California doesn’t regulate or monitor water pumped on federal public lands, even though it comes from the same aquifer the state oversees. “This is a gap in the state’s plan, not just regulation or oversight, but just tracking. This is a huge gap for them.”

Without oversight now, Riverside County, where the basin is located, “could get pulled into a situation in which you basically sleepwalk your way into more stringent regulation,” Ayres said, “and that can be really demanding and really costly.”

The basin could already be overdrawn, or have too many wells competing with one another in an area, Ayres and Melady said. The only way to know, they said, is to invest resources into finding out more about the basin.

Preventing further decline of the aquifer and getting help for those already impacted by shortages is top of mind for people who live here.

Desert Center itself is little more than a “ghost town” where travelers between Los Angeles and Phoenix once stopped for food, gas and repairs. A few miles north lies Lake Tamarisk, a retirement community of around 200 where neighbors view each other as family and spend their days admiring the desert.

Plumes of dust rise into the sky after being kicked up by construction on solar farms near Desert Center, California, on Monday, May 8, 2023.

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But the views of the endless desert filled with sacred Indigenous sites, palo verde and ironwood trees, and endangered desert tortoises are now disappearing as solar panels spread around the local communities. The citizens of Desert Center and Lake Tamarisk, like others across the country, are beginning to push back. After being left out of conversations about previous solar development near their homes, they’re determined to be heard as two new solar projects are proposed in the area.

“No one took into consideration a community lived out here,” said Teresa Pierce, a resident of Lake Tamarisk who has helped lead the community’s response to future solar development. While they aren’t entirely opposed to solar, she said, “we’re against it being so close to our community and stealing our water out from our aquifer.”

‘Dead without water’

The first sign of trouble arrived this February, months after the most recently approved solar projects began construction, when John Beach got an email from his bank saying he hadn’t paid the electric bill for his property in Desert Center because it had exceeded his authorized limit. His land has no home on it, just two palm trees he’s been irrigating for 15 years, and his water pump was working overtime because it wasn’t getting any water.

His electricity bill in January was $15. In February, it was $1,800.

Later that month, a local RV park had its well go dry, too. The water table had dropped 50 feet, leaving about 70 residents, most of whom are construction workers for the solar projects, without water for a week. Fortunately, the well was deep enough that all that needed to be done was lower the water pump, which cost $16,000. But it can’t be lowered again should the water table continue to fall.

“That park is dead without water,” said Nick Melendez, the property manager. “You can’t even get water trucked in out there.”

Drilling a new well for either property would cost around $100,000.

“I’m not hurt really. I just have palm trees that are gonna want water,” Beach said. “But if the Lake Tamarisk public water system goes out, you’ve got 200 people without water, and it doesn’t just get turned on again the next day. I mean that is a terrible thing to allow to happen.” Two commercial fish farming operations in the area also experienced reduced flows from their wells, he added.

Intersect Power—the company behind Oberon and another proposed utility-scale solar project in the area—said in a statement to Inside Climate News it had been notified of the issue and was looking into it, but “the potential for the project to impact nearby wells was studied extensively by the agencies that authorized the project under State and Federal law. Science-based mitigation measures were imposed including ongoing monitoring of area wells. The project is in compliance with all mitigation measures.“

Concerns over the impact of solar project development on the local aquifer have long existed.

At a property outside of one of the solar farms, home made signs against the development are posted by the roadside in Desert Center, California, on Monday, May 8, 2023.

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Three hours away from Desert Center, in Tempe, Arizona, two BLM staffers who had studied the hydrology of the Chuckwalla Valley Groundwater Basin and worked for the BLM’s Palm Springs office gave a presentation at the Arizona Hydrological Society in 2021. The topic: “Renewable Energy Impacts on Ground Water in a Desert Basin.”

“That is ground zero for solar field developments in North America,” said Noel Ludwig, one of the presenters and now a hydrologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Colorado. At the time, he said, all the studies on the basin agreed: Groundwater was being pumped out at near or above the rate at which the basin can replenish the supply.

It’s “simple math,” Ludwig said. You can’t remove more water from an aquifer than is added by return flows into it without eventually running out. The Chuckwalla Valley Groundwater Basin is an ancient aquifer, primarily refilled by rain, and takes a long time to replenish.

“It’s just something that’s a groundwater issue—not just in that basin but around the country and around the world,” he said. “They’ve been treating it like a bottomless bank account, without accounting for the long-term and certain implications on people’s wells.”

Individual solar projects don’t use much water, but when added all together, they can start to make an impact, Ludwig and groundwater policy experts said.

Ludwig and his colleague’s groundwater presentation in Tempe “was never accepted by the BLM” and is not reflective of the current mitigation measures for groundwater use, a spokesperson for the agency said.

The BLM did not answer questions about what mitigation measures are in place, if it is looking into the current situation of wells going dry, if it has been monitoring the basin or how it is working with local communities. 

But in its environmental assessment for recently approved solar projects, the BLM found water used by solar project development could affect local wells.

Under baseline conditions, it found the basin would have a surplus of 2,390 acre-feet. But the lack of data on the basin makes “performing a detailed analysis” challenging. And the water supply assessment found the aquifer could already be overdrawn by 6,685 acre-feet of water under lower precipitation and water inflow conditions.

Communities see few benefits, all consequences

Teresa Pierce’s porch provides a “front row seat” to Joshua Tree National Park. The view of the desert is nearly endless—until the solar farms interrupt it.

The Lake Tamarisk community got its start as housing for workers at a Kaiser Steel iron mine before morphing into a home for everyone from school-aged children to retirees. In addition to a man-made lake and single tamarisk tree the community’s name suggests, it has a library, post office and fire station.

At her home in Lake Tamarisk, Teresa Pierce flips through a college English paper on environmentalism that she wrote in 1984 on Monday, May 8, 2023.

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But just outside of town, near Desert Center, what were once vast stretches of desert filled with washes providing essential habitats for the local wildlife are now the most built-out area of solar development in the nation.

Solar farms started here over a decade ago with multiple projects arriving after the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, said Mulvaney, the San Jose State University professor who has researched solar projects on BLM lands in the Southwest.

Those projects, while still in view, are miles away from Desert Center. But the area is now seeing another wave of solar development as space on nearby transmission lines opens up, Mulvaney said. Those projects are slowly surrounding Lake Tamarisk, which would be encircled by solar farms on three sides, with the latest project’s panels being 750 feet away and its fences and other infrastructure even closer.

Members of the community say they have long been left out of the decision-making process going back to when the Riverside East Solar Energy Zone was established. Community members said they were never notified directly about Oberon, the most recently approved project, near Lake Tamarisk and Desert Center. When the same company, Intersect Power, proposed another project, only one person received a direct notice about it, and he then informed his neighbors.

When two of the projects in the area were approved for construction last summer, BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning said in a press release that “Renewable energy development on BLM-managed public lands will continue to help communities across the country be part of the climate solution, while creating jobs and boosting local economies.”

The water treatment facility and well for Lake Tamarisk in Desert Center, California, on Monday, May 8, 2023.

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But most people here say they see few of those benefits but endure all the consequences of that development—dust storms that threaten their health, construction noise, intense glare and heat from nearby panels, disruption of delicate ecosystems and the removal of plants that make desert life livable for other species, a drop in home values and the lack of water.

They hope to have their concerns remedied with berms put up around the solar farms, financial compensation for negative impacts like wells going dry, help with air conditioning bills if the development increases the temperature in the area during the summer, and larger buffer zones between the projects and their homes.

“They’re willing to spend millions to schmooze communities but they don’t want to spend money on the project to protect the community,” said Mark Carrington, who once worked as a biologist for the BLM. He discovered the community while roaming the desert during the pandemic and has helped lead its response to solar developments.

While renewable energy projects break ground at record pace, rural communities and vital ecosystems important for biodiversity are getting left behind, said Kevin Emmerich, a cofounder of the environmental group Basin and Range Watch who previously worked for the National Park Service. Emmerich said the projects in the area are being approved despite impacts to the nearby Desert Dry Wash Woodlands, desert tortoise habitat, and the killing of ironwood trees and other vegetation that help hold together a vital ecosystem.

Skip Pierce and Mark Carrington discuss how around 3 p.m. the light reflecting off of solar panels to the east reflect into the homes of Lake Tamarisk Desert Resort in Desert Center, California, on Monday, May 8, 2023. Alex Gould / Inside Climate News

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Ripped-out ironwood trees pepper the vistas at many of the solar sites, and trash fills boxes meant to provide homes for desert tortoises.

The country may have a mandate to develop more renewable energy sources and companies may have made investments in future projects around Desert Center—Intersect Power’s substation to allow for more development, for example—but people in the communities should come first, Emmerich said. “You (the BLM) don’t work for these companies—you work for us,” he said.

As the water here begins to disappear, residents worry the Lake Tamarisk wells are next. The community is entirely reliant on groundwater. If their wells run dry, all they could do is drill deeper or hope the drawdown of the aquifer is just a short-term impact of the nearby construction and not a sign of overdraft for the entire region.

“I have not seen anybody mitigate, or even kind of highlight (water) as a major concern” for any solar projects in the Southwest, Mulvaney said. “I think, in general, people aren’t aware of this issue across the U.S. because most solar farms don’t require groundwater wells. This is a Western phenomenon to even use groundwater wells for these things.”

But the development is unlikely to end anytime soon. So far around 20,000 acres of land has been developed in the solar energy zone the community falls within. Another 120,000 acres are available for solar development.

And there’s another renewable electricity-generating elephant in the room that would demand even more of the aquifer’s water—the Eagle Crest Pump Storage Project.

That project would generate 1,300 megawatts of power by pumping water uphill from one former mining pit to another and then releasing it back downhill to spin turbines that would generate electricity during periods of high demand. It would use 4,456 acre feet of water a year during construction and then 2,050 acre feet during operation, “more than ten times the operational groundwater of all other cumulative projects combined,” according to a water assessment of the basin for the Oberon solar project from the BLM.

The Chuckwalla Valley’s aquifer below the BLM’s land has just over 2,000 acre feet of water left before the basin begins to be over-pumped, according to the recent water assessments. One of the proposed solar projects would use half of that if approved. Even under the BLM’s baseline assumptions of how much water there is, further build out of renewable energy projects could quickly sip away what is left.

Not far from the Riverside East Solar Energy Zone, above a different aquifer, lies the town of Blythe. The Colorado River runs by it, and agricultural operations dot the landscape. Those farming operations use far more water than any solar development, and as California looks to use both less groundwater and Colorado River water, replacing those fields with solar is being viewed as a viable alternative, said Mulvaney and Ayre, with the Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy Center.

As long as the federal government’s policy is to encourage utility-scale solar development on federal lands, places like Desert Center and Lake Tamarisk will continue to see projects nearby, Mulvaney said. And as long as that development is occurring, residents like Teresa Pierce and Mark Carrington will be pushing back.

Flipping through her old college papers, Pierce realized her fight against the solar development wasn’t the first time conservation issues had caught her attention. In 1984, her first college English paper—for which she got an A+—was on the importance of conserving the nation’s national parks and wilderness areas.

“We should stop and reflect for a moment on the reasons why we need parks and wilderness areas,” she wrote. “If indeed the reasons are to achieve oneness with our world and our universe then we better do the best we can to hold onto what we have.”

Her goal now is to hold on to what she found at Lake Tamarisk—the beauty of the desert.

The leader of a congressional panel warned Tuesday he would use “every tool” to get Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass to testify after she skipped a hearing that put L.A.’s homeless services system in the hot seat.

It came as multiple audits, reviews and court rulings have found L.A. has failed to ensure proper tracking of large-scale spending on homeless services — particularly through the joint city-county L.A. Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA. Much of the money is federal dollars authorized by Congress.

Bass had declined to testify at Tuesday’s hearing, saying she was unavailable and that it would be a “politically motivated” attack. Her public schedule showed she planned to attend a groundbreaking of a shopping and community center in the Pacific Palisades two hours after the hearing was set to start.

Rep. Tim Burchett, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee's DOGE subcommittee, said she won't get off that easily.

Bass "seems intent on evading accountability, but she knows we will not let her off the hook," Burchett said at the hearing. He added that he and the Oversight Committee’s chair would "use every tool at our disposal to secure her appearance if she does not cooperate.”

House committees and subcommittees can issue subpoenas to compel witnesses to testify or provide documents.

Just before the hearing got underway, Bass called it "the latest attack on Los Angeles by the Trump Administration and his allies in Congress.”

"I don't run LAHSA," she said, adding that she was the first mayor to sit on its board and that street homelessness has dropped since she took office. The latest official count for the city showed a 8% year to year jump in street homelessness.

Bass stepped off LAHSA’s governing commission last week, after LAist reported she had missed most of its meetings since she appointed herself to it in 2023. The mayor cited “time and all” as her reason for stepping down. She continues to appoint — and has the power to remove — half the commission’s members, including its current chair.

What happened at the hearing

Much of the hour-and-a-half hearing focused on Republican members’ criticism that Democrat-led cities distribute drug paraphernalia and don’t require unhoused people with addictions to get treatment as a condition of living in publicly funded housing.

Some proposals raised Tuesday would change how money reaches Los Angeles.

Burchett said he will introduce the Recovery First Housing Act, to require federally funded housing to offer substance abuse treatment. He has also introduced a bill restricting federal housing dollars to only support U.S. citizens.

LA's fights on a national stage

Burchett noted LAHSA’s audit committee chair, Justin Szlasa — who was proactive in rooting out wasteful spending — was demoted by Stephanie Graves, a Bass appointee who has declined to give her reason for doing so. The move was first reported by LAist.

Burchett also made claims that don’t hold up. He said 50,000 people are homeless in the city with "another 75,000" in the surrounding county. The latest official count found a total of 73,000 unhoused people across L.A. County — a figure that includes the city.

Burchett also said, “ LAHSA recently doled out funds to an L.A.-area nonprofit whose CEO had just been indicted for fraud.” LAist recently investigated LAHSA’s awarding of funds to that nonprofit, Abundant Blessings, and found no indication that LAHSA awarded it any funds after the fraud indictment. However, the review did find that long before the indictment, LAHSA kept awarding millions in contracts to the group even after it was flagged internally as high-risk for failing to do its job.

Burchett, however, was correct in saying “a court-ordered independent assessment of LAHSA's finances found alarming financial control weaknesses that leave the door open to rampant fraud.”

On Tuesday, street safety advocates and families of victims of vehicle collisions demanded that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declare a state of emergency on traffic violence in the city.

Sandra Sanchez Loulakis’s son died last year after she said he was hit by a negligent driver.

“I’ve been struggling just to survive daily,” she said at the news conference organized by traffic safety nonprofit Streets are for Everyone. “This is what happens to a parent when they lose a child.”

The city has seen 8% more fatal traffic collisions this year than during the same period last year, according to LAPD data from the end of August.

Advocates said an emergency declaration would better coordinate resources to respond to traffic fatalities, which have exceeded the rate of homicides for the last three years.

“ This is not a matter of we don't know what to do,” Damian Kevitt, who leads Streets are for Everyone, said Tuesday. “This is a matter of we know exactly what to do. We’re just not making this a priority as a city.”

Kevitt said more than 1,250 people signed an open letter delivered to the mayor and L.A. City Council. One of the demands listed in the letter is for the city to restore transportation department staff.

Earlier this year, the city gave up $100 million in state grants to make streets safer because it did not have the personnel to complete the projects in compliance with state-mandated deadlines.

Draft executive directive on Vision Zero

It appears there had been momentum from the mayor’s office earlier this year to issue an executive directive recommitting the city to its Vision Zero goals of reducing traffic fatalities to zero.

According to emails from May shared with LAist, the mayor’s senior director of transportation told an activist that a draft executive directive was “under review” and expected to be released “within the next three weeks.”

The email was sent to Jonathan Hale, who organizes community members to paint crosswalks where there have been pedestrian-involved collisions.

The executive directive has yet to be released.

LAist submitted a public records request for drafts of the executive directive, but on Sept. 14, the mayor’s office responded saying it could not disclose any records.

“[The records] include drafts and/or deliberative process for which the public interest served in nondisclosure clearly outweighs the public interest served by the disclosure,” the office said.

The mayor’s office has not responded to requests for comment about the draft executive directive.

A new report commissioned by Olympics organizers estimates that the 2028 Games will generate at least $20 billion in economic output across Greater Los Angeles.

The analysis, prepared for LA28 by the nonprofit Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation’s Institute for Applied Economics, looked at the economic effects of L.A. hosting the Olympics and Paralympics. It includes organizing committee spending, capital investments, publicly funded transportation and security investments, and tourism. 

In total, the report projects that new economic activity across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties could total somewhere between $20.5 billion and $25.4 billion and add around 126,000 and 152,000 jobs to the economy.

A second less conservative methodology employed by the researchers estimates the overall economic output could be even higher, between $35.4 and $40.6 billion and up to 224,000 new jobs.

“ Together, they provide a responsible range, not an exaggerated promise,” Stephen Cheung, CEO of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, said at a news conference announcing the report on Tuesday. “ If we work together with intention, the Games can leave Los Angeles with more than unforgettable memories. They can leave us with stronger businesses, greater opportunities, and a more connected regional economy.”

Despite the 2028 Games being advertised as a "no-build" Olympics, the biggest chunk of spending laid out in the report is on capital projects, including the $2.6 billion L.A. Convention Center renovation, billions in LAX improvements, major transit projects like Metro ExpressLanes on the 105 Freeway, and venue renovations, such as upgrades to Rose Bowl Stadium.

The report also estimates that around $5.7 billion of LA28’s spending will be in the five county region. LA28 has a $7.1 billion budget and has pledged to keep 75% of its spending in the Greater L.A. area, and put 25% toward small businesses.

“ That economic impact is going to be felt far and wide and across Los Angeles, as well as the Southern California region,” LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover said Tuesday.

The report is the second economic analysis forecasting the effects of the 2028 Games to come out this month. A separate report submitted to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors in early September estimated that the Games would produce more than $13 billion in direct spending and a total economic output of $19.2 billion in Los Angeles County alone.

The same report also laid out the potential uneven distribution of economic benefits to the region, including limited benefits for Olympic venue sites that are not tourist destinations and parts of Los Angeles being excluded from the Games altogether.

HR&A Advisors, the consultant group that put the report together, identified Carson, Pomona, the City of Industry and Exposition Park as locations that are hosting Olympic events, but that could end up being “passthrough areas.”

“Although these areas may be active during the day, they may struggle to capture spending from visitors who pass through but do not spend money outside the venue,” the report states.

The county report also questioned what economic benefits will flow to parts of L.A. County that will be disconnected from Olympic and Paralympic activities, like Antelope Valley and Southeast Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, the analysis found that L.A.’s typical tourist destinations — including downtown L.A., Old Town Pasadena, downtown Long Beach and the Venice Boardwalk — can expect to be active areas for economic activity during summer 2028.

The Palisades and Eaton Fires last year destroyed thousands of homes in Los Angeles County. Thousands more were left standing, but choked with toxic fire residue.

On Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package of bills that will make California the first state in the nation to establish smoke damage testing and cleaning standards for insurance companies.

Assembly Bills 1642 and 1795 will require insurers to test for smoke damage, cover the cost of cleaning contaminants, and keep paying for a homeowner’s alternative living expenses until the home is found safe to reoccupy.

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control will have until the end of 2028 to develop testing and cleaning standards for lead and asbestos, and until the end of 2029 to set rules for heavy metals and other pollutants.

Reaction to the bill

According to the state Department of Insurance, property owners filed 13,000 smoke damage claims for standing homes after the January 2025 fires. While insurers have covered testing and cleaning in many cases, other homeowners are still unable to return home as they battle with insurance companies over addressing smoke damage.

In a news release Tuesday, the governor and an author of one of the bills praised the changes to state law.

“These new protections will make insurer obligations clearer and give homeowners more financial flexibility when they need it most,” Newsom said.

Assemblymember John Harabedian said: “Science, not an insurance company’s opinions, will determine whether a home is safe.”

Insurance industry groups had opposed shifting rules and regulation away from the state Department of Insurance and to the Department of Toxic Substances Control.

Altadena residents pushed for change

Testing efforts by a group known as Eaton Fire Residents United found that lead, asbestos and heavy metals were still present in homes even after they were cleaned by professional remediation companies. Jane Lawton Potelle is the group’s executive director.

“California is leading the nation in how to recover safely after an urban wildfire,” she said in a news release about the laws’ passage.

Public health officials said smoke from the L.A. County fires was particularly toxic because it emanated from urban areas. The structures that burned often had lead paint and asbestos insulation.

The fires also destroyed cars, appliances and other human-made materials. This created more pollutants than smoke from fires in rural areas, which mainly burn through vegetation.

LAist covered the push to change smoke damage policies in a recent episode of our podcast Imperfect Paradise, which breaks down what these changes could mean for insurers, homeowners and how California adapts to climate change.