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Banned in California
- Hizonner 8mo agoLot of unsupported "impossibles" in there.
- 201984 8mo agoBut don't you get it? We're moving up the value chain to things only WE can do.
- wewtyflakes 8mo agoSo no new car paint shops or oil refineries? I'm okay with that.
- akoboldfrying 8mo agoAre you okay with not using products that have an oil refinery in their supply chain?
- testbjjl 8mo agoI think if we consolidate those operations the better, and then we can improve an regulate legislative or as a market more easily than if everyone is spread all over.
- trklausss 8mo agoYeah I agree. Since Russia is mostly empty and they have a lot of oil, let's put all refineries there! (/s) This is to show that there is more geopolitically than meets the eye.
- cucumber3732842 8mo agoIf we consolidate them you wind up with the same situation we have for everything already. The big megacorps who's paid for experts and lawyers (and ability to donate to politics) to tell you why the river glowing is safe get to do what they want and the upstart who may challenge that bigCo to do better never gets off the ground. But I guess if the goal is simply to declare everything "fixed" because the government has agreed it's compliant then consolidation is fine.
- wewtyflakes 8mo agoI do not care to try to make things ethically fair for oil refineries. Call me a hypocrite, I do not care, as these companies similarly do not care. "Ya got me!", yup, moving on, I am still glad oil refineries are effectively banned.
- akoboldfrying 8mo agoMy point wasn't about fairness towards oil refinery companies, it was that supporting a ban on refineries in your local area while still benefiting from the downstream outputs of oil refineries is hypocritical nimbyism. If oil refineries are bad in California, they're bad everywhere, and if they're bad everywhere, we ought to stop using them altogether, which will make for some unwelcome lifestyle changes.
- wewtyflakes 8mo agoI'm fine if other states want to ban them too. I'm also fine if ultimately running oil refineries is uneconomical. I do not care if this is nimbyism; other communities are free to set their own rules.
- akoboldfrying 8mo agoSo you're okay with no refineries after all. So, no combustion-based private or public transportation, no detergents, no aspirin, paracetamol or ibuprofen. It would still be possible to drive an EV, though. You could keep it lubricated with whale oil.
- wewtyflakes 8mo agoI think the things you are describing would make running a refinery economical, and I am sure at some price some community would be thrilled to have a refinery. Good for them, still glad its not here.
- anankaie 8mo agoMuch of the pharmaceutical industry depends on petroleum byproducts.
- ryanobjc 8mo agoPaint VOCs sounds fine, until it's done at industrial scale, and it's also your neighbor, and also all the children in the neighborhood have asthma, and also healthcare is a lot more expensive... This list isn't things you "cant do in california" but "polluting things you can't do in highly populated cities". I'm not sure what the conclusion here is other than health is not important.
- Gigachad 8mo agoMost of this stuff could be done in compliance with the laws but it’s just cheaper to do it somewhere else where you allowed to vent poison in the air rather than having to filter it out.
- DannyBee 8mo agoThis place you speak of doesn't exist. First, manufacturers don't really make non voc compliant auto paints. The market is too small. They may make 550 and 275 variants but most don't. Second, even like Texas has voc regulations on paints and also requires filtering and enclosed spray booths and gun cleaners and .... And like I said, nobody is selling non compliant coatings because the market is zero.
- bmelton 8mo agoAre they only banned in the cities, or are they banned in the state, which -- even in California, should have rural areas far enough away from cities to be tenable? It's an interesting conundrum though, because in many cases, the cities could not exist without the things that are being banned in the cities. It's a curious goal of populations to centralize, then ostracize all the things that enabled that centralization
- cucumber3732842 8mo agoThey're probably "not banned" only in the "basically lying" sense that they per rule won't approve you in certain cities and if you do happen to be rural the process is hostile and expensive enough that it's not worth it for the value such a facility would generate. That's how that sort of stuff is in my state.
- arjie 8mo agoOil refineries in particular are interesting because the sources for the blend of gasoline California requires[0] are either in CA itself or are few and far away. This means that gasoline prices are susceptible to greater supply shocks and so on. Many US regulations follow from California exercising its large market to induce companies to change their policies (electronic one-click cancel, CCPA, No Surprises in healthcare billing) but this one hasn't quite had the same effect. One can hope that most Californians switch to BEVs from ICE vehicles before this becomes more of a constraint. Gasoline usage externalities are poorly priced-in so the resulting increase in cost of gasoline here is probably overall a good thing. If we had appropriate carbon/sulphur/etc pricing on the outputs, I think it would be less justifiable since then the externalities would be priced in. 0: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65184 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65184
- DannyBee 8mo agoThey are wrong about paint shops.or at least the reason. They are all using voc compliant paints these days, even outside California. I have no idea how hard permitting is mind you, but the claimed thing here is that they can't be voc compliant and that's just totally wrong.
- bigyabai 8mo ago> California has outsourced its industrial base while still consuming the products. America did that. If it was just California then they could import iPhone parts from Alabama, but they don't do that do they?
- decremental 8mo ago[dead]
- garciasn 8mo agoThis site is limiting its focus to environmental permitting concerns, it seems. The problem is that one of the biggest barriers to manufacturing in the US is labor: cost and protections of various sorts. Don't need to worry about those pesky people and their rights in other countries where people are in desperate need for, or are coerced into, working in these industries.
- taeric 8mo agoI confess I don't know what to make of this. Without seeing the reasons why these are banned, what is the point? Would be like lamenting how you can't use asbestos. Sure, but is that necessarily a bad thing?
- hnav 8mo agoapparently you can use asbestos and they have been and will continue until 2030-ish. It's now in the wild in all kinds of unexpected places.
- taeric 8mo agoYeah, I don't think that is generally viewed as a good thing, though? And I would not be surprised to learn California has some stricter rules on it. (Would honestly not be surprised to find out some of these "banned" items are due to asbestos level concerns.)
- beachtaxidriver 8mo agoAs a resident who likes to breathe clean air and drink clean water, none of that seems all that bad. I guess there should be an ability to do this farther from the population centers though.
- daedrdev 8mo agoSome of these items actually net improve clean air and clean water, but you’re instead happy to export those pollutants to another country to feel better yourself
- thousand_nights 8mo agothe plurality of this website are californians so this whole discourse is about as predictable as can be
- warkdarrior 8mo agoExport the externalities baby!
- thousand_nights 8mo agolol. yeah there is but instead of "farther from the population centers" it is "farther from YOUR population centers"
- dotancohen 8mo agoYes, exactly. That's fine - live and let live. If somebody else values their health less - let them have pollution in their own back yard. If enough communities worldwide care about their health, then polluters will have to clean up their processes. But it's not for the residents of California to decide what happens in other jurisdictions.
- iamnothere 8mo agoDo you not think it’s possible that there are many places where people do care about their health, but they are forced to allow pollution because the alternative is grinding poverty and eventual starvation? Do you think the ship breakers in Bangladesh do it for fun? This outsourcing of misery is the absolute worst feature of Western neoliberalism. You get a two for one, dumping misery on other countries because it’s cheaper, while outsourcing strategic concerns because they are “too dirty.” It’s NIMBYism taken to its logical conclusion.
- observationist 8mo agoThey just really, really want to be European. Just look at what they've done about rebuilding the Palisades, and the nonsense they've perpetrated, allowing people to live and build in places that are completely impossible to make safe to live because of incredibly stupid bureacratic policy conflicts. And then the staggering mismanagement of water resources, allowing huge tax breaks and claims on water rights to giant corporations, then completely taxing and running out farmers and landowners with legacy rights, making it impossible for them to live there. At least if they drive everyone productive out of the state, the environment will be pristine. It's like some insanely scaled up version of gentrification, but in the most aggressively, offensively stupid way possible. California is a tasteless joke.
- testbjjl 8mo agoI don’t know, 39.5m with net growth might disagree with you. Are you living in California at present? If not, do any of the deregulation in laws where you are trouble you. If so, when do you plan on leaving and where to?
- SunshineTheCat 8mo agoCalifornia is one of the only states in the union seeing a population decline year over year (while surrounding states are seeing population growth). https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2026/demo/state-population-percent-change-map.html https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2026/demo/stat... And that doesn't even take in to account the major businesses fleeing the state as well.
- ixtli 8mo agoNow do economic growth?
- testbjjl 8mo agoSome people like to pick cherries and some are cherry pickers. California is amazing. If we lose some employers and our economy falters okay. Happy to take it as it comes personally. Growing up here was can remember when it was a quiet place I would come home to from college breaks. Those were the good old days for me. Today’s days are pretty good too.
- raziel2701 8mo agoAre other states building all this manufacturing/semiconductor capacity? I think it's an overall USA thing, we just don't do manufacturing anymore because it's cheaper to do it in another country. Not sure what the point of the website is. To me it looks like a bad faith argument. The secular trend in the US has been to increase margins by moving manufacturing to other countries. The tariffs are certainly not making it easier to manufacture domestically.
- renjimen 8mo ago> Not sure what the point of the website is I think it's just informative. I found it interesting at least. I formed my own conclusions from it.
- mint5 8mo agoReally? Since it’s lacking any comparison to other states and because many of these complaints single out metropolitan areas comparison to nationwide census of metro areas, what actual conclusions are you drawing that are valid? Context matters a lot. We haven’t built a lot of mercury based hat felting shops lately in California. What conclusion do you draw from that?
- renjimen 8mo agoI assume you're being a little obtuse. The comparison to wherever manufacturers phones and EVs is implicit. They are manufactured somewhere with looser environmental regulation than California, where they are purchased en masse. You can draw your own conclusions from that.
- mint5 8mo agoI saw complaints that amounted to “it’s more expensive to build out large industrial facilities in bay area than in Reno” okay what’s different in Reno hmmm I could be like the website and try to imply it’s only environmental regulations… or I could acknowledge that land price and availability is drastically different and also labor costs…. But then that wouldn’t help my contrived argument that it’s all the pesky regulations. Again, without apples to apples comparisons to other areas, wha are you actually able to conclude from the website other than stoking confirmation bias?
- ranger_danger 8mo agoGuess we can add free (from age verification) operating systems to that list now as well.
- themafia 8mo agoThe newest thing I've seen: "compostable - except in CA"
- tokenless 8mo agoWhy? The microbes don't get along with sourdough starter bacteria?
- inigyou 8mo agoIt's because CA has stricter regulations about what can be labeled compostable. Whatever had this label was never compostable to begin with, but called itself that on a technicality.
- gorfian_robot 8mo agoyeah we took one of those cups and buried in a compost heap for a few years. it was not degraded in the slightest.
- rising-sky 8mo agoProbably helpful to add why, otherwise this is just seems intended to trigger biases
- jey 8mo agoI wonder if there's a law+econ analysis of comparing the current framework (regulations and upfront permitting) vs having the regulations but then enforcement via combination of randomized gov't inspections and private lawsuits. The motivation would be to allow things to move faster while also requiring the same degree of compliance, but without the massive red tape upfront with administrators having no real incentive to approve projects or move fast. One obvious downside is that it effectively creates an economic incentive to try and skirt the law and/or find loopholes, but that arguably exists to the same degree in the existing system.
- mark242 8mo agoI love that "The Grandfathered In" section. Here's just one sample of a place that presumably this stupid website wants to keep up and running: https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-10-04/chevrons-el-segundo-refinery-had-a-history-of-safety-environmental-violations https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-10-04/chevron... The guy who made this site is selling a $7k stove? Good luck with that, my dude.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- crawshaw 8mo agoLot of things could be added to this list. Good luck getting permission to start a hospital, or permission to mine/refine anything with a slightly messy process (e.g. rare earth metals). You can't build a new port. The California Coastal Commission won't let you open a new hotel anywhere on the water. You can't even keep a bar open late in San Francisco.
- jasongill 8mo agoI just searched "new hospital opened in CA" on Google and see that there were two new hospitals opened in Irvine in December, half of a new hospital complex in Santa Clara opened in October, more being built and slated to open this year or next...
- hunterpayne 8mo agoNow look up when those projects were started...I will wait.
- lokar 8mo agoHospitals always take long time, both are non-profit and had to raise ton of money. They are both large multi-building complexes. And I think the UCI one is a trauma center (even more complexity) to deal with the fact that the previous (UCI) trauma center no longer meets earthquake standards.
- lokar 8mo agoA new 22 floor hotel is on the way in less than a mile from the ocean in Newport Beach.
- seb1204 8mo agoIs this a lobbying initiative? Surely the answer is not let's just allow to pillage, pollute and extort again to build a car, ship or phone. I like clean air, and rivers. They are good for every being.
- Take8435 8mo ago[flagged]
- georgemcbay 8mo ago> This has 70 upvotes within 30 minutes. This feels like an astroturf. Not really surprising given the audience, HN has an awful lot of neo-Technolibertarian types. The kind who used to complain about government regulation of free speech, and now complain about anything that gets in the way of amassing massive amounts of capital at any social/environmental/political cost.
- Take8435 8mo agoIt's unfortunate that folks who complain incessantly about "facts not feelings" don't appear to be using their critical thinking skills here. But I guess it's not too surprising.
- ixtli 8mo agoYa a lot of people on this site are ideologically positioned in a way that required demonizing CA. I don’t have any skin in that game but it seems pretty clearly A Thing to me from the other side of the country.
- hunterpayne 8mo agoA lot of people on this site do or used to live in CA. It is especially galling to have people who have never lived there tell those that have what it is like there. Especially people who have tried to build or run a business in CA.
- overfeed 8mo agoThe Silicon Valley founderati is chock-full of (right wing) libertarians. I can't tell if they were always that way, or are increasingly disgruntled by state-taxes the wealthier they get.
- 8mo ago
- georgemcbay 8mo agoAs a Californian: 1) They forgot to list Kid Rock (https://x.com/GovPressOffice/status/1969256868364095868 https://x.com/GovPressOffice/status/1969256868364095868) 2) Good, I'm glad this toxic shit is banned. 3) I wish people that constantly complained about California's regulations/taxes/politics would just quietly see their way out rather than obsessively whine about it. Enjoy Texas/Florida/wherever you go. We'll be ok without you.
- SunshineTheCat 8mo agoThey are: https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2026/demo/state-population-percent-change-map.html https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2026/demo/stat...
- chung8123 8mo agoMy favorite banned in CA is the "off roster" handguns that the police can buy and sell to the people of CA at a markup.
- daedrdev 8mo agoListen y’all, it’s not just that we aren't letting companies spew chemicals into the air. The permitting and regulatory process is so extremely hostile that even when you want to and are able to do so safely and without emissions, it’s impossible. Instead you have to ship things from out of state and other countries, which generates emissions and pollution itself that might actually be more than local production. Its the same issue as housing. Endless rules and regulations, many of which make no attempt at doing anything but block, cause the wealth of socirty to be siphoned away. An apartment project in LA with permits complete is worth twice as much as one without. How do we see this and expect our economy to do anything except drown in bureaucracy? My advice is dont ever manufacturing anything in CA. They will try and kill your business for simply existing no matter how perfect you are.
- devmor 8mo ago[flagged]
- daedrdev 8mo agoI obviously mean that you can filter out and properly dispose of and neutralize what would be emissions, so that they are not emitted. I cant see your comment as anything but bad faith, why are you responding like this?
- greesil 8mo agoSir, this is a hive of pedants. They live for this. Just accept it and move on.
- autoexec 8mo agoCan you give us a couple of examples of a company that was stopped by the state of California because they weren't producing any harmful emissions whatsoever and/or were disposing their waste in ways that were not harmful? It would be interesting to see exactly what they were doing in violation of the regulations, what regulations they ran into, and where those rules came from.
- 8mo ago
- ortusdux 8mo agoThey lost me at "vacuum deposition - impossible" without justification. As far as processes go it's one of the safest (everything happens in a sealed vacuum chamber). Maybe the solvents used to clean prior to coating?
- Gracana 8mo agoYeah, it’s the solvents used for cleaning the chambers and parts. Very nasty stuff, and it’s probably the biggest concern for this type of facility anywhere, not just in California.
- ErroneousBosh 8mo agoThe stuff my dad used for cleaning down beryllium copper sheets that then had silicon, gold, and nichrome deposited onto them to make tiny medical pressure sensors was generally various stages of xylene, amyl acetate, freon, and - on one notable occasion when a shipment of the sheet stock came heavily contaminated with tractor oil - plain ordinary petrol. This was back in the 80s. You are very much Not Allowed To Do That Now.
- ortusdux 8mo agoI was trying to follow a piece of older equipment's cleaning procedures to the letter, but once I hit "flush with freon" I decided to go off-book.
- ErroneousBosh 8mo agoSome 30-odd years later (more in fact, it's been over 30 years since he died) I can still smell the workshop. That and the lathe oil in the machine shop where they made various mechanical components, too.
- edgarvaldes 8mo agoLet's be honest: People have no problem polluting elsewhere as long as they can consume the final product without suffering the consequences. TFA isn't important to the people of California.
- goodluckchuck 8mo agoCalifornia can do a lot to private companies, but the supremacy clause allows the federal government to do what it wants. If a business wants to engage in these illegal-in-California practices, they could partner with the federal government. Edit: Now that I’m doing the research a partnership isn’t even needed, just a contract. Which makes sense, the feds cannot hire a private individual to do what would be illegal for them to do themselves… conversely, a company who is contracted to do federal business also enjoys supremacy by virtue of acting for the feds.
- mparkms 8mo agoThe creator of the website is the CEO of a battery-powered induction cooktop company. (https://x.com/sdamico https://x.com/sdamico) He clearly has an agenda against what he perceives as onerous environmental regulations: https://x.com/sdamico/status/2026536815902208479 https://x.com/sdamico/status/2026536815902208479 https://x.com/sdamico/status/2026552845294792994 https://x.com/sdamico/status/2026552845294792994
- richwater 8mo ago> has an agenda Everyone has an agenda. Is anything on this site false? Is it incorrect information?
- thephyber 8mo agoLies can be either by commission or omission.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- teaearlgraycold 8mo agoI don't think it makes a good case for itself. No automotive paint shops sounds kind of ridiculous. I don't know anything about that industry but there has to be a way to paint cars in a safe way, right?? But lumping that in with semiconductor fabs, which are extremely toxic, makes me wonder how many of these banned industries I don't want in my state. I think if we want to build them in the US maybe don't build them in the most agriculturally productive and highest population state. Or first figure out how to do it without turning the US into China with its "cancer villages" from poisoned river water. I'm not defending the dysfunctional CA bureaucracy, but the site should probably focus on specific cases of government-produced insanity than a general complaint that certain industries are banned from operation.
- ixtli 8mo agoIt actually makes me wanna move to CA.
- blintz 8mo agoThey are playing a bit fast and loose with the word "banned". > Your smartphone contains materials processed through semiconductor fabrication, chemical etching, metal anodizing, glass tempering, and electroplating — none of which you could start a new facility for in California without years of litigation. I agree that we should make it easier to do things, specifically by decreasing the amount of litigation involved in doing stuff. But the risk of a bunch of litigation isn't a ban, right? I get that it's trying to be attention-grabbing, but calling it a ban when it's not just sort of confuses the issue.
- jbellis 8mo agoHe's talking about taking the government to court to force it to follow the law, not "maybe we'll get sued later."
- Tyr42 8mo agoBeing unable to start a project without doing 5 years of legal wrangling once you put shovel to earth may not be a "ban", but it sure doesn't encourage development.
- bilbo0s 8mo agoJust Devil's Advocate.. but why is this a problem? There are other states without the regulations that these businesses apparently find offensive. Why can't the manufacturing be spun up in those states? Serious question.
- computerdork 8mo agoAgreed, words matter. There are a lot of smart people out there, and the writer of this site makes me skeptical when he/she exaggerates, omits or spins info. Tell us all the facts at least, so we can trust you.
- mothballed 8mo ago[flagged]
- bitwize 8mo agoGot a new one. In California—the only place that matters in tech—all operating systems must implement age verification by Jan 1, 2027. Which means this is coming to a computer near you, worldwide.
- cmxch 8mo agoNot in the free states they won’t.
- rswail 8mo agoThe free states that demand it of Pornhub causing it to withdraw services from those states?
- bitwize 8mo agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1skbgEGEn80 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1skbgEGEn80 Why were old PCs beige? It turns out, Germany had workplace standards laws that mandated light, unobtrusive colors on office equipment. Because it was expensive to offer different SKUs for different regions, gray or beige PC cases became the only ones available worldwide. If a jurisdiction as big or important as California passes a law mandating certain features on products available there, manufacturers may make those features part of their products worldwide to save on costs. OEMs may make bootloader-locked PCs which cannot run operating systems that don't do age check in order to comply with the law in California and Brazil, and decide it's not worth it to offer a bootloader-unlocked version. If you think PC manufacturers are required to make bootloader-unlockable PCs, the only thing requiring them to do so is an edict from Microsoft, something they can and will reverse in order to comply with the law.
- yardie 8mo agoInteresting website. "Semiconductor Fabrication (7nm/5nm) The main processor requires ultra-clean rooms, toxic gases (arsine, phosphine), and chemical etching. No new fabs have been built in CA in over a decade. Intel, TSMC, and Samsung all build elsewhere." Phosphine is pretty nasty stuff. California was full of EPA Superfund sites when the government got stuck with cleaning up all the toxic waste. Politicians and voters went, "Eff that!" after manufacturers left the state, but left their barrels of shit behind.
- becurious 8mo agoAnd there’s still mercury contamination from the gold rush in San Jose.
- jameson 8mo agoI don't want to make a mess in my yard but I don't care if your yard is a mess and I'll buy it Why not invest in ways to make these processes more eco friendly?
- burkaman 8mo agoThe Grandfatherd-in section is incredibly misleading. Look at the Semiconductor Fabrication section, for example. The implication is that these are the only fabs in the state, they wouldn't be able to get new permits today, and the red dots indicate that it would be "effectively impossible" to open any other ones. In fact (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...) there are at least 18 fabs in California, and these are just two random examples of particularly old ones. Obviously they couldn't reopen under the same permits they got in the 60s, why would anyone expect that to be the case?
- ch4s3 8mo ago> why would anyone expect that to be the case? Why would you expect it to be impossible?
- burkaman 8mo agoI wouldn't expect it to be impossible, and it isn't, but I would expect the permits to be different than they were 60 years ago. You can still build a house today, but that doesn't mean you can build one using the same permits you received in 1965. This is true for everything.
- mothballed 8mo agoOf course. And the goal in part is to enrich prior entrants and also to create massive unearned gains for them by printing a license for something no one else can have. This explains a lot of the housing prices writ large -- boomers and others who own houses that are grandfathered in via various regulations that let them build for cheap but not you, and making a new one has to be done at much higher regulations, basically printing money for those grandfathered in without them having to do anything but add regulations that apply to everyone else but them.
- no-dr-onboard 8mo agoA lot of these are actually grandfathered in. Vulcanization, electrolysis, auto painting, etc. I think the emphasis is that CA has effectively made it difficult to get regulatory authorities to agree to issue new permits. That was the part that stood out to me.
- paxys 8mo agoHalf the states in the country are actively deregulating all of this stuff. Why not take your factories there? California is anyways too expensive.
- kylecazar 8mo agoIt's interesting, but is there some conflation of regional restrictions with the state of California? Example: cites automotive paint shop restrictions as the quintessential example of what you can't do in CA, and qualifies it with a specific Bay Area regulation.
- ErroneousBosh 8mo agoI'm not in the US, but isn't the Bay Area quite specifically very polluted, very densely populated, and has some weird geographical/meteorological quirk that makes it very hard to get air pollution to blow away? So, the restrictions on incredibly stinky processes like spray painting cars that emit lots of VOCs and dust are somewhat reasonable? Or to put it more crudely, isn't it a bit like putting up a big "NO FARTING" sign in a crowded room where the windows don't open, and then simply expecting people to understand that this is a place where they should not fart?
- nphardon 8mo agohonestly, you couldn't even build your own house.
- givemeethekeys 8mo agoHow do the new manufacturing startups in the Bay Area and El Segundo deal with these limitations?
- mrbluecoat 8mo agoIs hosting a website in California banned? /s https://check-host.net/ip-info?host=bannedincalifornia.org https://check-host.net/ip-info?host=bannedincalifornia.org
- mint5 8mo agoOh I didn’t realize pineapple farms were banned in California and Alaska. I thought they hadn’t been built for other reasons over the last decade. But according to this, not being built means banned. TIL! Started reading this site but the massive gaps in logic and reasoning are like nails on a chalkboard. No new fabs being built in CA means fabs are banned?! Okay well fabs are banned in pretty much the whole country then, so why call out California? Just because something isn’t done doesn’t mean it’s banned. Neither is it necessarily bad. There’s a lot of reasons why not to build certain things certain areas - labor cost, earthquake risk, land is more desired leading to higher cost, blah blah blah That doesn’t mean something is banned. Maybe we should look at making some things easier but this website is just a hit piece and has a clear motivation rather than being a trustworthy evaluation. It’s like those cringy billboards on highway 5 about Gavin newsom and water. Edit —— Complaining that large factories can’t easily be built in dense population centers like the Bay Area means things are banned is weird - who in the right mind thinks a sprawling factory with emissions should go smack dab in the middle of population centers? Why can’t we build a new nuclear plant in Manhattan or maybe an oil refinery on wall street!? Waah waah so outrageous! None were built in the last decade so it’s the outrageous regulations fault! I want my lead battery smelter in downtown Portland but Oregon banned it! Waah waah! Aside that, this site is mostly blaming California regulations for the nationwide manufacturing issues driven heavily by free trade
- ineedaj0b 8mo agoCalifornia is mismanaged and you don’t need to vote Red to fix it. We can do better as Blue State. Wake up. We’re losing to ourselves like an obese patient anemic to a diet.
- georgeecollins 8mo agoI think it could be better run for sure. We need to look at things other states seem to do well (Utah - homelessness, Texas - K12) and push to improve. The problem for me is that when you go out in the rest of the country the dislike bordering on hate for California is really common. It is insane to me that you can send Marines to Los Angeles and almost no one cares. California is a such a huge chunk of the US economy, not just tech but agriculture, trade and yes even manufacturing. The partisanship is poison for everyone and it holds back reform in California. We're all the same country.
- dayyan 8mo ago[flagged]
- ixtli 8mo agoThis kinda makes me wanna move to CA. someone should take these list items and make a map of those fabs in the US so we can avoid moving near them.
- culi 8mo agoclose enough, here's a map of superfund sites https://hub.arcgis.com/datasets/EPA::epa-facility-registry-service-superfund-enterprise-management-system-sems/explore https://hub.arcgis.com/datasets/EPA::epa-facility-registry-s...
- parl_match 8mo agoA lot of these are stretches or remove nuance. I get the point they are trying to make, but it's a lot weaker than they think and undermined by their own "hero" example: painting cars in California > A modern auto paint shop emits volatile organic compounds (VOCs) during primer, base coat, and clear coat application. The Bay Area AQMD makes permitting a new paint shop nearly impossible. This is THE classic example of what you can't do in CA. Ah yes, the Bay Area, famously "all of California". And on top of that, the restrictions are mostly in highly populated areas.
- DannyBee 8mo agoOh it's worse bullshit. Modern paint shops don't emit meaningful VOCs. Even in Texas, for example. Nobody's even making non voc compliant auto paint anymore because there is no market for it. I can't speak to permitting but the coating and coating voc stuff I know quite well and what they state is simply bullshit. I can also say I know of a bunch of auto paint places that opened in the mountain view surrounding area alone in the 10 years I lived there. So I suspect it's all bullshit
- wiskinator 8mo agoThe site would be better if it linked to the actual regulation that prohibits each type of business instead of just making the claim “0 new factories of this type have been built”.
- OkayPhysicist 8mo agoThe claim that aluminum anodizing is "banned in California" because of the sulfuric acid waste it produces is patently absurd. There are no shortage of labs, factories, and more in California that use sulfuric acid, and they all figure out how to dispose of their waste without going "fuck it, YOLO it into the river".
- 01100011 8mo agoCA is currently importing gas from Bermuda via the Panama Canal: https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/02/16/gasoline-starved-california-is-turning-to-fuel-from-the-bahamas/amp/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/02/16/gasoline-starved-cali... I appreciate some of the arguments here about pushing pollution outside the state, but this is madness.
- thereisnospork 8mo agoA lot of people on this site clearly have never tried doing anything in California that involves more infrastructure than a laptop. Can easily be 18 months or more to get a permit to 'do things the right way'. If they'll even deign to give you one.
- culi 8mo agoNow compared that to this map of superfund sites and the pollutants they've left in our soils and groundwater. Statistically speaking, an average American lives within 10 miles of one of these sites all sites: https://hub.arcgis.com/datasets/EPA::epa-facility-registry-service-superfund-enterprise-management-system-sems-/explore https://hub.arcgis.com/datasets/EPA::epa-facility-registry-s... npl sites: https://epa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=33cebcdfdd1b4c3a8b51d416956c41f1 https://epa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=... Also funnily enough, the first place I checked from this site's list of facilities that have been grandfathered in led to this finding > Lehigh Hanson's Permanente cement plant in Cupertino, CA, is permanently closing following thousands of environmental violations and over 80 years of operation. The plant was a major source of air pollution and discharged toxic selenium into Permanente Creek. Not being able to build a destroyer in California seems like a small price to pay for an ecosystem not poisoned
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- phyzix5761 8mo ago"Grandfathered in"? Isn't that how you create monopolies?
- fhd2 8mo agoIf geographic location is a serious advantage, then yes, kind of. Competitors would have an uphill battle against the grandfathered incumbents. I doubt it is though, in these cases. Was probably just to make the measures more popular, as in not destroying existing investments / jobs.
- CodinM 8mo agoThe author equates "you need a permit, which you obtain by making proof you follow the law and best practices re: handling dangerous substances" with "BANNED!!!!!!". I dislike how misleading and emotionally targeted this is and I understand the hate we get as tech people if this is the best we can do.
- daneel_w 8mo agoAt least the New Republic is clean and healthy... on paper...
- inigyou 8mo agoSo most of these are just saying "you can't do this because they won't let you dump your waste in the river" and some are just "nobody's doing this in California yet" What if you ... don't dump your waste in the river? Is it legal if you dispose of your waste properly?
- yellow_lead 8mo ago> A modern auto paint shop emits volatile organic compounds (VOCs) during primer, base coat, and clear coat application. The Bay Area AQMD makes permitting a new paint shop nearly impossible. This is THE classic example of what you can't do in CA. Banned in California.. wait, I meant the Bay Area.
- a3w 8mo agoI claim BS: labs can operate with these and more dangerous chemicals. Top of the list is "sulfuric acid baths". The correct disposal of sulfuric acid is "dilute with water", or if about metal dissolved in it, yeah treat as waste to be cleaned up or compacted and stored into eternity at a cost. So even after skimming, this seems agenda driven, not a fact sheet. This seems like a "we cannot do it cost efficiently, so we claim it is impossible since China underbids us"
- Fischgericht 8mo agoThere is a reason these kind of things are no longer possible in much of the western world and especially Europe-like US states like California: After the deindustrialization people started to enjoy healthy air and clear water. As always when it comes to "the good old times" or "make great again", your brain will remember very selectively. I used to live next to a large river for about 35 years. As a kid, it was forbidden to swim in it, and if you did, you had weird oily chemicals on your skin that felt unhealthy (burn, itching etc). Back then we had huge production industries upstream, employing thousands of people. Today you can swim in the river without any problem at all. But the industry and the jobs have shrunken a lot, because not polluting the air and water simply is expensive. You can sum this up with: Producing stuff without polluting the environment in most cases is impossible. Reducing the pollution costs a lot of money, and can make your product non-competitive. This is why you outsource to other countries and let them do it, because you simply do not care about them living in a polluted environment. Poison Outsourcing. So, if the US wants production industry again, and want it to be competitive, than have a look on how the environment in the countries you will be competing with looks like, and then to an informed decision if you really want that. I'd pick the clean air and water, and have people poisoned far away that I don't know and can ignore. What would be your choice?
- flakiness 8mo ago> "Europe-like US states like California" This statement makes me smile. Although I see where this comes from...
- Fischgericht 8mo agoI'm not judging here. From my experiences in California I would say that the general mindset and cultural approach to life is comparable to that of south-western Europe. In part that's simply because while looking different, the general environment is fostering respecting nature, giving room for arts and creative and having an open mind. (This example of course is coming from a past world where you could safely travel to/from the US, say, 10 years ago:) Travelling from say Portugal to Miami ) would give you a massive culture shock. Portugal to San Diego? Not so much. ) Yes, Portugal to Key West would have worked.
- rswail 8mo agoThis is whining from someone that doesn't want to be responsible for the externality of pollution that these manufacturing facilities generate. The regulations are to stop the pollution, if you can manufacture without polluting, then you'll comply and be able to manufacture. The problem is that there are other regulatory environments where the people aren't protected from pollution. What would fix that is enforcing the regulations nation wide, then applying tariffs on imported products that don't enforce the same regulations. Net result, more expensive phones, better health and improved environment for the public. In the same way as car pollution was cleaned up.
- RajT88 8mo agoWe've kicked the can down the road. Stuff used to cost more; now we make everything out of plastic overseas. Once all of those economies are wealthy enough to start caring about the environment (and I'm convinced we'll get there), pollution will have to be dealt with globally. Maybe by then we'll have returned to building products which last (although I'm not holding my breath).
- rob74 8mo agoThanks for confirming my suspicion! When I read phrases like "Battery cells require electrode coating with toxic solvents (NMP), electrolyte handling, and formation cycling. This is exactly why Tesla's Gigafactory went to Reno." I (as someone not very familiar with the subject) thought it's strange that California should regulate what kind of chemicals can be used in an industrial process. Of course, they don't - but they regulate that industry can't release toxic chemicals into the environment. But because Elon thinks it's too expensive to make sure that no NMP gets out of his factory, he goes to his Republican pals in Texas or Nevada who don't worry about pollution...
- djha-skin 8mo ago...because dumping stuff into the middle of what is already a barren wasteland isn't actually a problem.
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- clarionbell 8mo agoYou could make similar site about much of Europe to be honest. It seems to me that there is a fundamental disconnect, between what society needs to function and what some societies are willing to tolerate. Almost everything we take for granted, like potable water, air conditioning, personal computers or long distance transportation, relies on industries generating some sort of externalities. Regulating these industries is necessary. But we have reached the point, where the regulation makes many of them almost impossible. This has several effects. First, the society is now dependent on delivery of these dirty products. This is obviously problematic if there is a major crisis that disrupts supply chains, or if those who manufacture them are no longer willing to deliver. Second, working class collapses. Manufacturing jobs are one of the more stable available. They are generally unionized, or are conductive to unionization. This is unlike service sector jobs. White collar professions can mostly cope. But those who were already disadvantaged find themselves in an even worse position. Third, the externalities move in locations with less oversight. This can, obviously, cause greater pollution and environmental degradation globally. Further, delivery of the manufactured goods across great distances adds to carbon footprint. This, again, leads to greater environmental toll. Taken together, benefits of overregulating "polluting" industry to oblivion, are at best local and temporary. I would also like to note, that the collapse of manufacturing jobs can be easily linked to increased political radicalization. That being said, it's not all gloom and doom. I firmly believe, that as the impacts of this approach are felt more and more, there will be a push for sensible deregulation. Europe is already leading the way, weakening or delaying some of the more absurd regulation schemes.[1] [1] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/eu-countries-give-final-approval-weaken-company-sustainability-laws-2026-02-24/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
- crest 8mo agoThere is a difference between banned and you can't just pump it into the next water stream.
- JaggerJo 8mo ago[flagged]
- jdross 8mo agoI’m married to a Brit and she is constantly in awe of how much better our healthcare is here in the US. And she paid for private insurance there too. Quality of facilities, low wait times, quality of staff interactions, organization, etc. She even freaks out about how we have free parking at our doctors and hospitals here! We’re on corporate insurance.
- GJim 8mo agoSo why are so many of your citizens without even basic affordable healthcare?
- ecshafer 8mo agoThey aren't. Anyone can go to the ER, and if you're poor it'll be billed through Medicaid. When I was young and poor, I had a multi-day hospital stay and multiple surgeries that totaled to $3.50 out of pocket. Urgent cares are everywhere and affordable.
- triceratops 8mo ago> Anyone can go to the ER They'll treat you if you have a heart attack and make it in alive. They won't put you on blood thinners or statins 10 years before that to keep you out of the ER in the first place. I don't think ERs do chemotherapy either.
- bayarearefugee 8mo agoYup, ERs are not a replacement for actual medical care. Their only goal/duty is to stabilize you during an acute medical emergency so you don't immediately die.
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- cdrnsf 8mo agoMy dad spent 40+ years working at a unionized industrial facility in California that recycled paper and cardboard waste into the paper layer used to make the corrugated interior of cardboard boxes. There were some local regulations on waste water runoff that I'm aware of, but he never mentioned much else. There was an EPA superfund site across the street (this all was adjacent to the beach). The company also had a co-generator that they used to produce their own power (using natural gas) and sold excess power to the local electrical utility. It's still in operation, though it changed owners ~4 times while he was there.
- triceratops 8mo ago> No new fabs have been built in CA in over a decade. Intel, TSMC, and Samsung all build elsewhere. The Bay Area is peppered with Superfund sites that used to be fabs in the 80s. Maybe CA is saying it's done its part and now it's someone else's turn.
- croes 8mo agoWithout the list of environmental side effects those things have it’s not a neutral list. How about the ban of asbestos and Chlorofluorocarbons?
- Meneth 8mo agoPoorly written site. Javascript-only, no references, no sources.
- LarsDu88 8mo agoI live in Santa Clara where the first chip fans in the world existed. In places like Santa Clara (home to Intel, AMD, Nvidia), and neighboring Sunnyvale and Mountain View there are maps of chemical leakage of industrial solvents which had contaminated the groundwater. The very first Google offices sat directly over one of these sites around 2004. It took decades to dissipate. People complained about noxious fumes and this was more than 20 years after the spills had occurred. There are real tradeoffs to having heavy industry to human health and well being.
- seltzered_ 8mo agoThere was a fairly recent case on Apple about this in the Santa Clara California area: https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-takes-action-against-apple-inadequate-hazardous-waste-management https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-takes-action-against-ap... (EPA, 2025) See also https://mastodon.social/@ashleygjovik/112668309100333232 https://mastodon.social/@ashleygjovik/112668309100333232 (Ashley M. Gjøvik , 2024)
- xrd 8mo agoElon Musk and Colossus have generated 3000 jobs in Memphis, according to Tesla propaganda (I mean "propaganda" in the original neutral term, of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda). But, locals don't love that because of the environmental concerns. https://mashable.com/article/naacp-data-centers https://mashable.com/article/naacp-data-centers I, for one, would not want to live within 100 miles of these data centers. But, people that live there already are not being given the choice. And, I imagine not many of the people that live there are being offered one of those 3000 jobs.
- giantrobot 8mo agoI find it disingenuous to talk about construction jobs as being "generated". Construction jobs are contracts. Building a datacenter might put 3000 people under contract temporarily but it doesn't "generate" jobs. Once the contract is complete those contractors they're no longer paid by the builder. The word "generated" is used to make it sound like the project opened up 3000 new permanent jobs for people. Those contractors were employed before the contract and will be employed on another contract at some later point. There's no net gain of jobs in the long run. The contractors won't even necessarily be local. The builder isn't going to call up Bob's AC repair from Collierville to do the specialized datacenter HVAC. They'll fly in a company specialized in that task who will fly home at the end of the contract. The companies scrambling to build datacenters take advantage of that linguistic ambiguity and then the local politicians end up doing the same. They give these companies sweetheart tax/zoning incentives, proclaim contractors as "generated jobs", and then leave the locals with all of the negative externalities and none of the revenue.
- seltzered_ 8mo ago" Building an EV requires metal forging, battery manufacturing, painting, and chip fabrication — all processes that drove Tesla to build in Nevada and Texas. Tesla's Fremont factory was the former NUMMI plant (GM/Toyota, operating since 1962). It was grandfathered in." This website misses talking about all the Tesla Fremont paint shop violations (see https://www.baaqmd.gov/en/news-and-events/page-resources/2024-news/062524-tesla-aq-violations https://www.baaqmd.gov/en/news-and-events/page-resources/202... ) and various OSHA violations: - https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-02-11/tesla-fined-for-serious-heat-violations-at-fremont https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-02-11/tesla-fine... (2025) - https://www.thedrive.com/news/26727/tesla-had-3-times-as-many-osha-violations-as-the-10-largest-us-plants-combined https://www.thedrive.com/news/26727/tesla-had-3-times-as-man... (2019)
- avs733 8mo agoTo be clear ….violations of their, repeatedly update, permit to paint cars. Something the website labels impossible.
- cogman10 8mo agoThe article is just factually incorrect. It says, for example, that it's impossible to manufacture batteries in California and cites Tesla moving to Texas as the example. But Telsa still makes batteries in California in Fremont. They last did expansions on their battery manufacturing plants in 2023. It cites all the dangerous chemicals used in manufacturing, but those aren't banned in California. CA has safety requirements for handling toxic materials. And we should be safely handling those materials, it's crazy to suggest we don't because of progress or whatever.
- tptacek 8mo agoYou might be right, but the site is explicit about the Fremont plant being exempted, and opens with the claim that there are facilities grandfathered in.
- cogman10 8mo ago> Tesla's Fremont factory was the former NUMMI plant (GM/Toyota, operating since 1962). It was grandfathered in. When Tesla needed to expand battery production, they built the Gigafactory in Reno, Nevada — not California — because the permitting for battery cell manufacturing was effectively impossible. The Cybertruck factory went to Austin, Texas. His point was that they were grandfathered in for making cars in general. But he flat out lies about making batteries being something grandfathered in. That wasn't a battery manufacturing plant to begin with. And he further lies to say they had to build elsewhere because cell manufacturing was "effectively impossible" because they expanded the factory for cell manufacturing in 2023. [1] [1] https://electrek.co/2023/06/09/tesla-snaps-new-location-fremont-to-expand-4680-battery-cell-production-report/ https://electrek.co/2023/06/09/tesla-snaps-new-location-frem...
- mc32 8mo agoI didn't read the text but if you’re referring to the quoted text, it’s not clear from the text that the implication was they were building batteries in _Fremont_ and then wanted to expand or that they were building them elsewhere and wanted to expand and chose Nevada as the expansion site. The sentence is not written with clarity. It’s written as people would speak.
- dragonwriter 8mo agoThese explanations have no citations, and even the explanations frequently conflict with the category labels. It seems much more like an elaborate propaganda infographic than a useful source of information.
- MrSqueezles 8mo ago"Hey AI, tell me what manufactured phone components require permitting in California." ... Copy paste copy paste copy paste I can think of multiple manufacturers that do all engineering and have recently built manufacturing facilities in California and would manufacture there at scale too except other states gave them massive tax incentives. Tesla and Rivian both do initial manufacturing in California. Startups like Freeform, doing metal 3D printing at scale, are in California. This article is wrong.
- avs733 8mo agoI confuses “it’s hard” with “it’s banned” It’s…not even wrong it is detached from any effort at truth.
- analog31 8mo agoI work in manufacturing. I don't think regulations are the only barrier. The other one is attracting investment. Manufacturing is simply second class compared to IT, the finance industry, healthcare, etc.
- reboot81 8mo agoPage seems to be blocked from EU.
- barelysapient 8mo agoShould California be treated differently than the rest of the world? In addition to banning these manufacturing processes in California, we should ban the products manufactured with these processes from California. This would require products to "green up" in order to access California's vast market. By allowing dirty products manufactured elsewhere, we've simply moved the problem and its harms out of our line of sight. And frequently to a place where the people are poor, non-white and under represented.
- gorfian_robot 8mo agothis does happen to some extent for example with auto emissions and other things. CA is such a large market when it alone makes a change, it often drags along other states or the nation.
- lokar 8mo agoNot really. CA can regulate import and sales of items based on the what the item does once in CA. They can't really regulate how it was made somewhere else.
- barelysapient 8mo agoI'd be curious to know if this is really the case. States have a lot of power to regulate commerce, interstate commerce and the products their citizens have access too. If indeed they can't, then perhaps its one subject dems and r's could get together on. Instead of blanket tarrifs, tarriffs on products made with slave labor or without strong consideration for environment impact.
- lokar 8mo agoI don't think it's unreasonable for indirect impacts like this to be regulated by the federal government.
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- ctime 8mo agoGreat! Considering you can’t swing a dead cat around Silicon Valley without hitting a superfund site, this seems ok. People and businesses that are ok with being exploited and exploiting others, while externalizing the true cost of their products on to the environment and future generations by treating the air and land like an open sewer can do it elsewhere.
- gorfian_robot 8mo agoyet oddly California is the #1 manufacturing state by a wide margin. https://www.industryselect.com/blog/top-10-us-states-for-manufacturing https://www.industryselect.com/blog/top-10-us-states-for-man...
- lokar 8mo agoThe line about auto paint shops is out of place / misleading. It's not all of CA, it's just the Bay Area, and probably some other urbanized areas with a history of really bad air quality.
- jayquery 8mo ago[dead]
- object-a 8mo agoIt would be nice if the site cited the regulations and costs that make the different facilites impossible — are they outright banned? Are there environmental regulations that don’t exist elsewhere? Is it a long process for permitting with tons of inspections?
- chaboud 8mo agoWhen I was a kid growing up in Texas, our ocean visits were to the Gulf of Mexico, off the Texas coast, and you would grab little alcohol wipes for when you got out of the ocean, to wipe the oil off. Years later, swimming in Hawaii, I found myself looking for wipes. I mentioned it to a snorkel-outfit operator, and she looked at me like I was insane. They didn't even put damaging sunscreen in the water, and there was no expectation of little 1-2 inch sticky spots of oil. The good old days, in the 80's, where we swam in oceans filled with slow-motion natural disasters. I wonder how much of it was place (Hawaiians seem to have a stronger relationship with the land and nature surrounding them) and how much of it was the time (20 years later).
- jayrot 8mo agoFor what it's worth you still need the alcohol wipes (mineral oil works well too) when swimming off the coast of Santa Barbara. It's naturally occurring oil that gets all over your feet in little annoying sticky spots.
- chasd00 8mo agoyeah same for the Gulf Coast, oil just seeps right out of the ground at some beaches or at some times. There's plenty of man-made pollution to go around though.
- colechristensen 8mo agoHalf-ish (don't get hung up on being exact, they are at least of similar orders of magnitude) of the oil that makes its way into the ocean is natural. That is, leaking out of the ground into the water not at all as a result of human activity. Obviously enormous anthropogenic oil spills make this a very spiky statistic one way or the other. Oil production and natural oil seepage happen in the gulf of mexico because there's oil there, there's not much oil around Hawaii. So there's likely both a human and non-human reason for this in Texas.
- jandrewrogers 8mo agoCrude oil floating in the ocean used to be a big nuisance in parts of California. It is a natural phenomenon, created by oil deposits on the ocean floor leaking into the environment. Santa Barbara was particularly famous for it. Extraction of that oil via commercial wells greatly reduced the natural seepage, which is why there is so little crude oil floating in that ocean water today. Oil drilling actually made the water cleaner.
- zdp7 8mo agoOn the website, it claims you cannot manufacture lithium battery cells in California unless you are grandfathered in. A relatively minimal search found statevolt.com. They are building a factory in the Imperial Valley. While I did see the project is on hold. It seems implausible that they bought the site, not having researched whether you could actually build lithium battery cells in California. Considering the banned website claims it's impossible, I can't trust anything on that website without citations.
- tzs 8mo ago> 1 West Coast shipyard that can build destroyers There are only a handful of shipyards in the US that build ships for the Navy. What makes him think regulation has anything to do with only 1 being on the West Coast?
- ted_dunning 8mo agoSome points on this page are simply incorrect. For instance, NC milling is done in California. Printed circuit board manufacturing is done in California. Small-scale integrated circuit fabrication is done.
- patwater10 8mo agoReading through this discussion and speaking from professional experience I have to say that the real challenge isn’t just specific bans, it’s the administrative cost and the inertia of a permitting paradigm designed in the 1960s and 70s. We’re still managing complexity with relics of a regulatory architecture built for a different era — one with paper files, siloed agencies, and a bias toward “check-the-box” compliance rather than real world outcomes. That’s why so many solutions feel like de facto bans: not because the environmental goal isn’t valid, but because the cost of compliance in time, paperwork, and legal risk creates a barrier that only well-resourced actors can navigate. The real economic deadweight loss isn’t always in the policy text — it’s in the thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars spent just to prove you did the minimum. There’s enormous opportunity right now with data tools and AI agents for qualitative assessment. We don’t have to keep defaulting to rigid checklists that presume every context is the same. With modern sensors, realtime monitoring, and AI that can synthesize qualitative evidence with quantitative data, we can finally shift toward performance-based permits that look at actual impacts rather than adherence to outdated procedural triggers. Imagine a system where: Sensors and connected data streams show real emissions or ecological outcomes, AI agents help translate diverse evidence into risk profiles, Permits adapt based on performance instead of fixed thresholds divorced from context. That’s not just a tech fantasy — that’s a pathway to reducing administrative drag while improving environmental protection. The status quo isn’t sustainable environmentally or economically. If we cling to 20th-century process dogma, we’ll keep seeing well-intentioned policies backfire into de facto bans, regulatory bottlenecks, and inequitable access to compliance.
- jimt1234 8mo agoI grew up in the 80s, not far from Times Beach, Missouri, so I'm a huge supporter of environmental protection. Hooray for California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Beach,_Missouri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Beach,_Missouri https://www.epa.gov/mo/town-flood-and-superfund-looking-back-times-beach-disaster-nearly-40-years-later https://www.epa.gov/mo/town-flood-and-superfund-looking-back... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ElM_xAtbAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ElM_xAtbAY
- njarboe 8mo agoI would like to read this website but the font and colors are so poorly selected (read and grey for most of the text) that I'm not willing to struggle to do so. I guess my eyes are just old.
- ta9000 8mo agoI guess Tesla’s paint shop in Fremont is virtual.
- epistasis 8mo agoThere's an important distinction here, between "banned" and "has far cheaper alternatives". Things can appear banned even when they aren't merely because there is a new technology that's better and cheaper and it's a big investment so people go with the cheaper option. Nobody is building new coal in the US because it's so expensive, not because there's an outright ban. Now, part of the reason it's more expensive than in the past is that using once-through water for cooling raises the cost of disposing of waste heat. And now, modern and much more efficient natural gas combined cycle plant is the obvious choice because not only is the fuel cheaper per kWh, but you also need to spend a lot less on waste heat disposal. So is coal banned? No. Did some environmental regulations have an impact on just how bad of an idea coal is these days? Sure, but let's talk about the tradeoffs here, it's not a ban and framing it is a ban leads to bad solutions to real regulatory problems.
- dmix 8mo agoYou can just look at examples in the article. For example "Lithium-Ion Cell Manufacturing" > Cell manufacturing uses NMP solvent for electrode coating, handles flammable electrolytes, and requires formation cycling that generates heat and gases. Tesla chose Reno for the Gigafactory specifically because of California's permitting environment. EPA tried to heavily restrict these outright in 2024 [1] and California has air/environmental rules that made it nearly impossible to develop large battery factories in California, which is why Tesla chose Reno in 2014. An alternative didn't exist at the time and now a decade later Tesla recently filed a patent this year for Dry electrode processing [2] So basically California lost a decade of possible lithium factories [1] https://www.sgs.com/en-ca/news/2024/06/safeguards-9624-us-epa-proposes-restrictions-on-solvent-n-methylpyrrolidone https://www.sgs.com/en-ca/news/2024/06/safeguards-9624-us-ep... [2] https://www.benzinga.com/markets/tech/26/02/50290319/elon-musk-hails-major-battery-chemistry-breakthrough-by-tesla-which-could-cut-down-costs-incredibly-difficult https://www.benzinga.com/markets/tech/26/02/50290319/elon-mu...
- epistasis 8mo agoThat's a good story to consider. Given the labor challenges in California due to high housing costs, which selectively pushes out those willing to work for lower wages, I am always surprised when manufacturers choose the state at all. Throwing additional challenges doesn't make it any easier.
- onlypassingthru 8mo agoYou can thank the fine people who figured it was cheaper/easier/faster to just dump the toxic waste out back (or offshore [0]) for many of these processes being outlawed. If I'm not mistaken, CA has the 2nd most Superfund sites in the US.[1] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_ocean_dumps_off_Southern_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_ocean_dumps_off_Southern... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_Cal...
- forthwall 8mo agoEveryone wants heavy industry outcomes, no one wants heavy industry side-effects; Do people want oil refineries that constantly catch fire or explode [1], or toxic superfund sites for fabs [2]? There are opportunities to build safer systems of course, the capital is there but there's places with looser regulations where you can harm people for cheap. Also, this website does not actually show what laws or reasons why things are banned, it just says it's impossible, no sources, how do I even know this is true? [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/A-look-back-at-six-of-the-worst-refinery-14537296.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/A-look-back-at-s... [2] https://www.theverge.com/23990525/semiconductor-biden-infrastructure-plan-toxic-chemicals https://www.theverge.com/23990525/semiconductor-biden-infras...
- 827a 8mo agoWhile I do tend to feel it is important that superpower-level countries be capable of producing within their political borders most/all of what they consume, for reasonable prices; I do not tend to feel that everything we produce needs to be produced everywhere within those political borders. California is the most beautiful and hospitable land on the entire planet. There's nothing wrong with putting the toxic chemical factories in a desert or tundra somewhere.
- pessimizer 8mo agoThis website has no content at all. It doesn't mention a single regulation or law. It's just something for politicians to cite from the floor or in reports when they're demanding deregulation or subsidy, and a url that sounds like a slogan. If this were real instead of dogshit lobbyist slop, you'd see the details, and there's be clear arguments and action plans. But the action is that they're going to pay politicians off, and the politicians are going to give speeches that start "I went to a website the other day, and it was called Banned in California - you might like electric cars, think they're good, but because of bad regulation, we could never make them here." And that's going to provide cover as they vote for something horrible. And buy a boat with the money they made for doing it.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- Animats 8mo agoPlating operations are a huge headache. They have corrosive plating baths. They have to do some chemical processing on site to neutralize the corrosive chemicals and get them down to a neutral pH. Some years ago, a plating company in San Jose dumped a plating bath into the sewer system. This was so toxic that it killed the bacteria that reduce organic sludge at the sewerage plant. This knocked the whole plant offline, releasing untreated sewerage into the bay. The lower bay was toxic for a week. It's normally swimmable. San Jose was fined by the EPA. The plating company was heavily fined by San Jose. It's a good sewerage plant. The output is drinkable, and if you take the tour, you're offered some to drink. Some of the output is used for irrigation. In a severe drought emergency, water could be fed back into the water system. They've never had to do that, but in a big drought a few years ago, things got close to that point. San Jose, which is more of an industrial city than most people realize, still has plating companies. Here's an inspection report for one of them.[1] This one was releasing too much chromium. [1] https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/www3/region9/water/pretreatment/files/Swift-IR.pdf https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/www3/region9/water/pre...
- djha-skin 8mo ago[flagged]
- fragmede 8mo agohttps://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
- harimau777 8mo agoFWIW, I don't see anywhere that the parent post said that there shouldn't be plating plants in San Jose, just that they are dangerous.
- Animats 8mo agoYes. It's a miserable business. Look at the pictures from the inspection of a plating plant. Everything near the process is corroded and covered with crud. Such plants have to be regulated and inspected, to prevent them from becoming a hazard both to the neighborhood and downstream. Plants which do chemistry on an industrial scale tend to need their own waste processing, which gets the waste products down to a reasonably neutral form. Regulation is needed to prevent dumping it unprocessed. That's what the EPA really does.
- tonymet 8mo agoi hear that's why Tesla paint is so soft, and why it's so popular for Tesla buyers to apply expensive protective film to their paint. I didn't believe anyone when they told me, and now i have more scratches after 1 year than my mazda did after 5+ years
- kazinator 8mo agoThis is deeply hypocritical, since Californians consume products built with these forbidden processes. They just have them made elsewhere so they can feel like they are ambassadors of environmental protection.
- docmars 8mo agoMake sure not to list the things that are easy to build or permit because California will find a way to make it impossible.
- breakyerself 8mo agoFuck oil refineries though. That's what you want to lead with?
- skeeter2020 8mo agoThis website gets a "very difficult" to "impossible" rating for usability: tiny, dense text, dim & blurry fonts and the modern UX that insists on reinventing how people navigate a webpage. Ironically it WAS made in California.
- jmonty900 8mo agoIf California made the products illegal that couldn't be produced here I wonder how many of these laws would suddenly be removed because the issues associated with the laws were suddenly considered "acceptable".
- timefirstgrav 8mo agoOperating systems are now updating legal docs so people in california can't use them. California has gone full retard. https://github.com/MidnightBSD/src/commit/7d956a27123f2d77a05313826c29a0329a923254 https://github.com/MidnightBSD/src/commit/7d956a27123f2d77a0...
- outside1234 8mo agoCalifornia has some deep trauma from all of the superfund sites the semis left behind.
- bmitc 8mo agoI don't have experience in basically all of these industrial processes, so I can't really comment there. I strongly support environmental protections, but I have no idea if what California does actually does that. A separate but related topic is the warnings California requires of products. It's gotten a bit out of hand because every product you buy has the same warning, which completely dilutes what I hope was the intention. Even buying something as simple as an electric guitar comes with the "can cause cancer" warning because it can have nickel parts on it (usually for the bridge and tuners and frets).
- silexia 8mo agoWashington is really bad too for doing anything. We are getting more issues at the federal level too. I just want to crush some rock and I have to get a mine ID and a mine permit and a ton of other stuff.