Could a California law help save America’s public lands throughout the West?

Could a little-known bill that recently passed in California serve as a model to save public lands throughout the American West from destructive oil and gas drilling? The innovative bill, an amendment to California's Public Resources Code, goes by the inauspicious name of AB 342. That may not sound like much, but it accomplishes a lot. The bill came as a response to an April 2019 announcement that the Trump administration planned to open more than 1 million acres of federal public lands in California to fracking and oil drilling. AB 342 became law this past October, a month after California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered a limited moratorium on new fracking operations in the state, an action that lacked authority over public lands. AB 342 closed that gap by making it illegal to build new pipelines and other infrastructure on state lands. Since any extractive industries operating on federal land would require infrastructure to move drilled oil and gas from public lands, this effectively blocks the new drilling permitted by the Trump administration. Experts say California's bill works creatively to stop the exploitation of public lands and could offer an important model for other Western states, like Colorado and Utah, where exploitation of public, federal lands has caused tension. "By prohibiting new infrastructure on state and public lands near these protected federal lands, other states could also safeguard federally protected land and national monuments within their borders," Muratsuchi explains. The progressive advocacy group Voices for Progress helped to pass a precursor bill to AB 342, AB 1775, which applied to offshore drilling in federal waters, and supported the new bill as well. Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director at WildEarth Guardians, says his group is pushing the governor of Colorado to take a similar approach...MORE

Interesting that the left is taking a states rights approach to influence federal lands policy.