Stop the Federal Takeover of California’s Coast
The Issue
Protect California's Coast: Demand that Elected Leaders Resist the Federal Override of Our Coastal Authority
On August 10, 2026, in a hotel ballroom in Santa Monica, the federal government will hold a public hearing on whether California should keep its coastal management program. The subject is the program itself, the authority that California voters created in 1972. Written comments close on August 22. This petition spent two years warning that a federal takeover of our coastal authority was coming, and the takeover now has a date and a docket number.
Look at the order in which this happened.
The day before the Coastal Commission voted 9 to 0 to reject SpaceX's launch expansion at Vandenberg, a vote joined by appointees of both parties, the White House signed Executive Order 14335. The order directed the Commerce Department to evaluate whether state coastal authority impedes spaceport development.
**October 10, 2025.** The Air Force overrode the Commission's vote, authorized 100 launches a year, and removed the environmental justice analysis from the final review.
**February 2, 2026.** A Falcon 9 out of Vandenberg suffered its fourth upper stage failure in nineteen months and reentered uncontrolled. The FAA opened an investigation and closed it in five days.
**April 2026.** SpaceX's retaliation lawsuit against the Commission ended in a settlement. The Commission apologized and agreed that it will never again require a coastal permit for Falcon operations at two of the base's launch complexes. In perpetuity is the phrase the agreement uses.
**Spring 2026.** Commerce finished the evaluation the executive order called for. It found no significant problems in Florida, Texas, or Virginia. It found repeated concerns with California, the one state that voted no.
**June 26, 2026.** At Commerce's direction, NOAA opened a formal performance review of California's entire coastal program, under a statute that lets Washington suspend the Coastal Commission's funding for up to three years. NOAA ran a routine review of the same program in 2024 and found it performing as intended.
As of late July, no lawsuit has been filed against any of it, by the Attorney General or by anyone else.
**What the booms are doing**
Shana in Ojai measured a sonic boom at 114 decibels outside her home, louder than a chainsaw held at arm's length, and it set off car alarms down her street. Jean in Santa Barbara was jolted awake at 5 AM and crouched in the earthquake triangle of safety beside her desk before she realized the shaking came from a Falcon 9 landing. Heath and his family now have to disclose the booms when they sell their house. I created this petition and I live in Ojai. A boom split the tape seal between two pieces of drywall in my dining room ceiling, I repaired it, and a later series of launches opened it again.
Vandenberg passed its fiftieth launch of 2026 in July. The base is on pace to pass eighty this year, and its leadership has said it hopes to reach one hundred, the full number the override authorized. More than 1,600 people from Lompoc to Ojai have signed this petition and described the same things: shaking houses, frightened kids and animals, ruined sleep. There is still no claims process for any of it, no fund, and no number to call.
**What the government's own scientists found**
The Air Force review that was supposed to study these impacts relied on computer models. It interviewed no residents and surveyed no households. It acknowledged that launches can damage structures at certain overpressure levels, then created no way to address that damage.
The models have since failed the one field test they got. In August 2024 the Space Force reported to federal fisheries regulators that sonic booms were landing on harbor seal rookeries at Carpinteria and Point Mugu, outside the footprint the models had drawn. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service warned that the modeling may underpredict the impacted region, found far more disturbance to sea otters and nesting snowy plovers than the Air Force predicted, and documented dead seal pups and damaged plover eggs after launches. The federal authorization to harass 11,135 harbor seals a year stayed exactly where it was. A model that could not locate a boom's effect on seals lying on mapped, monitored beaches is a poor basis for claims about what is happening inside anyone's house, or beneath the surface of the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary next door, where no one has studied these booms at all. The tribal consultation for the last expansion was closed before the Chumash could finish a site visit.
**The new launch pad**
In December 2025 the Space Force solicited bids for a pad at SLC-14 built for super heavy rockets, and nearly everyone assumed Starship would get it. Congressman Carbajal sent the Air Force seven questions in January, including whether anyone has modeled what a super heavy sonic boom does as it travels south over these communities, and gave the Air Force thirty days to answer. No answers have been made public. On April 14 the Space Force awarded the pad to Blue Origin for its 320-foot New Glenn rocket, with a first launch expected around 2028. Starship, which lost its booster on both of its test flights this year and has destroyed two vehicles on the ground with the same unresolved tank failure, did not win.
The pad is still coming, though. New Glenn will fly the same southward corridor, and its environmental impact statement, its Coastal Commission consistency review, and a full Chumash consultation all lie ahead. This community intends to be in that record from the first day of scoping. Nothing prevents a later solicitation for Starship once its record improves.
**Why this reaches past rockets**
By Coastal Commission staff's own count, only about 30 of 132 SpaceX launches from Vandenberg carried government payloads. The rest were commercial, mostly Starlink satellites. A commercial business is being treated as a federal activity exempt from state review. If a unanimous vote by the state's coastal authority can be overridden, apologized for in a settlement, and then made the subject of a federal funding review without a single legal challenge, the Coastal Act and the Coastal Zone Management Act will mean very little for any project on this coast, and other industries will notice. On paper, the deadline to sue runs for years. In practice it is much closer, because every month of unchallenged launches strengthens the government's argument that objections have come too late.
**What we are asking**
Every person reading this: sign the petition, then submit a written comment in NOAA's review by 11:59 PM Pacific on August 22, 2026, at czma.california-evaluation@noaa.gov, Docket No. 260623-0150. Say where you live in this corridor, what the launches have done to your home and household, and that California's program is performing lawfully, which is what the federal government's own 2024 evaluation found. If you can, attend the hearing on August 10 from 2 to 6 PM at the Hilton Santa Monica, 1707 4th Street, or the virtual sessions on August 11 and 12. Then call the officials below.
Attorney General Bonta: File the challenge to the October 10, 2025 Record of Decision while it can still be brought effectively. The removed environmental justice analysis, the sonic boom modeling that federal biologists call underpredictive, and the override of the Commission's vote each supply grounds. Enter the NOAA review with formal comments in the program's defense. An earlier version of this petition asked your office to open a state front in the Sable pipeline preemption fight, and in January it did. We are asking for the same commitment here, on a shorter timeline.
Governor Newsom and the Legislature: Direct state agencies to file comments by August 22. Hold the hearings this petition first requested in 2024. Pass what still does not exist: independent sonic boom monitoring with public data, a funded claims process for documented damage, and mandatory state review of any launch complex built for super heavy rockets, beginning with SLC-14.
Congressman Carbajal and the Central Coast delegation: Publish the Air Force's answers to your January letter, or tell the public that none came. Request the GAO investigation this petition specified in 2024. Oppose the FAA's proposed rule that would let it waive environmental laws when licensing launches. Introduce the requirement for an independent safety and environmental review, with community participation, before any super heavy launch operation is approved next to civilian populations, whichever company builds the rocket.
This petition has been updated as events developed, and the record so far has borne out every version. We support space exploration, and we live here. We are asking our own state to use the legal tools it still holds during the three weeks before Washington decides whether California may keep them.
Sign, comment by August 22, and be in the room on August 10. This coast belongs to all of us, and it is not for sale.
1,740
The Issue
Protect California's Coast: Demand that Elected Leaders Resist the Federal Override of Our Coastal Authority
On August 10, 2026, in a hotel ballroom in Santa Monica, the federal government will hold a public hearing on whether California should keep its coastal management program. The subject is the program itself, the authority that California voters created in 1972. Written comments close on August 22. This petition spent two years warning that a federal takeover of our coastal authority was coming, and the takeover now has a date and a docket number.
Look at the order in which this happened.
The day before the Coastal Commission voted 9 to 0 to reject SpaceX's launch expansion at Vandenberg, a vote joined by appointees of both parties, the White House signed Executive Order 14335. The order directed the Commerce Department to evaluate whether state coastal authority impedes spaceport development.
**October 10, 2025.** The Air Force overrode the Commission's vote, authorized 100 launches a year, and removed the environmental justice analysis from the final review.
**February 2, 2026.** A Falcon 9 out of Vandenberg suffered its fourth upper stage failure in nineteen months and reentered uncontrolled. The FAA opened an investigation and closed it in five days.
**April 2026.** SpaceX's retaliation lawsuit against the Commission ended in a settlement. The Commission apologized and agreed that it will never again require a coastal permit for Falcon operations at two of the base's launch complexes. In perpetuity is the phrase the agreement uses.
**Spring 2026.** Commerce finished the evaluation the executive order called for. It found no significant problems in Florida, Texas, or Virginia. It found repeated concerns with California, the one state that voted no.
**June 26, 2026.** At Commerce's direction, NOAA opened a formal performance review of California's entire coastal program, under a statute that lets Washington suspend the Coastal Commission's funding for up to three years. NOAA ran a routine review of the same program in 2024 and found it performing as intended.
As of late July, no lawsuit has been filed against any of it, by the Attorney General or by anyone else.
**What the booms are doing**
Shana in Ojai measured a sonic boom at 114 decibels outside her home, louder than a chainsaw held at arm's length, and it set off car alarms down her street. Jean in Santa Barbara was jolted awake at 5 AM and crouched in the earthquake triangle of safety beside her desk before she realized the shaking came from a Falcon 9 landing. Heath and his family now have to disclose the booms when they sell their house. I created this petition and I live in Ojai. A boom split the tape seal between two pieces of drywall in my dining room ceiling, I repaired it, and a later series of launches opened it again.
Vandenberg passed its fiftieth launch of 2026 in July. The base is on pace to pass eighty this year, and its leadership has said it hopes to reach one hundred, the full number the override authorized. More than 1,600 people from Lompoc to Ojai have signed this petition and described the same things: shaking houses, frightened kids and animals, ruined sleep. There is still no claims process for any of it, no fund, and no number to call.
**What the government's own scientists found**
The Air Force review that was supposed to study these impacts relied on computer models. It interviewed no residents and surveyed no households. It acknowledged that launches can damage structures at certain overpressure levels, then created no way to address that damage.
The models have since failed the one field test they got. In August 2024 the Space Force reported to federal fisheries regulators that sonic booms were landing on harbor seal rookeries at Carpinteria and Point Mugu, outside the footprint the models had drawn. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service warned that the modeling may underpredict the impacted region, found far more disturbance to sea otters and nesting snowy plovers than the Air Force predicted, and documented dead seal pups and damaged plover eggs after launches. The federal authorization to harass 11,135 harbor seals a year stayed exactly where it was. A model that could not locate a boom's effect on seals lying on mapped, monitored beaches is a poor basis for claims about what is happening inside anyone's house, or beneath the surface of the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary next door, where no one has studied these booms at all. The tribal consultation for the last expansion was closed before the Chumash could finish a site visit.
**The new launch pad**
In December 2025 the Space Force solicited bids for a pad at SLC-14 built for super heavy rockets, and nearly everyone assumed Starship would get it. Congressman Carbajal sent the Air Force seven questions in January, including whether anyone has modeled what a super heavy sonic boom does as it travels south over these communities, and gave the Air Force thirty days to answer. No answers have been made public. On April 14 the Space Force awarded the pad to Blue Origin for its 320-foot New Glenn rocket, with a first launch expected around 2028. Starship, which lost its booster on both of its test flights this year and has destroyed two vehicles on the ground with the same unresolved tank failure, did not win.
The pad is still coming, though. New Glenn will fly the same southward corridor, and its environmental impact statement, its Coastal Commission consistency review, and a full Chumash consultation all lie ahead. This community intends to be in that record from the first day of scoping. Nothing prevents a later solicitation for Starship once its record improves.
**Why this reaches past rockets**
By Coastal Commission staff's own count, only about 30 of 132 SpaceX launches from Vandenberg carried government payloads. The rest were commercial, mostly Starlink satellites. A commercial business is being treated as a federal activity exempt from state review. If a unanimous vote by the state's coastal authority can be overridden, apologized for in a settlement, and then made the subject of a federal funding review without a single legal challenge, the Coastal Act and the Coastal Zone Management Act will mean very little for any project on this coast, and other industries will notice. On paper, the deadline to sue runs for years. In practice it is much closer, because every month of unchallenged launches strengthens the government's argument that objections have come too late.
**What we are asking**
Every person reading this: sign the petition, then submit a written comment in NOAA's review by 11:59 PM Pacific on August 22, 2026, at czma.california-evaluation@noaa.gov, Docket No. 260623-0150. Say where you live in this corridor, what the launches have done to your home and household, and that California's program is performing lawfully, which is what the federal government's own 2024 evaluation found. If you can, attend the hearing on August 10 from 2 to 6 PM at the Hilton Santa Monica, 1707 4th Street, or the virtual sessions on August 11 and 12. Then call the officials below.
Attorney General Bonta: File the challenge to the October 10, 2025 Record of Decision while it can still be brought effectively. The removed environmental justice analysis, the sonic boom modeling that federal biologists call underpredictive, and the override of the Commission's vote each supply grounds. Enter the NOAA review with formal comments in the program's defense. An earlier version of this petition asked your office to open a state front in the Sable pipeline preemption fight, and in January it did. We are asking for the same commitment here, on a shorter timeline.
Governor Newsom and the Legislature: Direct state agencies to file comments by August 22. Hold the hearings this petition first requested in 2024. Pass what still does not exist: independent sonic boom monitoring with public data, a funded claims process for documented damage, and mandatory state review of any launch complex built for super heavy rockets, beginning with SLC-14.
Congressman Carbajal and the Central Coast delegation: Publish the Air Force's answers to your January letter, or tell the public that none came. Request the GAO investigation this petition specified in 2024. Oppose the FAA's proposed rule that would let it waive environmental laws when licensing launches. Introduce the requirement for an independent safety and environmental review, with community participation, before any super heavy launch operation is approved next to civilian populations, whichever company builds the rocket.
This petition has been updated as events developed, and the record so far has borne out every version. We support space exploration, and we live here. We are asking our own state to use the legal tools it still holds during the three weeks before Washington decides whether California may keep them.
Sign, comment by August 22, and be in the room on August 10. This coast belongs to all of us, and it is not for sale.
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Petition created on November 18, 2024