New Public Meeting scheduled for CARB's GHG Reporting and Financial Risk Disclosure Initial Regulation

As we noted in a previous post, due to certain court decisions, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) had to delay implementing some of the requirements of recently adopted California regulations that pertain to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the reporting of the financial risks associated with them by certain corporations operating in California. 

Photo Credit: CARB website

To address that, CARB has scheduled a new public meeting to consider adopting final reporting regulations for February 26, 2026, at 9:00 A.M., with a continuation to the next day if needed.

The public comment period will begin on December 26, 2025. Written comments may be submitted on or after that date with a deadline of February 9, 2026, representing a 45-day public comment period. (CARB is providing extra time for the public to review everything because of the holidays.)

An agenda for the meeting has not yet been posted as of today, however, it will be available at this link at least 10 days before the meeting: Public Agenda

The proposed final regulations were submitted to the California Office of Administrative Law (OAL) today, December 9, 2025. These and all of the rulemaking documents are available for review on CARB's website at this link: Rulemaking Documents 

CARB postpones GHG Financial Risk report deadline due to court order.

As we noted in an earlier article, certain California businesses were required to submit a Climate-Related Financial Risk Report by January 1, 2026, as required by Senate Bill SB261 and the California Health and Safety Code. 

Photo Credit: AI image generated by Google Gemini, Fair Use

However, this requirement has been postponed until further notice as a result of a successful legal challenge by the California Chamber of Commerce. On November 18, 2025 - the same date as a CARB scheduled public workshop on this and related reports - the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted an injunction against enforcement of this requirement as a result of other appeal proceedings related to it. 

Those proceedings will not be held until January 9, 2026, after the January 1, 2026 deadline.

CARB will provide further information and a new reporting date once the appeal process is completed. Additionally, no enforcement action will be taken for failure to submit the report by the original date.

In the meantime, CARB has stated that they will accept voluntary reports as of today, Dec. 1, 2025

Smog, particulates, greenhouse gases, or hazardous wastes - what are your priorities?

Ok folks - many of us got into the environmental arena/profession because we were tired of seeing black smoke coming out of smokestacks. Others because we were tired of not being able to see the mountains we lived by because the smog was so thick. Some people were concerned about oil spills and hazardous wastes being dumped where they shouldn't be. Some of us are old enough to remember the Cuyahoga River catching fire in Ohio! And still others woke up when all of the alarm bells about global warming started ringing.

Photo credit: ©Frank J. Maccioli

How about you? What got you interested in the environment? Let us know by answering the questions below:

1. What first got you interested in the environmental field?

2. Is your focus of concern on one area over another or all of the above?

3. If it came down to economics, how would you prioritize spending? For example, would you favor a higher priority on reducing the pollutants that cause smog (which may only impact certain geographical areas) or focusing on controlling greenhouse gases because that's a world-wide problem? 

4. Do you have any other thoughts?

Please comment below. We are VERY interested in how you feel about this!

False alarm - Ventura lifts Do Not Use Water order

As we previously noted in an earlier post, residents and businesses in the Pierpont area of Ventura, CA, were notified by city officials earlier this week not to use or drink their water due to gasoline contamination.

Photo Credit: City of Ventura

However, that order has been officially lifted as of Wednesday, November 26, at 12:15 PM. City officials now say the water is safe to drink and that the original order was made due to a false positive for gasoline during routine testing.

Subsequent tests on several additional water samples have shown no such contamination. According to the city, the laboratory doing the testing, Eurofins Calscience, explained the false positives were caused by "carryover from unrelated high-concentration samples tested earlier in the batch. Reanalysis (and analysis of additional new samples) showed no detection of gasoline."

In short, Eurofins Calscience said the contamination of the Pierpont samples was due to contamination from samples from another, unrelated site that were done before the Pierpont samples were analysed. Retesting showed no contamination. 

Such an error does raise questions about quality control procedures during the analysis of samples from different sites.

You can see Eurofin Calscience's explanation here: False Positive letter from Eurofin Calscience to Ventura