In the Bay Area oil port city of Martinez, where a colossal Shell refinery has long tainted the air, the landmark California law that requires polluters to ease their carbon footprint seemed to some to promise new relief…
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.
Six Stanislaus County residents with different visions but the same values united to create a Modesto nonprofit, dubbed Valley Improvement Projects, dedicated to social and environmental issues…
New research this week questions the connection between air pollution and asthma.
In 2011, a study by the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District established a link between asthma-related ER visits and levels of PM2.5, or fine particulate matter in valley air. But after a follow-up to that study, the Air District now reports that for a number of years, asthma-related ER visits increased even as PM2.5 levels dropped.
David Lighthall, health science advisor to the Air District, says the findings should not be interpreted as black and white…
The Bee’s editorial missed the mark by supporting the state Department of Toxic Substances Control’s improper approval of the expansion of Chemical Waste Management’s hazardous waste landfill 3.5 miles from the farmworker community of Kettleman City (“California should clean its own messes,” Editorials, May 27).
The department’s approval ignored chronic permit violations, racially discriminatory processes, study flaws and the state’s own ranking of Kettleman City in the top 10 percent of vulnerable communities. If upheld, this reckless decision will increase pollution that may add to health problems including birth defects, childhood cancer and infant deaths…
San Joaquin Valley towns appear to be finished with the California Department of Public Health, which many have blamed for funding delays that have left residents with bad drinking water for years.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s new budget, which cleared the Legislature, moves the state’s Drinking Water Program from Public Health to the State Water Resources Control Board. The move will be made July 1, state leaders said.
The program holds the purse strings for funding to correct drinking water problems in small communities…
San Joaquin Valley towns appear to be finished with the California Department of Public Health, which many have blamed for funding delays that have left residents with bad drinking water for years.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s new budget, which cleared the Legislature, moves the state’s Drinking Water Program from Public Health to the State Water Resources Control Board. The move will be made July 1, state leaders said.
The program holds the purse strings for funding to correct drinking water problems in small communities…
More than 50,000 signatures from Kern County residents were presented at a press conference on Saturday in Shafter to show Governor Jerry Brown the impacts of fracking first hand.
“When we frack, we don’t just frack for gas, we also frack for oil,” said 350.org campaign coordinator Linda Capato. “Every barrel of oil we get is burned, and that carbon goes into the atmosphere.”
The petition is part of a growing effort to force governor Brown to “face the reality that fracking is wasting and poisoning California’s water, polluting the climate and endangering families,” according to a statement by the Race Poverty and the Environment organization..
It Reeks of Injustice in Wasco, CA: A Latino Barrio Gets the Short End of the Pollution Stick, Again
Very close to the city of Delano, CA, where Cesar Chavez conducted a great deal of his work for justice, it reeks of injustice.
In Wasco — in the San Joaquin Valley where tens of thousands of farm workers toil — a local ordinance has approved the expansion of a railroad coal depot right next to an overwhelmingly Latino barrio.
Every year, the terminal would receive 1.5 million tons of coal to run a proposed coal-powered plant known as Hydrogen Energy California (HECA) in the neighboring Kern County. The terminal would further poison what already is the country’s worst air quality. The proposed terminal lies right next to a barrio housing some 220 Latino farm-working families who were never notified of the project…
The Bee published an editorial arguing that the decision regarding Kettleman Hills was “long overdue.” Kettleman City is one of the most overburdened communities in California as identified by the state itself. Residents in Kettleman City suffer cumulative health impacts from several sources including diesel emissions along Highway 5, poor water quality, pesticide use, and this violation-plagued facility.
To issue this permit modification, the state relied on flawed data collected through a flawed process that successfully limited community information and participation. The DPH health study was admittedly recorded when the facility was operating at less than 5% capacity, and captured emissions at that level rather than during 100% capacity operations. This study, also, did not collect any sampling of residents and instead simply collected questionnaires from them…
Natural Resources Agency Secretary John Laird and other state officials have repeatedly claimed that the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the peripheral tunnels would be “fair, open, and transparent,” but a panel of environmental justice experts today exposed this claim as false when they revealed the blatant institutional racism that permeates the controversial process.
Restore the Delta (RTD) and environmental justice advocates charged the Brown Administration with violation of the civil rights of more than 600,000 non-English speakers in the Delta by its agencies’ failure to provide for “meaningful access to and participation” in the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) public comment period.
The groups said the state and federal agencies failed to make the EIR/EIS available in any languages other than English. Restore the Delta, the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, Asian Pacific Self-Development and Residential Association, Café Coop, Lao Family Community Empowerment, Environmental Water Caucus, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, California Water Impact Network (C-WIN), and Friends of the River released a letter calling on State and Federal officials to restart and extend the public comment period for the BDCP and its EIR/S, and to do adequate public outreach to limited English speakers…