I’ll make my stand here: the section of Sunset Avenue where it meets LK Wood and the various Highway 101 on- and off-ramps is the worst intersection in Arcata. By far. Though docile at midday, during the morning and evening rush hours it’s a bear trap. Taking a left through the crush of oncoming traffic from where the Highway 101 northbound off-ramp meets Sunset is a task that eats up precious minutes of my time every day when I make my return from LoCO HQ. I’d damn the thing if I had Powers of that sort. 

Anyway, I was excited (as excited as one can be for new infrastructure) when I heard a while ago that a project was in the works to rectify this situation: the city of Arcata and Caltrans were going to build two large roundabouts and cure this sick puppy. Construction was set to begin this year. 

As anyone whose paths are forced to intersect with that intersection could tell you, that has not come to pass. City engineer Netra Khatri told the Outpost today that’s been pushed back to June 2027; the project will likely be complete during fall 2028. Some “design adjustments” were made, Khatri said, and if they change one thing in a complicated project like this, the fallout trickles down and they have to change a bunch of things. The whole timeline was delayed several months, but the design plans will likely be completed by the end of the year.

The project will add two landscaped roundabouts to Sunset Avenue, plus several bike paths, sidewalks, and two bus stops.

Khatri said that Arcata had received all of the funding it’ll need to build the project: $14.9 million from a US Department of Transportation RAISE grant, $2.5 million from Cal Poly Humboldt, and $1.25 million from Caltrans. The city will kick in somewhere around $200,000 from Measure G funds. 

It’s difficult to estimate exactly how much it’ll cost, Khatri said. They have a few bids from developers coming in under-budget, but, as he gently put it, “the world economy is changing.”

“It’s hard to guess the cost of pavement in 2027 and ‘28,” Khatri said. “‘What would that be?’ It’s hard to predict anything at this point. It’s like Covid times. But, you know, I think we’re optimistic, and we have the money, and if we have to cut something, we’ll cut. If not, we’ll just do what we have to do, and we’ll make it happen.”

One exciting side-effect of Proposition 50, which gerrymandered California’s Congressional districts in order to boost the number of Democrats we send to Congress, is that candidates have to try again, at least a little bit. Maximizing the number of Democrat safe seats means divvying up former Republican safe seats, and burying those constituents here and there in districts belonging to their competitors.

Which means that the Second Congressional District, to which Humboldt belongs, is actually going to be just a bit more Republican than it used to be. To our south and east, the First Congressional District, formerly represented by the late Doug LaMalfa, will essentially be dismantled and given to Santa Rosa, making it also a safe D but with a pretty good population of Rs.

So candidates want to reach out to these new constituencies, even if those constituencies aren’t going to vote for them. And it turns out that this means the return of an old form of campaigning that Humboldters have probably mostly forgotten about — the slick, highly produced, 30-second TV ad.

Let’s check out what’s on offer!

Second Congressional District

JARED HUFFMAN

Population-wise, the new Second Congressional District is essentially Marin County, Humboldt County and Shasta County, with a long thin tendril of the North Coast connecting them. 

So how do you, as incumbent Jared Huffman, make a pitch that will resonate with all three polities? Put yourself in a kayak and paddle around! Go fly fishing!

Also, while we’re at it, let’s cut back a little bit — though not entirely — on our usage of the word “environment,” and instead foreground concepts like “scenery” and “natural heritage.”

OTHERS

As best we can tell, no one else in the race has produced a slick, highly produced 30-second TV ad. That includes Redding prog-Dem Rose Penelope Yee, independent Nicolette Hahn Niman and several Republicans.

First Congressional District

The sprawling new First Congressional District is a bit outside the Outpost wheelhouse, though it does include Willits and Ukiah and other areas of northeastern Mendocino County. But it’s of interest because one of the candidates is Mike McGuire, who has served Humboldt in the state Legislature for the last 12 years, so let’s check it out.

Note: This is kind of three races in one. There’ll be a special election on June 2 to fill out the last few months of LaMalfa’s term, which will run concurrently with the regular primary election for the term after that. The former takes place in the old First District and the latter in the new First District. The main candidates are the same. It’s complicated!

MIKE MCGUIRE

McGuire comes across as more assertively blue than Huffman does in his ad, but he seems to stick to topics that he thinks will be more universally popular than not: fighting for rural hospitals, sticking up for Planned Parenthood, funding wildfire response.

He even vows to stand up to Trump! It’ll be curious to see how this plays out in the special election, when the electorate will still be majority red.

JAMES GALLAGHER

This Sutter County Republican — a current member of the state Assembly — isn’t afraid to go full oppo.

Gallagher says: Oh, you like Mike, do you? Well, watch this:

How about now, huh? Still like Mike?

But like both Huffman and McGuire, above, Gallagher is also making the positive case for himself, and he’s doing so in a way that offers at least a token hand-across-the-aisle to the formerly foreign, across-the-hill voters he seeks to persuade.

We’re talking about farming? Show a picture of grape vines. Cutting gas taxes? Sticking it to PG&E? We can all get behind that, right?

AUDREY DENNEY

Has Mike McGuire stopped Trump? 

He has not. Trump is still there, despite Mike.

That’s one reason why First Districters might want to take a look at this Chico Democrat, who must somehow penetrate the consciousness of voters far, far away in Sonoma County — McGuire country, the district’s main population base.

All videos courtesy of Destinee Bogue.

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A sea lion has taken a trek up the Klamath and Trinity rivers to damn near Willow Creek. The pinniped was spotted by river-goers Friday twirling in fresh water at least 50 miles from the ocean.

Experts say such a journey is rarely seen, but does happen every once in a while.

In a video posted to social media, the sea lion was spotted gliding through the water near Devil’s Elbow, a popular swimming hole just north of Willow Creek.

Professor Dawn Goley, director of Cal Poly Humboldt’s Marine Mammal Education and Research Program, identified the pinniped as a Steller sea lion, in an email to the Outpost.

“They typically stay in oceans, sometimes in river mouths, but rarely travel this far upstream,” she said.

She said sea lions will follow food, and believes the creature is looking for fish upriver.

“It can’t sustain itself in freshwater for long periods of time, though, so I suspect it will travel out on its own soon,” she noted.

The sea lion traveled far to reach the area, likely starting from the mouth of the Klamath and swimming into the Trinity at the confluence. 

Sea lions are known to travel long distances up rivers occasionally, including one population that swims well over 100 miles up the Columbia River to fish.

But locally, it’s not something seen often.

“Every handful of years it’ll happen,” said Justin Alvarez, deputy director of the Hoopa Valley Tribe’s fisheries department. 

Occasionally harbor seals will make their way to tribal land, but more frequently, if a pinniped comes all the way up river, it’s a sea lion, he said.

He recalled a sea lion being spotted at Tish Tang several years ago, but said the individual spotted Friday is the farthest he’s known one to come upriver.

Alvarez said the sea lion could be looking for lamprey or salmonids to snack on, though noted there’s not many spring salmon right now.

“They’re also mammals and curious, and sometimes they just want to get an edge and explore,” he added. There’s some concern locally the sea lion could get stuck in gill nets or steal a fish.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the sea lion looks to them to be a juvenile, about 2-4 years old.

“This is unusual for Stellers, and may be simply a young animal exploring potential habitat. The animals seen on the Columbia River, for example, are usually older and much larger,” wrote Michael Milstein, a spokesperson for NOAA Fisheries’ West Coast Regional Office, in an email.

Alvarez encouraged people to keep their distance as sea lions are federally protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, which makes it illegal to harass, capture or kill seals.

NOAA recommends staying at least 50 yards away from sea lions, though this may prove difficult if one’s poached your river spot.

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Press release from the Fortuna Police Department:

On May 14, 2026 at approximately 1:43 AM, an Officer with the Fortuna Police Department attempted a traffic stop on a silver Mercedes sedan around the 2600 block of Kenmar Road for a vehicle code violation. The vehicle failed to yield to the officer’s signal and a short vehicle pursuit was initiated. The vehicle came to an abrupt stop, and the driver was safely taken into custody. Upon taking the male driver into custody, Officers removed a concealed handgun from his waistband. The driver was identified to be a 16-year-old male juvenile.

The juvenile driver was arrested and booked into the Humboldt County Juvenile Hall for carrying a concealed weapon on his person, possessing a firearm with an altered, removed, or obliterated serial number, being a minor in possession of a handgun, vehicle evading, and being unlicensed.

The Fortuna Police Department remains committed to public safety and transparency. Any questions related to this release can be directed to Lieutenant, Jason Kadle at (707) 725-7550.

Press release from the Eureka Police Department:

On May 13th, 2026, at approximately 11:30 a.m., an Officer with the Eureka Police Department was patrolling the 3300 block of Glen Street for an unrelated investigation when the Officer observed a male subject quickly leaving a nearby park area. When the Officer attempted to contact the subject, the male rapidly walked away toward a nearby residence and jumped over a fence into the yard.

Officers then observed the male jump back over the fence and flee on foot when Officers again attempted contact. After a brief pursuit, Officers detained the subject nearby without further incident. The subject was identified as Christopher Smith, 42 years old of Eureka. During the pursuit Officers located a backpack containing burglary tools that was discarded by Smith.

Smith was arrested for felony possession of methamphetamine, violation of probation terms, possession of burglary tools, and resisting arrest.

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Seven years ago, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law to bring safe and affordable drinking water to the state’s most disadvantaged communities.

Last week, Newsom celebrated the program’s accomplishments.

“Over 1 million people that didn’t have access to clean, safe drinking water today have access to clean, safe drinking water,” Newsom told a conference room filled with California’s water leaders, to a round of applause.

“I’m not saying that to impress you, but to impress upon you real progress. A lot more work to be done.”

But that work could lose critical funding as the Newsom administration overhauls its source: California’s carbon market. The changes to the program’s funding priorities and revenue threaten efforts to bring clean drinking water to schools, homes and communities across California.

“If that funding goes away,” said Sherry Hunter, who has long battled the arsenic leaching into the water supply in the historic Tulare County town of Allensworth, “Oh my god, I can’t even imagine.”

Climate money for clean water

A critical piece of California’s clean water funding is linked to the state’s carbon market, which sets a declining cap on greenhouse gas emissions that oil refineries, power plants and manufacturers can meet by buying and trading carbon credits.

Lawmakers tap this fund for environmental efforts, like combatting unsafe drinking water in rural communities.

In 2019, Newsom signed a law that gave rise to the Safe and Affordable Funding for Equity and Resilience, or SAFER, drinking water program at the State Water Resources Control Board. The law called for funding it with $130 million a year from carbon market revenues through 2030.

It can be a risky source of funding, subject to the rise and fall of credit auctions. But the law came with a promise: When the proceeds fell flat, the state’s general fund would make up the rest.

This isn’t the only pot of money that California draws on for its safe drinking water efforts, but it’s the most versatile, paying for emergency and other types of assistance that bonds and more restrictive funding can’t.

Cases of water Sherry Hunter collects in her home in Allensworth on Sept.4, 2024. The community of Allensworth has been dealing with an ongoing issue of arsenic leaking into its wells, one of which consistently exceeds state health limits. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local

When Newsom and California lawmakers don’t budget enough to provide bottled water for households and schools with dry or dangerous taps, this fund covers the costs.

When low-income communities can’t pay for the technical expertise to manage their water systems or compete for grants needed to drill new wells and connect to safer water, the safe and affordable drinking water fund can help bridge that gap.

Thousands of households and dozens of schools rely on this money for emergency supplies — like Hope Elementary School in Porterville, where the taps flow with elevated levels of nitrate. The contaminant is linked to cancers, pregnancy complications and a life-threatening condition in infants known as “blue baby syndrome” when consumed in high enough quantities.

More than $83,000 has been awarded from the fund since 2021 to supply the school with bottled water and roughly $110,000 for technical assistance as the school district works to connect to safer supplies, according to the water board.

The funding lets school officials put their budget to work in the classroom.

“Thank goodness,” said Melanie Matta, the school district’s superintendent and principal. About three-quarters of the students are socioeconomically disadvantaged, Matta said. “That water can get expensive, right? We’re already running on a pretty tight budget.”

Matta has a message for Newsom: She’d like him to tour her school, and witness why this money is so important.

“When you meet our kids and walk our small school community, you’ll see exactly why this fight matters and why this funding must be protected,” Matta said in an email. “Safe water is not a gift. It’s a promise. And we need your help to keep that promise.”

‘There’s nothing left’

The cuts began in September, when Newsom and lawmakers struck a deal to reauthorize the state’s carbon market after weeks of tense and chaotic negotiations — renaming it “cap and invest.”

The new laws deprioritized funding lawmakers had promised to safe drinking water, clean air, fire resilience, affordable housing and other programs — shifting their priority behind $1 billion for high-speed rail and $1 billion for lawmakers to direct through the budget.

The laws removed the 2030 expiration for the safe and affordable drinking water program. But they also dropped the original promise to make up any funding shortfalls from the carbon market — putting $100 million at risk through 2030, according to a Department of Finance forecast in January.

Assemblymember James Gallagher, a Republican from Chico, called the new priority system “unfortunate” and “misplaced” at a budget subcommittee hearing in March.

“If you ask these Central Valley communities, these rural communities, ‘What would you prefer? Would you want safe drinking water coming out of your faucet, or do you want a high-speed rail in your community?’” he said. “I’m pretty sure I know the answer.”

Now, climate regulators on the California Air Resources Board — chaired by Newsom appointee Lauren Sanchez — are proposing to overhaul the carbon market in ways that could cut revenues in half.

If adopted, the changes could leave no funding at all for safe drinking water and other third-tier programs as soon as the 2027–28 fiscal year, according to legislative analyst Helen Kerstein — though, Kerstein added, the forecasts are uncertain.

Sanchez, who was Newsom’s top climate advisor before leading the air board, defended the staff proposal at a Senate oversight hearing last week.

“Do you believe the Legislature intended to eliminate funding for affordable housing, transit, drinking water, wildfire prevention and clean air programs with the reauthorization?” Sen. Eloise Gómez Reyes, a Democrat from San Bernardino and chair of a Senate budget subcommittee, asked Sanchez.

Sanchez said the staff proposal didn’t specifically call for defunding those programs.

“Let me stop you for a moment. That will be the effect,” Reyes said. “There’s nothing left … and those are the most important programs that have served the community.”

Newsom deflected, pointing to the Legislature.

“Any suggestion that California is ‘trading away’ clean drinking water ignores both the current budget proposal, and the Legislature’s ongoing role in funding these priorities,” Martinez said in an emailed statement. Martinez hinted at, but did not specify, what’s coming in Newsom’s May budget revision Thursday.

‘Many of them were left behind’

Roughly 613,000 people still rely on water systems that fail to meet state requirements for safe and reliable drinking water. Regulators at the state water board deem another 661 water systems serving nearly 2 million people “at risk” of failure.

Still, almost one million more people have safe drinking water than in 2019 — which state water officials attribute to the safe drinking water program and its unique, flexible pot of money.

“When we were relying on the community to spend its own time and money to get ready, many of them got left behind,” said Darrin Polhemus, who leads the state water board’s Division of Drinking Water. “The safe drinking water fund has allowed us to prepare communities to do long-term projects, faster.”

The program, which draws from other state and federal funding sources, has awarded more than $1.8 billion in grants for disadvantaged communities. It’s helped around 320 water systems serving 3.3 million people come off the state’s failing list, even as other, at-risk suppliers stumble onto it.

The safe and affordable drinking water fund also has helped pay for emergency repairs, technical assistance, bottled water supplies and even some construction costs in communities from San Bernardino to Tulare, Monterey and Sutter counties — all contending with aging and contaminated water systems.

“We could not have done it without them,” said Sherry Hunter in Allensworth, which started work on a new well and storage tank in January to bring clean water to a town struggling with arsenic and other water problems for over a century.

“There’s a lot of other smaller disadvantaged communities that depend on them as well,” Hunter said.

The costs for fixing these water systems and household wells could hit billions of dollars in the coming years, according to a 2024 water board analysis. And Polhemus said the challenge will grow — even as funding shrinks — as water suppliers face new limits on contaminants like hexavalent chromium.

“If we’ve started and committed to a project, we’ve got the funding reserve to see it through,” Polhemus said. “It’s just, we won’t be starting new projects.”

Federal money is also running out. A Biden-era funding boost ends this year, slashing another, more restrictive fund for drinking water infrastructure projects from hundreds of millions of dollars to tens of millions, according to federal and water board data. Congressional earmarks could eat into what remains.

Tami McVay, emergency services director for the nonprofit Self-Help Enterprises, which connects rural communities to affordable housing and safe drinking water, is worried.

Her program provides bottled water to more than 3,000 households in the San Joaquin Valley, and trucks water to refill storage tanks at roughly 700 more. Her team helps replace domestic wells and test their water. And it relies on state funding.

Seeing the potential cuts, she said, “it definitely made our mouths drop a little.”

Polhemus said he understands communities are nervous.

“We’re going to work with the funds we’re given to continue the program as best we can, because we know the need still exists,” he said. “The question of how much of it exists, of course, comes out of our hands and into the political arena.”

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California just gave plastic producers until 2032 to make all their packaging recyclable or compostable — the most ambitious deadline in the country. Advocates say it doesn’t go far enough. Producers say it goes too far. At least one of them is threatening to sue.

The sweeping regulations, finalized at the start of the month, put producers in a bind that has no obvious solution. Plastic clamshell containers, for instance, protect berries from being crushed and keep them fresher, longer until they reach a refrigerator. Plastic producers say there’s simply no substitute — yet under the new rules, they’ll have to find one.

Last week, two environmental groups — the Natural Resources Defense Council and Californians Against Waste — said they plan to take California to court. Their argument: the state’s rules actually break the law by allowing recycling methods that create a lot of toxic waste, and by letting some plastics slip through the rules entirely. On the other side, plastic manufacturers say the rules go too far and will make products more expensive for shoppers.

Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat from coastal Los Angeles County who authored the plastic waste law, said the program still “massively moves the needle on this really major problem” — even if the process was messy. “This was the product of a compromise, and it was not perfect, and everybody walked away from the table, you know, unhappy about various aspects,” Allen said.

“California is the United States, but 30 years in the future,” said Joe Árvai, director of the University of Southern California’s Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies. “What’s happening now is emblematic of trends that we are seeing worldwide … and the U.S. needs to adapt in the way that those countries are adapting in order to remain globally competitive.”

Less plastic, more recycling

For decades, the burden of reducing, reusing and recycling plastic waste has fallen on consumers. Once a consumer buys a product, they decide what happens to it — whether it ends up in the garbage can or the recycling blue bin — and their tax dollars fund recycling systems we have today.

In 2022, California’s landmark Senate Bill 54, the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, shifted that responsibility to businesses. The regulations outline what materials are covered by the law and who counts as a “producer” of plastic waste.

The new regulations are a huge milestone, said Anja Brandon, director of U.S. plastics policy for the Ocean Conservancy. “There’s plenty more steps on this journey, but I’m just really excited that we are going to start making real progress,” she said.

The law applies to plastic food service ware and almost all single-use packaging — from the plastic wrap around large pallets of products shipped to retailers to a tube of toothpaste and the cardboard box around it.

Our broken recycling system

Most of the plastic packaging Californians throw away isn’t recycled — and that’s not your fault as a consumer.For decades, the revolving green arrows symbol has urged consumers tp do a better job of reducing, reusing and recycling. But the system itself started out broken, and got worse.

When people toss items into recycling bins, workers at recycling centers sort through them. Contaminated items — like a peanut butter tub with residue still inside — go straight to the landfill. Manufacturers buy clean, valuable materials like water bottles and detergent tubs and turn them into new products.

But a slew of other trash isn’t valuable enough to sell. It ends up in landfills, too.

In 2021, the plastic recycling rate was only 6% nationwide, according to a report by the advocacy group Beyond Plastics. That’s down from 8% in 2018, partly because China and other countries that used to buy our trash have stopped doing so. In California, most plastic packaging types are recycled at strikingly low rates, according to a 2025 CalRecycle report: Even milk jugs and detergent bottles, among the most commonly recycled plastics, reached only 19%, while most others came in at single digits or below.

To carry out the law, the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery appointed the Circular Action Alliance, a nonprofit that helps states carry out extended producer responsibility mandates, as the organizing body for producers. The alliance is responsible for coming up with a plan to meet the law’s goals.

Producers — defined as companies that make more than $1 million in sales and produce products packaged in plastic or own brands under which those products are sold — must join the organization and pay fees to fund waste management. They can meet the law’s requirements by using less plastic, finding alternative materials, or investing in recycling infrastructure.

“The biggest challenge is the scale and coordination required to modernize a complex recycling system across a state as large and diverse as California,” said Sheila Estaniel, a spokesperson for the Circular Action Alliance, in an email.

California’s requirement that businesses reduce single-use plastic altogether makes it one of the strongest plastic waste laws in the country. It also goes further than other similar laws because it requires plastic producers to pay $5 billion over a decade to address the environmental damage their products have caused to communities — though the state doesn’t expect to start distributing those funds until 2027 at the earliest.

Watered down rules

The plastic waste rules have had a rocky road to implementation.

In 2024, CalRecycle developed a first draft of regulations detailing what plastic the law covers and what producers must do. The draft expired before CalRecycle finalized it. In 2025, Gov. Gavin Newsom directed regulators to rewrite the rules — a move that some advocates say say food and agriculture lobbyists pushed for.

The result was a second draft that carved out a broad exclusion for plastics used for food and agriculture purposes, covering products under the jurisdiction of the FDA and USDA, such as packaging for fresh produce and supplements. Advocates said the exclusion gutted the law.

“Governor Newsom was clear when he asked CalRecycle to restart these regulations that they should work to minimize costs for small businesses and families — while ensuring California’s bold recycling law can achieve the critical goal of cutting plastic pollution,” said Anthony Martinez, a spokesperson for the governor. “That’s exactly what these draft regulations do.”

CalRecycle submitted that draft to the Office of Administrative Law in August 2025, but withdrew it to make changes that narrowed that exclusion. Regulators ultimately excluded only plastic that federal law requires for food safety — walking back a broader carve-out that advocates said would have gutted the law.

Advocates gear up to sue

Not all plastics follow the same rules — and advocates object to the state’s two-track system.

Some materials with unique technical challenges can apply for exemptions, but must meet specific criteria to qualify.

Others, like plastic that federal law requires for food safety, escape the rules entirely once producers complete an application to CalRecycle — no timeline, no obligations.

“In practice, this allows exclusions to remain in effect …even for notices that ultimately fail — creating strong incentives to submit weak or legally unsupported claims simply to delay (and effectively filibuster) compliance,” wrote Tony Hackett, a policy associate for Californians Against Waste in a public comment letter to the department.

Advocates raise a second concern: the regulations allow certain waste polluting technologies — ones the law specifically excluded because they generate significant quantities of hazardous waste — to count as recycling, as long as they have a hazardous waste permit.

These technologies include chemical recycling processes that the oil industry has long promoted as a solution to plastic pollution — a claim California’s attorney general says is deliberately misleading. Rob Bonta has sued ExxonMobil alleging the company misled the public about recycling’s potential to address the plastic crisis.

“These regulations ignore explicit limits on recycling technologies and create permanent escape hatches the law never authorized,” said Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for Californians Against Waste, in a statement.

Rhonalyn Cabello, a CalRecycle spokesperson, said the agency does not comment on pending or potential litigation.

Sen. Allen agreed the regulations fall short.

“We feel that the regulations as presented don’t maintain some of the core agreements that were made in the passage of the bill,” he said. When there’s too many exclusions, he said, companies are “basically forcing everybody else to pay and getting away scot free.”

Set up to fail?

Businesses claim they want to reduce plastic waste but feel trapped by conflicting state regulations and a lack of viable packaging alternatives.

The tension starts with labeling. The state’s accurate recycling labels law, Senate Bill 343, prohibits businesses from using the chasing arrows symbol to indicate recyclability unless certain criteria are met. Advocates say the restriction is necessary to avoid confusion. But businesses say it means consumers are less likely to recycle products that could be recyclable.

“If we lose the right to use (recycling labels on) dairy cartons, our members are going to have to expand their plastic use, because that is the only other packaging type that can take a shelf stable product,” said Katie Davey, executive director of the Dairy Institute of California.

As investments from producers flow to cities and counties under the law, Cabello said, more materials may eventually meet the labeling criteria.

Beyond labeling, businesses say workable alternatives to plastic simply don’t exist yet — and that getting there will be costly. Investments needed to meet the law’s first goal alone — a 25% reduction in single-use plastic by 2032 — could cost up to $15.4 billion, according to CalRecycle estimates.

Kevin Kelly, the chief executive of Emerald Packaging, sells film plastic packaging to farmers, who use the plastic to bag items like salads and baby carrots. Paper packaging that could replicate plastic’s ability to regulate oxygen and carbon dioxide levels — keeping produce fresh — is still in early development, he said, and mass production is decades away.

“You have to build tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure to actually produce something at the level that would be needed to replace plastics,” Kelly said.

Dairy illustrates the same problem. Alternatives to plastic milk packaging include refrigerated gable-top cartons, shelf-stable cartons, and glass. Each comes with tradeoffs. Glass is heavier — meaning fewer units per shipment — and clear glass exposes fresh milk to light that can degrade it. Switching packaging lines entirely would cost producers about $40 million for a single mid-size line, according to the Dairy Institute — a cost they would pass on to consumers.

“We’re deeply concerned because we know that food costs are going to increase and products are going to come off the market because there literally is not a packaging solution within the required timeframe,” Davey said.

But USC’s Joe Árvai said producer complaints are really about the pace of change, not whether compliant packaging is possible at all.

“Whether they like it or not, these changes are coming,” he said. “In the end, there are going to be players in the industry that are going to be better able to respond, and they will be better indemnified against the shocks than their partners and competitors.”

What happens next

The next major test comes in June, when the Circular Action Alliance must submit its plan to CalRecycle outlining how producers will meet the law’s goals.

Oregon, which passed a similar law and is also facing an industry legal challenge, offers a possible model. There, grant funding is already flowing to expand reuse and refill infrastructure — helping businesses and schools replace single-use plastic products and improve recycling access.

“Despite the fact that there’s a lawsuit in Oregon, money is moving out the door,” said the Ocean Conservancy’s Anja Brandon. She said groups like hers will closely watch the June plan.

“We’ll all be waiting with bated breath” to see how producers are interpreting this and what pathways they’re laying out, she said.

Meanwhile, advocates will be watching closely as CalRecycle begins to make decisions about who qualifies for exclusions and exemptions. The Natural Resources Defense Council is waiting for CalRecycle to post additional documents before filing its lawsuit.

“If we let this thing get derailed and turned into a Swiss cheese of exemptions and non‑compliance, it will really harm our global progress on this issue,” Allen said.