[teaearlgraycold]

I 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.

[MikeTheGreat]

> No automotive paint shops

Wait, hold on - I watched all the seasons of "Rust To Riches" on Netflix, about a small shop that flips cars.

They routinely painted cars.

They'd paint in this sealed-up room/garage thingee, the guy would wear and industrial-grade mask, and the camera would slide past as he expertly painted the car. The 30 second montages looked awesome!

That show took place in Temecula, California. So there's no way that site is accurate.

And, more to the point, if they want to show that they are accurate they should be linking to the rules & regulations that actually prohibit these things instead of just making a claim & calling it a day.

[chipsa]

It’s not claiming: you can’t have an automotive paint shop. It’s claiming you can’t start a new paint shop. Specifically, if you don’t have one for your car manufacturing line already, you can’t set one up. Wikipedia shows 13 pages for auto plants in CA. Most of them have the verb “was” in the opening sentence. There are two current plants: Tesla Fremont and Toyota California. Both of these plants are over 50 years old, and only one of them produces actual cars instead of parts.

[nayroclade]

Firstly, an auto paint shop is not the same as an auto manufacturing plant.

Secondly, it says you can't permit a new auto paint shop in CA, but it specifically mentions the Bay Area AQMD as the reason. But, as its name implies, the Bay Area AQMD only regulates within the San Francisco Bay Area. It is only one of 35 air districts in California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_air_distric...

So, it is impossible to permit a new auto paint shop in all of these districts, or just the bay area? Because those are very different. It also labels starting a new paint shop as "impossible", but then says it's "nearly impossible". So is it actually impossible, or just nearly impossible?

[inigyou]

It's claiming you can't get a permit to release VOCs into the air, but the GP comment describes a setup that apparently is designed to paint cars while preventing VOCs getting released into the air, so that you can still paint cars in California.

[_2d30]

The website is extremely clear about this being about _new_ automotive paint shops, so nothing you said here refutes the website.

[avs733]

He doesn’t need to refute it he just needs to offer an alternate claim.

The site provides no citations, no evidence, so there’s no need to defend the count argument or honestly even make it.

The sit isn’t just false, it is flat out disrespectful to all the workers, engineers, founders, and everyone else involved in the industries he says don’t exist that actually do exist. The site is basically “I think this is hard so no one else could possibly do it”.

[cucumber3732842]

They're likely falling under some "we aren't selling car painting as a service or main part of our business, we're painting our own cars as a small ancillary part of our real business" exemption.

[mothballed]

Sounds like the "llantera" model you see out west. There's about 10x the number of them that would actually be needed just to change tires.

[bsder]

> I don't know anything about that industry but there has to be a way to paint cars in a safe way, right??

There are. They just cost more and take more time.

> But lumping that in with semiconductor fabs, which are extremely toxic

People say this all the time, but semiconductor fabs simply aren't very toxic compared to just about every other industrial manufacturing process. Mostly this is because everything is sealed and sealed and sealed some more.

Yes, they handle stuff like arsenic gas (arsine AsH3), but they really try to reclaim it all. The semiconductor waste stream is often purer than most industrial inputs. Yeah, old plants would just dump crap into the environment. However, for modern semiconductor facilities, it is generally more economic to reprocess your waste than try to purify from primary sources.

Now, PCB manufacturing, on the other hand, is quite terrible or at least it used to be. I don't know if people have sealed and automated that yet.

[ashdksnndck]

I assume you use semiconductors yourself, since you are posting here. But you want their manufacture to be banned in your state.

So the right thing is to outsource the dirty jobs to countries that can’t afford to be picky?

Wouldn’t it be better for the world if we used our wealth to develop methods of safe semiconductor manufacturing with low environmental impact, and proudly built those facilities in California?

[WD-42]

Well that's the whole problem isn't it?

It's not like the laws are simply "you can't make semiconductors here". The laws ban the harmful externalities of the process. The companies that want to make semiconductors don't want to find a way to make the processes less harmful: it's cheaper and easier to just go somewhere where they can pollute instead.

[ashdksnndck]

In many cases, California’s environmental regulations don’t make an earnest attempt to permit safe ways to do things.

[WD-42]

And in all cases, those industries make no earnest attempt to develop safe ways to do things instead of simply doing it where it doesn't matter.

[CamperBob2]

[Citation needed]

[saghm]

A sibling comment a few levels up provided it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47160514

[_DeadFred_]

When an industry leaves this many superfund sites in an area, that industry can expect some regulatory blowback from that area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_Cal...

https://www.epa.gov/superfund/search-superfund-sites-where-y...

[ixtli]

It actually makes me wanna move to CA.

[chrismcb]

California, by density, is that highly populated. I didn't really like the idea is "hey we need to build something that uses a toxic process, by just don't build it here. Build it somewhere else." Unless that somewhere else is in outer space.

[amluto]

I would imagine a paint booth with negative pressure and particle and carbon filters on the exhaust would work fine.

I go by a paint shop every now and then. It’s not nearly as smelly as a quite of a few of the nearby restaurants.