Water quality, air pollution, and safe open spaces are concerns shared by all county residents. However, the county’s unincorporated, rural towns need help making policies to protect residents from environmental risks. With an addition to the county’s general plan, the Board of Supervisors seeks to shield seven vulnerable regions.
On March 10, supervisors unanimously approved the county’s first environmental justice element, which is required under state law SB 1000 for disadvantaged and unincorporated communities. Despite surveys and three Planning Commission hearings last year, organizations and community members expressed concern to the board about a lack of outreach in the element’s targeted regions.
The agenda item was also pushed back more than two hours, heard out of order from the board’s original schedule. Fourth District Supervisor Bob Nelson apologized for the change, but some public commenters felt the wait time discouraged individuals from speaking.
Sandra Plascencia, a climate justice organizer with the local United Domestic Workers, said nine other group members planned to voice their concern but had to leave for work. Plascencia asked supervisors to visit the eight communities to hear more input before approving the element.
“Our members feel discriminated and disrespected by all of you,” Plascencia said. “Not only have you gathered minimal input, but you’ve also pushed away marginalized community members who have eagerly sought to voice their environmental concerns.”
In North County, Garey, Casmalia, Los Alamos, Sisquoc, New Cuyama, Cuyama, and Ventucopa were identified as the rural towns the element is focusing on and have been labeled disadvantaged for more than a decade. Isla Vista is also included in the element. Planning and Development staff assessed communities based on household median income, negative health effects, and environmental burdens based on state data from CalEnviroScreen.
Staff revised the element to modify Sisquoc’s boundaries to exclude agricultural land and removed Garey from the element altogether, as Garey’s income data didn’t meet the state’s definition of disadvantaged.
Only unincorporated communities were included in the study because cities can make their own environmental justice elements, like Lompoc did in 2024.
There are nine policy categories in the environmental justice element including food, air quality, pollution, physical activity, and sanitation. All feature steps for increasing civic engagement, county staff said.
“My heart aches a little bit about the agenda change and that people who came weren’t able to participate,” 3rd District Supervisor Joan Hartmann said. “I do think that although they’re asking for more outreach, I think the time has come where we really need to adopt this element. I see tremendous opportunity with the implementation plan with Appendix A to engage stakeholders.”
Similarly, 2nd District Supervisor Laura Capps said she regretted that members of United Domestic Workers weren’t able to share their voices and said she’d like to hear their thoughts.
“The doing is always more important to me than the planning,” Capps said. “The doing is really important to really actually improve people’s lives, and that’s what we’re here to do.”
Though classified under the new title of an environmental justice element, 5th District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino explained that the county hasn’t been ignoring such concerns. For example, the county has the cleanest air it’s had in the past 50 years according to the Air Pollution Control District, he said.
“But we continue to talk about these things like none of these things are being addressed when we’re spending millions of dollars tackling all these things,” Lavagnino said. “Now it’s in a different format, so now we call it the environmental justice element. But we’re doing a lot of these things.”
This article appears in March 19 – March 26, 2026.