The Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee is holding a hearing on Senate Bill 100, legislation to transition California to 100% clean electricity by 2045, where advocates gathered to deliver more than 38,000 messages and signatures in support of a clean bill. The Committee, chaired by Assemblymember Chris Holden, is expected to vote on SB100 following today’s hearing…
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.
California’s corrections department is spending $46,000 a month to buy bottled water for inmates and staff at a prison in Tracy where it opened a state-of-the-art water treatment plant eight years ago. Deuel Vocational Institution draws water from brackish wells on its grounds and runs it through a two-step treatment process before providing it to 2,300 inmates and 1,000 employees for drinking or for showers…
“Now is the time to address the true costs of oil and gas production on our communities and public health,” the new group, Elected Officials to Protect California, explained on their website. “Fossil fuels cost Californians thousands of lives and billions of dollars in public health and climate damages each year. Elected officials across the state must stand together on this critical issue…”
On Wednesday, the California Air Resources Board (ARB) and the California Transportation Commission (CTC) will hold its first joint meeting to discuss issues of mutual concern. The meeting is being held to fulfill requirements of A.B. 179, passed last year, that requires the two groups to meet at least twice a year to “coordinate implementation of transportation programs and policies…”
Kern County administrators believe they are well on their way to digging the county out of the hole it found itself in about three years ago, when crashing oil prices resulted in a $44.5 million deficit in the county’s general fund. On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors accepted a preliminary $2.6 billion budget for the Fiscal Year 2018-19. The budget will act as the official spending document for all county departments for the first two months of the fiscal year until the supervisors approve the final budget in August…
Gustavo “Gus” Aguirre Jr. calls them tools for “the democratization of data.” Air quality official Sayed Sadredin worries that using them without recognizing their limits could result in residents receiving “erroneous information.” The objects in question? Six air monitors operated not by government regulators, but by a private environmental advocacy group in the small farm town of Arvin, a city that often has the distinction of suffering some of the worst air quality in the nation…
The bottom is falling out of America’s most productive farmland. Literally. Swaths of the San Joaquin Valley have sunk 28 feet — nearly three stories — since the 1920s, and some areas have dropped almost 3 feet in the past two years…
What makes a community safe? For low-income families, safety is not about sheriffs and prisons. Here in Kern County, the Kern County Sheriff’s Office is one of the deadliest and most dangerous police forces in the country, according to investigations by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Guardian. Yet Kern County spends more than half of its discretionary budget, including $218 million in fiscal year 2017-18, toward “public protection,” much of which goes toward law enforcement…
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has awarded $20 million in grants to accelerate California’s transition to zero-emission off-road equipment in the freight, agriculture and waterborne mass transit sectors.Projects awarded funding include a battery-electric locomotive at the Port of Los Angeles; a hydrogen fuel cell-powered ferry providing passenger service between the Ports of San Francisco, Oakland, Redwood City and Martinez; battery-electric tractors in the San Joaquin Valley; and zero-emission cargo handling equipment at three California ports (Los Angeles, Long Beach and Stockton)…
We now know the next governor will be either Gavin Newsom or John Cox. Newsom has promised to be a voice for environmental justice and to protect climate funds that are dedicated to communities of color and low-income Californians. We know Cox is the oil industry’s favorite, but how real is Newsom’s commitment?