This article has been updated following the Solano County Board of Supervisors’ vote. Scroll or jump to the bottom of this article for our recap of the meeting.
In the last days of the legislative session, the controversial developer California Forever turned up the heat again to fast-track its shipyard project. The Solano County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday afternoon to cool things down, and push discussions of a bill that could help transform 6.5 miles of waterfront outside the tiny hamlet of Collinsville into America’s largest shipyard.
“This is definitely a win for us,” Nate Huntington, resilience manager for Greenbelt Alliance and member of opposing coalition group Solano Together, told Bay Nature after the meeting. California Forever promises the shipyard could revitalize
Solano’s economy with good jobs and industry, while critics worry about the unstudied environmental impacts and how the developer has upended normal political processes.
The legislation would have exempted maritime industrial and manufacturing projects from further environmental scrutiny in 1,350 acres owned by California Forever. Environmental review requirements would instead be considered fulfilled by Solano County’s 2008 General Plan environmental impact report, which does not explicitly mention shipbuilding. It gave state agencies a maximum of 90 days to review any project in the area, and limited the legal challenges projects can face. The state legislative session ends Aug. 31, and bills must appear in print 72 hours before they go to a vote.
The text was constructed through weeks of private discussions between California Forever, county officials, and state representatives, as CalMatters has reported. The bill has narrowed from its first drafts, which also accelerated permitting for California Forever’s proposed 400,000-person city and additional manufacturing hubs. California Forever did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday morning.
Nate Huntington, a resilience manager with the environmental advocacy organization Greenbelt Alliance, notes that he knows of no other industrial manufacturing facility on a greenfield that has been exempted from environmental review like this in California’s history. The 2008 environmental impact review itself calls for “project-specific environmental analysis” to assess, and mitigate, the industry encouraged by its zoning designations.
As Bay Nature has reported, ecologists cannot assess how a new shipyard would transform the channel’s fragile, brackish waters without details of the future ships to be built. At this key transition point between the freshwater Delta and saltier Bay, dredging or industrial pollution could harm the threatened native fish and migratory birds that depend on these waters. Because the legislation also gives permission to reshape the area zoned for shipbuilding in Collinsville, it could also open the door for shipbuilders to level sections of the undeveloped Montezuma Hills, according to the Solano County Board of Supervisors.
This afternoon was a moment of déjà vu for many. Before the end of last year’s legislative session, the Board of Supervisors was given 15 minutes to read a similar bill—which they voted to support. “I almost have to [endorse this legislation],” said Supervisor Mitch Mashburn then. “The alternative is whatever gets pushed down our throat.” The Legislature ultimately did not advance that bill.
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A lot has changed in the last year. This time, supervisors had almost a full day to review legislation. Also, the future shipyard has lost its prospective shipbuilder. Saronic Technologies, which shares investor Marc Andreessen with California Forever, announced in July it would locate its “Port Alpha” in Texas, where local council members promised $211 million in tax rebates. No other shipbuilder has publicly expressed interest in the shipyard, though California Forever’s director of partnerships, Micahel Fortney, says the organization is in private discussion with cargo shipbuilders, among others. A recent article in Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute estimated it would take $22 billion to ready the Collinsville site for shipbuilding, compared to $10 billion for nearby Mare Island.
Meanwhile, political pressure from California Forever has ratcheted up dramatically in Sacramento. According to state disclosures, California Forever has spent $455,000 lobbying in Sacramento during the 2025–2026 legislative session, with $120,000 devoted to shipbuilding. California Forever spent $100,000 on lobbying during the 2023–2024 legislative session. In an August 2026 blog post, the organization said the shipyard is tied to its still-unapproved, contentious city. “Without the investments and larger mixed-use ecosystem that comes with the overall project, [shipbuilders] will not come,” wrote the organization.
In quiet Collinsville, Solano Together members report that everything is changing too fast for some residents to keep up. After a hot day door-knocking, Huntington says the seven Collinsville residents he and a colleague met all assumed the shipyard plan had died when Saronic chose Texas. None of them knew about this proposed legislation, which could transform their lives forever.
Update, 26th August 2026
The marathon discussion on Tuesday lasted five and a half hours, and garnered more than 100 public comments, including a lively rendition of “Pop Goes the Weasel.” The Solano County Board of Supervisors’s final 3-2 vote likely delays any development of California Forever’s proposed shipyard by at least another year to the 2026-2027 legislative session. “I’m not saying this legislation isn’t needed,” said Supervisor Mitch Mashburn, who proposed the motion. “But I’m saying we don’t need to rush because that fear that I had about the [governor] being just able to cram something down our throat isn’t there.”
California Forever’s head of public affairs, Jim Wunderman, urged supervisors to hurry their discussion of the bill, speaking over heckles from members of Solano Together, the bill’s opposing coalition But he promised the organization would continue working with the board and the community. “This is a long-term thing,” he said.
Assemblywoman Lori Wilson issued a statement declaring she would follow the county’s lead on shipbuilding discussions. “I will strive to keep Solano County a part of [the conversation around shipbuilding investments] and pursue only what is most desirable and beneficial for Solano County residents,” she wrote.
The supervisors want more time to explore a new environmental review of the Collinsville site, as well as secure tribal support and union guarantees before the bill moves forward again. “The tribes all day have been pinging our folks about their issues with this legislation,” said Mashburn. Restore the Delta has criticized the bill text for “unilaterally end[ing] Tribal consultation.” In public comments, multiple trade unions also critiqued the bill’s lack of job protections for machinists and metal workers following the initial period of construction, despite the historic building union agreements with California Forever.
The dozen or so comments that supported the shipyard were dwarfed by those in opposition, primarily delivered by pink-shirted members of Solano Together. They critiqued the bill’s circumvention of the county’s Orderly Growth Initiative and its use of an EIR that was produced 18 years ago to permit a shipyard of unknown scope.
As Collinsville resident Jim Bartz performed his parody of “Pop Goes the Weasel,” he produced felt weasels from his coat and sleeves at each “pop”. “Don’t build ships in old Collinsville,” he concluded. “We ask you, pleasel.”
Aug. 25, 2026: This story was updated to clarify that the bill limits legal challenges to shipyard projects but does not restrict such challenges entirely.
