In 1925, a Tennessee substitute teacher was indicted by a grand jury for teaching evolution to his high school class. That case, the Scopes trial, became famous for pitting science against the Bible, and it helped pave the way for educational reform. This week, a case in California could do for climate change what the Scopes trial did for evolution…
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 faces a statewide drinking water crisis that affects a million Californians each year, but most of us have no idea what’s going on. In 2017, the California State Water Board identified more than 300 public water systems that were out of compliance with federal drinking water standards. Many of the communities served by these systems – often in rural, disadvantaged areas of the state – have gone without safe drinking water for years…
Tens of thousands of people living in the San Joaquin Valley’s unincorporated, rural, low-income communities have unsafe drinking water pouring from their taps. That water is delivered from a patchwork of community water systems that often don’t meet state or federal standards for drinking water or from private wells that are not tested…
Around 100,000 San Joaquin Valley Residents Live Without Clean Water; Study Suggests Access Is Close
There are almost 100,000 San Joaquin Valley residents living without access to clean drinking water. This is according to a new UC Davis study, which suggests that permanent solutions aren’t that far away.”The costs of doing nothing, in terms of impacts on public health and economic vitality, are far higher than the investment needed to provide safe drinking water for all communities in the region,” said Jonathon London, lead author on the study conducted by the Center for Regional Change at the university…
Many Californians know of the lead poisoning in the public water system in Detroit. Very few know of the contaminated water crisis impacting more than 1 million Californians. After years of trying to resolve the failure of the State of California to address this public health challenge, advocates have reached a historic negotiated agreement…
Tens of thousands of people living in the San Joaquin Valley’s unincorporated, rural, low-income communities have unsafe drinking water pouring from their taps. That water is delivered from a patchwork of community water systems that often don’t meet state or federal standards for drinking water or from private wells that are not tested. However, a University of California, Davis, study that assessed water systems throughout the valley found that safe water is often close at hand…
Ask any native of Wilmington, California, for directions, and you’ll get a quick glimpse of what daily reality is like here. “I live on the side of town where Phillips 66 is, or where the Tesoro refinery is. Or where the container yards are; the side of town with the ports,” says resident Sylvia Arredondo, rattling off the various ways a local might tell you how to get to his or her house…
The James Irvine Foundation recognized Susana De Anda and Laurel Firestone Feb. 28 for their work with the Community Water Center. De Anda and Firestone received the Irvine Leadership Award which came with $200,000 to go toward the work the CWC does…
On February 22, 2018, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced that the Department of Justice is opening an environmental justice office within the Environment Section: the Bureau of Environmental Justice (“Bureau”). “The Bureau’s mission will be to protect people and communities that endure a disproportionate share of environmental pollution and public health hazards.”…
Pursuant to Senate Bill 83 (Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review, Chapter 24, Statutes of 2015), the Secretary of the Natural Resources Agency and the Secretary for Environmental Protection have appointed an independent review panel to evaluate the regulatory performance of the administration of the Program and make recommendations on how to improve its effectiveness by evaluating resource needs, statutory or regulatory changes, as well as program organization…