The San Joaquin Valley has made some strides in cleaning the air but continues to rank among the most polluted areas for ozone and soot in California, according to a 2018 American Lung Association report on air quality. Eight counties — from Stanislaus to Kern — got flunking grades for both ozone and particle pollution in the association’s State of the Air 2018 report card released Wednesday…
News
This page features excerpts from news about environmental justice advocacy in the San Joaquin Valley and links to their original sources. Use the features on the right to sort by topic, news source, date, key word or author. You may also subscribe to receive the news by e-mail or through an rss reader. Please note that links to original sources may expire over time.
AB 617’s stated goal is to improve air quality in environmental justice communities through local, community-specific strategies focused on the individual needs and issues particular to each community. The development and implementation of this “community focused” strategy is largely the responsibility of California’s local air quality management districts (AQMDs) because AB 617 places new, explicit responsibilities on AQMDs so that they take the lead in improving the air quality in their environmental justice communities…
Through a newly established Environmental Justice Bureau, Becerra is using the authority and resources of his office to assist Californians whose plight rarely makes headlines. His focus is a humbling reminder about what ultimately should drive environmentalism: the right of people – regardless of their political views, income, or ethnic and racial heritage — to live in places that won’t sicken them and their children…
The San Joaquin Valley struggles with environmental pollution. Hundreds of thousands of residents are served with water that’s unsafe to drink, and all of us live under seasonal clouds ozone and particle pollution in the air. Water and air problems are regulated separately, but one contaminant bridges both domains. This story examines why nitrogen is such a persistent problem…
The California Community Environmental Health Screening Tool (CalEnviroScreen) advances research and policy pertaining to environmental health vulnerability. However, CalEnviroScreen departs from its historical foundations and comparable screening tools by no longer considering racial status as an indicator of environmental health vulnerability and predictor of cumulative pollution burden. This study used conceptual frameworks and analytical techniques from environmental health and inequality literature to address the limitations of CalEnviroScreen, especially its inattention to race-based environmental health vulnerabilities…
The second annual Health and Social Justice Hackathon took place at Bakersfield College on April 12-14 and organizers of the event were BC Professors Edward Rangel, computer science, and Sarah Baron, Public Health Science. The three-day long competition is mainly for BC students to come together as a group and build technology wise tools that can be used by the community…
Residents of several San Joaquin Valley communities shared their concerns over issues from water quality to health care with two candidates for California governor on Friday. Seated inside a meeting room at Orosi High School, the community members spoke, at times passionately, about the daily struggles they face living without clean running water. They said they also are challenged by air pollution, a lack of access to health care and a shortage of affordable housing…
Yet six years later, more than one million residents are exposed to unsafe drinking water each year and over 530,000 Californians pay a bill for water that does not meet state and federal drinking water standards each month. A disproportionate number of those residents live in the southern San Joaquin Valley, where 109 local water boards oversee the water quality and quantity delivered to homes and farms…
More than 750 public interest groups from California and around the world kicked off a campaign today urging Governor Jerry Brown to stop the build-out of dirty fossil fuel infrastructure, keep oil and gas in the ground and take immediate action to protect those most vulnerable to climate change…
León directs the San Joaquin Valley Latino Environmental Advancement Project, which is working to formalize the Raiteros service and make it more environmentally friendly. The group has gotten grants to help buy two hybrid plug-in vehicles and several charging stations for the Raiteros to use…
