Stockton is warning several homeowners on the far north side of the city that their water may be contaminated. The city found a higher chemical level in two wells, which may be caused by the drought…
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.
It should have been a good year for turning wood and waste into electrons. A record-setting drought forced growers to bulldoze thousands of acres of trees, and hardly anyone in the Central Valley has permission to light bonfires anymore…
In California, we like to think of ourselves as being on clean energy’s cutting edge. We drive more electric vehicles, generate more electricity from solar power, and our legislators have pushed forward innovative policies that have become a model not just in the U.S., but around the world.Yet, hidden beneath this green image is a dirty secret: California is the third-largest oil-extracting state in the country, and the majority of that oil comes from where I call home, Kern County…
California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control is an agency tasked with protecting the state’s residents from chemical exposure. Sounds simple enough, but it shouldn’t be underestimated: Like the state’s Environmental Protection Agency, DTSC is empowered to lead criminal investigations in connection with violations of hazardous waste law. It’s an environmental agency with police power, including the power of arrest and seizure, and it was created to tackle serious environmental hazard issues…
The 17,000 residents of the San Joaquin Valley city of Shafter have been told to boil tap water or switch to bottled water after coliform was found in samples collected last week. A statement posted on the city’s website Monday says the bacterium is not dangerous on its own, but can provide an indication of other types of contamination…
A father fighting California laws that allow fracking near schools will appeal the dismissal of his case against the state’s oil regulator, his attorneys said. Sacramento Superior Court Judge David Brown dismissed Rodrigo Romo’s law suit against the Gov. Jerry Brown and the Division of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources on Nov. 30. He found that Romo failed to prove that his and thousands of other minority children are intentionally harmed by laws that allow fracking near public schools…
After four years of drought, we need to take local action now to mitigate impacts and protect our most vulnerable residents. With thousands of dry household wells in the San Joaquin Valley, our counties need to do a better job monitoring well drilling and addressing the negative impacts of virtually unrestricted groundwater pumping…
Recently, members from Asian Pacific Environmental Network and other community-based organizations gathered in Paris at the U.N. climate conference to demand strong international agreements that protect and benefit the people most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change…
Thousands of local social justice organizers passed away this year. People doing crucial work in their communities, whose deaths didn’t make the headlines. On this edition of Making Contact, we’ll hear about some of the fallen heroes of 2015.
Emiliano Amor Mataka,Environmental Justice activist, co-founder Valley Improvement Projects…