Fourteen environmental groups are asking officials at the Office of Management and Budget to drop biomass power plants from a White House plan to reduce emissions that lead to climate change…
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.
A provision in the newest California budget could give the state the power to force mergers between small water providers and larger companies. A number of small central valley water utilities are facing dried up wells and dirty water due to the drought.
Many of the smallest water providers in the valley have just one well and lack the resources or customer base to continue to provide clean water.
Laurel Firestone with the Community Water Center says merging with bigger companies gives those communities a larger more durable water supply, especially during the drought…
Today, the legislature passed Senate Bill 88 and Assembly Bill 115, which authorize the State Water Resources Control Board to order water system consolidation where necessary to ensure that customers of small, struggling water systems have access to safe and affordable drinking water. The legislation also provides technical assistance and financing to assist local governments and water systems in implementing voluntary and mandatory consolidations…
In its brief history, California’s cap-and-trade system to fight global warming has faced many foes, including oil-company executives and manufacturing magnates.
On Thursday, it came under fire from a new quarter: the Vatican.
Pope Francis, in his highly anticipated call to action against climate change, took an unexpected swipe at the cap-and-trade systems used in both California and Europe to control greenhouse gases. They may sound good, the pontiff argued. But they won’t work.
Our county’s poor air quality is a continued problem, but a recently released report details the impact of pesticides in the air — specifically near one local school.
The 56 page draft is designed to gauge the potential health risks from pesticide exposure.
Sandra Aguirre lives in Shafter. She says her kids have respiratory issues…
Braving high school every day is enough of a drag without having to worry about, like, pesticides — gross! California, in true Wild West form, doesn’t have any set rules for spraying near schools, so growers don’t have to notify local officials when they treat their crops. But amid growing studies citing the links between long-term pesticide exposure and increased risks of cancer, reproductive and developmental issues, concerned parents throughout the state are calling for change…
Rio Mesa High School sits just outside the strawberry growing hub of Oxnard and is surrounded by vast fields of the juicy red fruit.
Jeff Elliott’s twin daughters, in 11th grade, are on the school’s track and cross-country teams, and they practice alongside neat rows of squat, green plants. But he worries that the chemicals that help protect the fruit might be hurting his girls. Elliott said his daughters told him at least twice that they sprinted through foul-smelling fumigation operations during runs near the campus…
The Center for Environmental Health (CEH) today announced it has initiated legal action under the drinking water provisions of California’s Prop 65 law against Seneca Resources Corporation, for the company’s disposal of highly toxic fracking waste water into four wells near Lost Hills in Kern County that flow into a potential source of drinking water. State documents reviewed by CEH show that the Seneca waste water contains levels of naphthalene, benzene and ethylbenzene – all substances listed by the state as known to cause cancer and/or serious reproductive health problems – far in excess of Prop 65 safety standards. For example, some of the waste water injected into a potential source of drinking water by Seneca contains more than 2,000 times more benzene than allowed under Prop 65…
Many Southern California communities stand out as some of the nation’s worst environmental justice hot spots, according to a new map released Wednesday by the Obama administration.
The interactive online map created by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency highlights low-income, minority communities across the country that face the greatest health risks from pollution. The analysis combines demographic and environmental data to identify where vulnerable populations face heavy burdens from air pollution, traffic congestion, lead paint, hazardous waste sites and other hazards.