In the last days of the legislative session, the controversial developer California Forever is turning up the heat again to fast-track its shipyard project. The Solano County Board of Supervisors is set to vote this afternoon on whether to support a bill that could help transform 6.5 miles of waterfront outside the tiny hamlet of Collinsville into America’s largest shipyard. 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 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 will be 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. 

A lot has changed in the last year. This time, supervisors have 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.

About 1,400 acres of the riverbank is currently zoned for water-dependent infrastructure, which could include shipbuilding. Solano County Parcel Viewer / Tanvi Dutta Gupta

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. 

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On Tuesday morning, Restore the Delta released a statement opposing the bill, saying it “would have a direct and detrimental impact on Delta communities and ecosystems,” and urging Solano County residents to show up at the Board of Supervisors meeting, which is at 2 p.m. in Fairfield today.

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.

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.