The cap part of California’s cap-and-trade program gets a lot of love: It places a hard limit on emissions, which benefits everyone. The trade part, however, has its detractors — and with good reason. Plenty of communities in the state, largely communities of color, still suffer from disproportionate pollution. In short, a lot of the good that’s created for all by the cap is negated for some people by the trade…
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.
The images are stark. People carrying empty jugs, lining up to fill them with water trucked to their towns. Others waiting in lines to take showers in stalls set up in church parking lots. These look like third-world conditions. In fact they are images of California. It may be hard to believe, but the eighth largest economy in the world is home to more than 275,000 people without access to safe and reliable drinking water…
With support from many of you, we achieved a lot in the 2015 legislative session! Governor Brown signed many water justice bills that CWC and our community partners supported, including: AB 401 (Dodd), which requires the state to develop a low-income water rate assistance program; SB 208 (Lara), which improves the Integrated Regional Water Management Program; and AB 1390 (Alejo), which streamlines groundwater basin adjudication while strengthening the goals and process set out in the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA)…
A fertilizer company with major operations here in the San Joaquin Valley was fined over $1 million for violating federal clean air regulations, according to an announcement today by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)…
The community of Arvin, which has had unsafe arsenic contamination for over a decade, is now on track to have safe water by the end of 2019. Six of the community’s seven wells currently exceed arsenic standards, which led to enforcement action from USEPA Region 9 starting in 2008. In September, the Arvin Community Services District (ACSD) agreed to a new Administrative Order with a timeline for the community’s Arsenic Mitigation Project…
Each year, California has an estimated $2-3 billion gap in funding for the state’s water needs. Thse chronically underfunded areas include groundwater recharge, stormwater management, aging infrastructure, and safe drinking water in disadvantaged communities…
CWC and our partners worked hard to secure over half a billion dollars in the 2014 Prop 1 Water Bond specifically to address the water needs of disadvantaged communities, and now is the time for communities and nonprofits to be applying for this funding…
On Tuesday, Nov. 17th, the Fresno County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously in favor of applying for state funding to develop an interim groundwater ordinance. This is a huge step forwards for a region where thousands of residents lack running water due to excessive groundwater pumping. After four years of drought, we need to take local action now to mitigate impacts and protect our most vulnerable residents…
A common type of pesticide used in agriculture may contribute to decreased lung function in children, making it harder for them to breathe and exercise, according to new research.Researchers, writing in the journal Thorax, found an 8% decrease in lung function for every 10-fold increase in concentration of organophosphate pesticides. That decrease in functioning is close to the effect caused by second-hand smoking…
All of this talk about how California (an agricultural implements and transportation innovations leader) and of the actions to lower harmful emissions through such programs as the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, Renewable Portfolio Standard, Cap-and-Trade and others, as well as via direct legislative effort – all of which are exemplary in terms of reining in emissions of greenhouse and other gases, fine particulates and more, the model program of greenhouse-gas-emissions reduction, building and energy efficiency, renewable-energy resources – could be offset in the state’s San Joaquin Valley region – housing 10 percent of total state population and is consistently ranked one of this nation’s most air-polluted regions – if crops, vineyard waste and removal of entire orchards the open-agricultural-field burning of which is given the green light by the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (hereafter referred to as the air district) to allow such activity to resume in earnest once again. If allowed to transpire, the Valley air-pollution situation could go from bad to worse…