Most San Joaquin Valley voters likely would support more restrictions on residents and businesses to improve air quality, especially young women who are Democrats, a recent Fresno State survey found. The survey was conducted by Fresno State’s Institute for Leadership and Public Policy between Feb. 5 and Feb. 15, a time shortly after the region experienced several weeks of poor air quality…
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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.
As the climate crisis deepens and existing environmental health and justice issues persist, people of color have emerged as strong supporters of aggressive environmental and climate change policies. This election year, communities of color living on the frontlines of pollution, overburdened by economic inequality and health disparities, have the power to elect progressive leaders who will courageously defend communities from corporate polluters and pass bold and visionary policies…
A new survey conducted by the Institute for Leadership and Public Policy at Fresno State found that more than half of registered voters in the San Joaquin Valley (53 percent) said they would support more restrictions on residents and businesses to improve air quality in the region, with 40 percent indicating that they would not support more restrictions…
Camrosa Water District, a public services provider in Ventura County, gets its water from a combination of groundwater, recycled wastewater, and the State Water Project, which transports water south through the state. Twenty miles away, another mid-size public water agency also founded around 1960 has a very different portfolio: Las Virgenes Municipal Water District gets virtually all its water from the State Water Project, which is managed by California’s Department of Water Resources…
Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board members voted Thursday to require an oil wastewater dump site operator in McKittrick suspected of polluting nearby groundwater to install a network of wells monitoring contamination. That falls short of environmentalists’ demands for the board to shutter the operation…
As a first step to solve the problem, Community Water Center volunteers and trained specialists like Erasto Teran teach people how to test their water. Contaminants like pesticides, nitrates, and arsenic can enter the water supply through natural deposits or industrial and agricultural pollution…
A court ruled today that the Environmental Protection Agency violated its duty to respond to civil rights complaints in a timely way. The case involved five organizations that had waited years for the EPA to respond to complaints filed under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, creed, or color…
Disadvantaged Communities Protection Act-Ensures that residents of disadvantaged communities receive notice of and have meaningful opportunities to provide input on proposals to site and expand land uses in their neighborhoods that may result in adverse public health effects, could negatively impact neighborhood quality, or undermine housing opportunities….
A new report from the Visalia-based Community Water Center indicates that nearly 500 local water board seats have gone uncontested in recent elections. In the southern San Joaquin Valley, the report finds that 87 percent of seats on public water boards went uncontested…
More than 300 California communities lack access to clean drinking water. A disproportionately high number of those communities lie in the San Joaquin Valley, as we reported in our 2017 series Contaminated. Last fall, a bill with a proposed solution passed the state senate but has since remained in limbo, receiving both broad support and opposition—even in the San Joaquin Valley…