Kern County, California, where 95 percent of the state’s fracking takes place, is getting sued over a recent decision that did away with public notice and environmental review for oil and gas permits for the next 20 years. A coalition of environmental and social justice groups filed the complaint Thursday, saying that the new zoning ordinance, which went into effect this week, is inconsistent with California’s environmental review laws…
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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.
The state’s lead toxics cleanup agency is in hot water over a series of racially derogatory internal emails by senior agency staff. The emails between two senior scientists at the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), obtained by the group Consumer Watchdog after Public Records Act requests, include racial and class-based slurs directed toward communities of color, as well as individual colleagues…
A broad coalition of community and conservation groups sued Kern County today for passing a new local law intended to bypass environmental review for oil and gas projects. The new county ordinance, sponsored by the oil industry and passed by the Kern County Board of Supervisors last month, purports to allow county officials to fast track permits for oil and gas activities without environmental review or public notice for a minimum of 20 years…
The head of the state’s toxics control agency said Wednesday she has disciplined two employees for using racially derogatory terms in emails, but activists called for a broader probe to determine if there is a cultural problem in the department. Meanwhile, an Independent Review Committee appointed by lawmakers to overhaul the state Department of Toxic Substances Control said it would review the issues raised by the emails…
The Department of Toxic Substances Control is under fire over racially-charged emails between two of its senior scientists. The two men have been disciplined, the attorney general’s office has investigated the exchanges, an oversight panel says it will conduct an inquiry, and some activists say the scandal confirms their suspicions of systemic bias…
In a trailer park tucked among the irrigated orchards outside Fresno that help make California’s San Joaquin Valley the richest farm region in the world, 16-year-old Giselle Alvarez, one of the few English speakers in this community of farmworkers, puzzles over the notices posted on front doors: There’s a danger in their drinking water.
In a trailer park tucked among irrigated orchards that help make California’s San Joaquin Valley the richest farm region in the world, 16-year-old Giselle Alvarez, one of the few English-speakers in the community of farmworkers, puzzles over the notices posted on front doors: There’s a danger in their drinking water. Uranium, the notices warn, tests at a level considered unsafe by federal and state standards. The law requires the park’s owners to post the warnings. But they are awkwardly worded and in English, a language few of the park’s dozens of Spanish-speaking families can read…
Uranium, the stuff of nuclear fuel for power plants and atom bombs, increasingly is showing up in drinking water systems in major farming regions of the U.S. West — a naturally occurring but unexpected byproduct of irrigation, of drought, and of the overpumping of natural underground water reserves.
In a trailer park tucked among irrigated orchards that help make California’s San Joaquin Valley the richest farm region in the world, 16-year-old Giselle Alvarez, one of the few English-speakers in the community of farmworkers, puzzles over the notices posted on front doors: There’s a danger in their drinking water. Uranium, the notices warn, tests at a level considered unsafe by federal and state standards. The law requires the park’s owners to post the warnings. But they are awkwardly worded and in English, a language few of the park’s dozens of Spanish-speaking families can read…
Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, Humane Society of the United States, Clean Wisconsin and other environmental groups requested EPA in 2011 to “find that ammonia gas pollution [from CAFOs] endangers the public health and welfare; designate ammonia as a ‘criteria pollutant’ under the Clean Air Act; and establish National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ammonia.”…