On May 12, the Fresno Environmental Reporting Network (FERN) hosted an Environmental Justice Bus Tour. This was for various nonprofit and government agencies to gain and share knowledge around topics including illegal dumping, pesticides and the drought. There were five stops on this tour: 1) a vacant lot at 9th and Grove in Calwa, 2) Tombstone Territory, 3) Parlier, 4) harvest fields and 5) southwest Fresno. At each stop, we met with residents and professionals to discuss their issues…
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.
When oil prices were near their peak a year ago, rail shipments of crude from the newly-fracked fields of North Dakota and elsewhere surged in California…
The principles of environmental justice say that access to clean air, water and soil, and to a healthy, safe, livable community, are intrinsic human rights. ForestEthics and Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) evaluated oil train routes and US Census data to investigate disparities in the hazards that Californians face from oil trains. This data is presented in maps showing the oil train blast zone, environmental justice census block groups, and racial profile of the ten largest cities in California with current and probable oil train routes, and four urban core areas where CBE works for environmental justice…
Residents of Avenal and Kettleman City, who are already exposed to many other pollution sources, are celebrating the news along with their allies who joined this fight for clean air, health and environmental and climate justice…
The state budget signed by Governor Jerry Brown last week took a stab at answering public demands for reform by funding an oversight panel to report on how the department is doing…
The budget signed this week by Gov. Jerry Brown establishes an independent panel to oversee the California Department of Toxic Substances Control after a series of shortcomings in its regulation of hazardous waste operations and cleanups across the state…
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals capped a saga of over seven years on June 18 by extending its March 11, 2015 ruling in support of alternatives to imposing hefty fees on individual companies which have complied with the law, but happen to do business in California’s Central Valley or South Coast…
In the case of Association of Irritated Residents v. EPA, decided June 23, 2015, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied a petition for review filed after EPA acknowledged that it had mistakenly approved certain New Source Review rules affecting ozone emissions in California’s Central Valley (which includes the San Joaquin Valley) subject to California’s State Implementation Plan, and then corrected this error…
Environmentalists cannot challenge federal regulators for changing course after realizing that an error led them to approve regulations for the heavily polluted San Joaquin Valley, the Ninth Circuit ruled Tuesday. Complications surrounding the regulations are longstanding, but the current dispute stems from California’s previous attempt to exempt all agricultural operations from certain federal air-quality permit obligations until 2003…
The court of appeals denied a petition for review. The court held that the Environmental Protection Agency had authority under the Clean Air Act to retroactively amend its erroneous approval of certain New Source Rules as part of California’s State Implementation Plan. The court held further that the agency reasonably determined that it made the error where it relied in major part on interpretations of California law provided by the California Attorney General and the California Air Resources Board…