photos

Anhydrous ammonia is pumped into unlined irrigation canals and later applied on the fields through the sprinkler system. It provides nitrogen to the crops, and also seeps into the groundwater that Central Valley towns drink.

The California Aqueduct carries clean mountain water through the Central Valley to Los Angeles. Farmers are allowed to use the water for irrigation, but local drinking water comes from often-polluted wells.

Tap water samples from the small towns around Visalia. Their contents? Nitrates from fertilizers and from mega-dairy cow manure. Dibromochloropropane, a pesticide banned in 1977 but still present in groundwater. Arsenic. Some of the water smells like sewage.

Sandra Meraz buys bottled water for cooking and drinking. She led the effort to get a new water system in her hometown after water services were shut off repeatedly for days at a time, but the water is still contaminated. Half Latina and half Native American, she is the first woman of color to sit on the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Josefina Miranda shows her daughter how she protects herself when she works in the fields. When Miranda was four months pregnant with an earlier child, she and her co-workers were put to work in a field still wet with pesticides. By the time they left, her clothes were so soaked that she could wring the pesticides out of them. She miscarried the next day.

Teresa DeAnda stands on the narrow strip of dirt and road that divides her home from the fields next door. Pesticides regularly drift into her yard and home. In 1999, a toxic cloud of metam-sodium drifted into her neighborhood from a nearby potato field. Residents were evacuated after vomiting and suffering other signs of acute poisoning.

Teresa DeAnda at work in her kitchen. DeAnda’s activism led to a job as the Central Valley representative for Californians for Pesticide Reform. Her calendar is now filled with meetings, public hearings and protests. She still often works from home where her seven kids, six grandchildren and six dogs can come in and out as they wish.

CertainTeed Plexiglas factory.

Heavy air pollution creates beautiful sunsets in the Valley. Here the sun sinks behind the Coast Range, usually obscured by smog.

The community group Vecinos Unidos meets at the Orosi McDonald's. Louie Campos, President of the Visalia Democratic club, coaches local resident Hector Joya. Joya ran for a seat on the Cutler Public Utilities District to try to improve the area's drinking water.

Irma Medellin testifies at a public hearing at the Kern County Agricultural Pavilion.

The Central Valley’s vast fields of cotton and other crops have formed a backdrop to human suffering and struggle for generations. Chinese labor camps of the late 1800s, Depression-era families fleeing the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, César Chávez and the farmworkers movement, and today’s environmental justice advocates have all called this region both workplace and home. Although the Central Valley produces great material wealth in the form of food and commodity crops, many of the people who live there are among the poorest in the nation.

Environmental justice advocates scored a major victory by removing agriculture’s exemption from clean air laws with the passage of Senate Bill 700. Even so, advocates continue to struggle to enforce the law and contain the other negative impacts of mega-dairies. Tulare County leads the nation in milk-production, and its residents feel the impact not just through air pollution but also through flies, drinking-water pollution and unpleasant odors.

The San Joaquin Valley is one of the most polluted air basins in the country. Agriculture, power plants, factories, cars, and air pollution blown in from the San Francisco Bay Area all combine to form high levels of volatile organic compounds, particulate matter and nitrogen oxides in the air.

Toxic tour in tule fog.

Ema Guzman’s asthma and that of her two children got suddenly worse after a pesticide cloud drifted into her town.

Alejandro Alvarez touches the image of his daughter, Ashley, which was tattooed onto his arm after her death. Ashley was one of a cluster of children born with cleft palette and other birth defects in Kettleman City and neighboring Avenal. She died when she was 10 months old in January, 2009. Residents fear that the hazardous waste landfill located between their towns may be causing the birth defects.

General Petroleum Avenue and Standard Oil Avenue are two of the main roads running through the residential part of Kettleman City.