Energy & Environment
Consumer Watchdog monitors California’s gas, electric, and oil companies, including municipal and investor-owned utilities, to protect ratepayers, consumers and the environment. We police the recycling industry to make sure consumers get their bottle deposits back, recycling is deposed of appropriately, and programs are effective.
Our nonprofit worked decades ago to fight and rollback California’s electric deregulation debacle, including stopping a ratepayer bailout in the legislature and getting ratepayers’ money back. We fight today to prevent Californians from being duped again by similar utility and energy industry scams.
In recent years, Consumer Watchdog established the PUC Papers to document the players and their roles in the corruption scandal that has plagued California’s Public Utilities Commission, or PUC. The searchable database of more than 100,000 documents is a public resource for researchers, journalists and activists.
Consumer Watchdog has also fought price gouging by oil companies with extensive research and reporting on their price and supply manipulations. We have policed the California’s regulator of toxics and toxics industry, creating change in oversight and spurring cleanup of toxic sites. This includes a pending legal case against Boeing for cleanup of the Santa Susana nuclear waste site outside Los Angeles.
Focus Areas:
Newsom Freezes New Fracking Permits In California & Slows Rate of Oil Well Approvals Since Summer; 2019 State Oil Well Permits Still Outpace 2018
Los Angeles, CA—Since mid-July, state regulators have not issued a new permit for fracking or acidizing in California and have slowed the overall rate of permitting oil wells. Nonetheless, state regulators have granted oil permits at a pace that is 8.8% greater in the first ten months of 2019 than in the same period last year under Governor Jerry Brown, Consumer Watchdog and FracTracker Alliance said today based on an analysis of state data.
Bill To Overhaul Bottle Deposit System Passes Out Of Senate Committee
Los Angeles, CA — Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court said in testimony today before the Senate Environmental Quality Committee on bottle deposit reform legislation, SB 372, that it is time for the beverage industry to take responsibility for recycling the empties that their beverages leave behind, as is done in all other successful bottle deposit programs here and around the world.
Consumer Watchdog Warns Of Bottle Deposit System Collapse Without Major Reform
Los Angeles, CA — Consumer Watchdog reported today that a major overhaul of the state’s once-vaunted bottle deposit system is needed to make drink makers responsible for refunding deposits or consumers will continue to lose a greater share of the roughly $1.5 billion a year they pay in nickel and dime deposits. Redemption centers that redeem bottle and can deposits are closing in the face of economic hardship.
Consumer Watchdog Applauds CalRecycle’s $3.6 Million Fine Against CVS For Failing To Redeem Bottle Deposits
Says Big Win For Consumers Must Be Followed With Continued Enforcement
Los Angeles, CA -- After years of paltry enforcement of California’s 1986 bottle deposit law against stores selling beverages that charge bottle deposits but don’t return them, CalRecycle signaled today that it means business with a $3.6 million fine against CVS stores, Consumer Watchdog said today.
