After years of being the focus of negative news, Kettleman City is headed toward the completion of projects that will grow the economy and improve the quality-of-life in the tiny western Kings County town…
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 Drinking Water Program — so important to cleaning up tap water in the San Joaquin Valley — appears poised to move out of the state’s health department to the state’s water-regulation agency in July. Or is it?
A task force proposed a transition strategy, and you can check it out. This is part of Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget. So the Legislature still needs to agree. But the legislative route didn’t work at all last year…
A year-old Cal/EPA online tool for calculating the burden of pollution by ZIP code across the state shows that African-Americans and Latinos are more heavily impacted by pollution than whites. Having established that, the agency has now ceased using race as a factor in its calculations…
In 2013, the Community Water Center (CWC), along with a coalition of drinking water advocacy organizations and residents from impacted communities, sponsored and supported several legislative bills. These efforts reflected a broad range of legislative priorities focused on creating regional specific tools, protecting drinking water systems, and creating and improving State water funding programs. Advocacy efforts resulted in Governor Brown signing five coalition-supported drinking water bills into law. A summary of our 2013 legislative year outcomes is listed below…
California’s parched winter brought a big surge in air pollution, pushing the number of bad air days one-third higher than the previous winter and posing a serious health threat, state air quality officials said Tuesday.
Levels of haze-forming soot typically increase in winter, but this year was worse because of the persistent lack of rainfall, low winds and unusually stagnant conditions that trapped pollution close to the ground.
Karen Magliano, an assistant division chief at the California Air Resources Board, said the increase in dirty air was a weather-driven exception to a decade-long trend of improvement.
The San Joaquin Valley’s air was the most polluted in the state, exceeding federal health standards for fine particulate matter for 66 days…
A contract to build a water line to West Goshen was awarded Thursday to Vulcan Construction of Fresno.
Construction starts in mid-March, said Jessi Snyder, community development specialist at Self-Help Enterprises in Visalia. Water mains and meters will be installed next year.
The 12-inch line will bring clean water from California Water Service in Goshen about a mile and half away to 80 homes in West Goshen, which has been struggling with failing wells and water contaminated with nitrates and nonfecal coliform bacteria…
California’s drought has put 10 communities at acute risk of running out of drinking water in 60 days, and worsened numerous other health and safety problems, public health officials in the most populous U.S. state said on Tuesday.
Rural communities where residents rely on wells are at particular risk, as contaminants in the groundwater become more concentrated with less water available to dilute them, top state health officials said at a legislative hearing on the drought…
Our economy depends on trucks, trains and ships powered primarily by diesel fuel to move our food, household goods and other commodities in a constant flow throughout California. Unfortunately, freight commerce takes a toll on our health and environment when heavy-duty engines leave noxious fumes in their wake.
Low-income communities disproportionately experience the health impacts of industrial freight activity by being forced to breathe diesel exhaust on a daily basis in their own neighborhoods. For instance, the San Joaquin Valley is being inundated with distribution centers that promise jobs but also add pollution to an area known nationwide for having some of the poorest air quality in the United States…
On Monday, January 13, local activists mobilize to welcome Governor Jerry Brown at Fresno City Hall. The group carried a strong message: Put a stop to fracking in Califronia! Chanting and raising their voice, the protesters gathered media attention and continued to push the message that the dirty oil in the Monterrey Shale will contribute to climate change. More specifically, fracking, the practice used to extract the oil will harm the water, soil, and air of the San Joaquin Valley. This is an unacceptable practice that must be stopped across the state of California…
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the signing of President Clinton’s executive order on environmental justice, officially known as the Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations a result of Environmental equity grassroots movements of the 1980s. Milestones like this are to be celebrated cautiously, for even in 2014 the issue is a salient one…