Inspections by water officials have found numerous oil-industry wastewater pits operating without permits across Central California. Oil producers have been dumping chemical-laden wastewater into as many as 300 unlined, shallow troughs in Kern County, according to the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board…
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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.
After California officials admitted allowing the oil industry to illegally inject wastewater into protected aquifers via disposal wells, more than 150 environmental and community groups filed a legal petition today urging Gov. Jerry Brown to use his emergency powers to place a moratorium on fracking and other well stimulation techniques. The groups point to tests showing dangerously high levels of cancer-causing benzene in fracking flowback fluid, which is often dumped into California injection wells…
Water officials in Kern County discovered that oil producers have been dumping chemical-laden wastewater into hundreds of unlined pits that are operating without proper permits.
Inspections completed this week by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board revealed the existence of more than 300 previously unidentified waste sites. The water board’s review found that more than one-third of the region’s active disposal pits are operating without permission.
The pits raise new water quality concerns in a region where agricultural fields sit side by side with oil fields and where California’s ongoing drought has made protecting groundwater supplies paramount.
Many residents of the San Joaquin Valley are pretty savvy about the quality of the air they breathe.
They know when summer ozone levels are spiking in Arvin or wintertime particulate pollution is off the charts in Bakersfield.
And vice versa.
But they’ve never had a tool to help understand whether the air in their neighborhood is cleaner or dirtier — at any given time, day or night — than the air quality in other parts of town. Or even a few blocks away.
But all that may be about to change…
Farmer and activist Tom Frantz lives in Shafter, a town just up the road from Bakersfield where oil rigs are as common as almond trees. But these days, his attention is focused on oil coming from outside the state, oil that comes in by train and unloads at crude-by-rail terminals.
“These tracks just ahead of us, they go under I-5,” says Frantz. “That’s just another potential accident spot. That’s not as dangerous as the multiple roads this rail line crosses.”
From his truck, he points out the single track that leads west from Bakersfield to the new Bakersfield Crude Terminal near the town of Taft. It’s one of many terminals that have been built in California in the past few years. And Frantz isn’t happy about it…
Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León proposed legislation last week to increase the amount of electricity California derives from renewable sources, continuing the Capitol’s longstanding tradition of excluding from what counts as “renewable” any power generated from burning household trash.
But de León, like lawmakers before him, acknowledged one exception: Any garbage-burning facility “located in Stanislaus County that was operational prior to September 26, 1996.”
The carve-out, tucked into existing law and included – with significant limitations – in de León’s proposal, applies to only one plant in California, a Central Valley incinerator that has stood for years as a tradeoff to moderate Democrats for their support on controversial environmental bills.
The California Senate released a sweeping package of bills aimed at addressing climate change today. The measures include creating a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, divesting California retirement funds from coal, increasing the amount of renewable energy in the state to 50%, reducing use of petroleum, and a study to explore green jobs within the clean energy sector. The announcement of the 4 bill package came from Senate pro Tem de León, Senator Pavley, Senator Hueso, and Senator Leno.
The California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA) joined Senators during the announcement, applauding their bold leadership and highlighting the need for this “next generation” of climate policies that benefit and protect low-income communities and communities of color, who are overburdened by the effects of air pollution and climate change…
In case you were wondering what Kings County leaders want to accomplish, the supervisors’ meeting on Tuesday laid out a list of lobbying goals in Sacramento and Washington, D.C.: Kill high-speed rail, find a way to get more water and/or funding for water projects and try to money to fix crumbling roads…
The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District illegally approved a rail terminal expansion that will transport 61 million barrels of volatile crude oil a year without environmental review, environmentalists claim in court. Communities for a Better Environment, the Sierra Club, ForestEthics, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Association of Irritated Residents sued the air pollution control district on Jan. 30…
California’s drought isn’t just causing wells to go dry, it’s also contributing to a long running water pollution problem. A new study by the U.S. Geological Survey looked at over 100 private domestic drinking water wells in the San Joaquin Valley. It found that around 1 in 4 had uranium levels above those considered safe by the EPA…