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Between 1980 and 2024, California faced 46 extreme weather events. It’s becoming routine — atmospheric rivers bringing winter floods, nearly year-round fire seasons.
With the dry, grassy hills surrounding our densely populated San Ramon and Danville neighborhoods, we are one lightning storm away from a disaster like the 2025 Los Angeles fires.
We’ve had some close calls here at home. The 2020 fires brought smoke and evacuations to the Tri-Valley. The 2023 flood in San Ramon closed streets, damaged trails, and displaced 13 households. And we felt it personally — watching cooling bills climb during heat waves, buying air filters to protect our families, paying more for insurance.
Just how much more? Realtor Robert Song says the average Danville home insurance premium in high-risk zones rose from $1,500 in 2015 to over $12,500 in 2025, and owners are spending tens of thousands more hardening their homes.
Those costs don’t stop at our front doors. CalMatters reports that seven extreme heat events between 2013 and 2022 killed nearly 460 Californians and caused 5,000 hospitalizations. The economic damage: $7.7 billion in lost wages, agricultural disruptions, power outages and infrastructure damage.
Every flood repair, every emergency response, every infrastructure fix comes out of city budgets — money that could go elsewhere. There’s a commonsense fix, and it’s gaining ground.
The “Make Polluters Pay” superfund would require fossil fuel companies to pay for the damage they’ve caused, infusing hard dollars into communities like ours. The superfund would make grant funding available to cities like Danville and San Ramon — money that could help repair damage, fix aging infrastructure, carry out climate action plans, and support emergency services.
Imagine what that could mean for our cities — wildfire resilience programs, solar panels and energy storage, microgrid installation, cooling systems and support for firefighters on the front lines.
The “Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act” is an opportunity to build something better. It could mean real jobs: local work in construction, clean energy installation, and climate resilience projects, with strong labor standards built in.
The Climate Center, a leading California clean energy policy nonprofit, estimates it could generate hundreds of thousands of good jobs statewide. That’s money circulating right here at home.
And it’s designed to ensure the most vulnerable aren’t left behind. At least 40% of funds would go to communities most affected by climate change. The act’s reach extends further, too, getting buildings off fossil fuels and putting electric buses on our streets. These aren’t abstract priorities — they’re already in the climate action plans Danville and San Ramon have adopted.
For too long, taxpayers have paid for disasters they didn’t cause. The Superfund Act shifts that burden where it belongs — onto the fossil fuel companies that knew. They knew their products were driving the climate crisis. They concealed it for decades. And they kept profiting anyway.
That’s where we come in. Danville and San Ramon stand to benefit. You can help make it happen. Share this article. Talk with neighbors. Show up at a city council meeting and urge your city to pass a resolution supporting the “Make Polluters Pay” bill. Contact your state legislators. Join a local environmental or wildfire safety group.
Every voice matters. Every step counts. We can do this — for our kids, for our health, for our cities.
Editor’s note: San Ramon resident Kathryn Grace is a member of the communications team for 350 Contra Costa Action, an all-volunteer and grassroots climate movement in Contra Costa County that motivates action for a healthy climate, sustainable clean energy and environmental justice for all.
