More than one million people across 16 California counties have excessive levels of a potent carcinogen in their drinking water, and customers are now facing huge rate increases to help pay for water agencies’ compliance with newly-adopted standards…
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 milestone climate change program was officially renewed Tuesday when Gov. Jerry Brown (D) held a public signing of a bill extending the state’s cap-and-trade initiative through 2030…
Over the past several years, our coalition and our members have, through careful analysis and years of on-the-ground experience, documented many of the flaws in California’s cap and trade system. These include a lack of significant emission reductions, particularly from industrial facilities; the disproportionate location of these exact climate polluters in EJ communities; and documenting the clear link between GHG emissions and co-pollutants that are harmful for the health of surrounding communities. It was our hope that legislators, environmental groups and environmental justice organizations would work together to address these issues, rather than perpetuate them, as we discussed how to meet the 2030 goals…
In January, Gov. Jerry Brown declared he would seek a two-thirds vote to extend California’s cap-and-trade system to 2030. The extension to 2030 would keep in place the market-based mechanism that enables the state to reach its ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals on a cost-effective basis – and send a market signal in favor of advanced energy technologies and services…
On Tuesday, Schwarzenegger joined his successor, Jerry Brown, as Brown signed legislation that kept alive a cap and trade program that both men have urged the rest of the world to emulate. The program puts a cap and a price on carbon emissions, creating an incentive for polluters to reduce emissions…
Given how President Donald Trump has taken aim at the Environmental Protection Agency with regulatory rollbacks and deep proposed budget cuts, it may come as no surprise that the Office of Environmental Justice is on the chopping block. This tiny corner of the EPA was established 24 years ago to advocate for minorities and the poor, populations most likely to face the consequences of pollution and least able to advocate for themselves…
Today the State Water Resources Control Board voted to create a new legal limit, or maximum contaminant level (MCL), on 1,2,3-Trichloropropane (TCP), a man-made, carcinogenic drinking water contaminant found across the state. The standard was set at the legal detection limit, the lowest level at which TCP can be detected in drinking water based on current technology, which is five parts per trillion (ppt)…
In the wake of the Trump Administration’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, a number of governors and mayors have pledged to come forward with ambitious climate policies and programs. California Governor Jerry Brown has been the drum major at the head of this parade of subnational climate warriors. On July 17, he scored a significant victory when the California legislature extended the state’s flagship multi-sector greenhouse gas (GHG) cap-and-trade program through 2030…
How well-meaning environmental groups wanted a climate-action pony so badly that they bought in to a crappy cap and trade deal that only an oil company executive could love… and boy, do they love it…
Despite the cost and controversy associated with it, the California Legislature recently reauthorized the state’s first-in-the-nation cap-and-trade system for another 10 years, until 2030…