No rain for the Valley means more bad air.
“Well it’s some of the worst air quality we have seen in at least 10 years, and without any wind or rain, it just continues to pile upon us, and gets worse and worse,” according to Physicians Assistant, Michael Ginsberg.
According to Doctors at the “Baz Allergy, Asthma, and Sinus Center,” the worse the air gets, the harder it is for people to breathe.
They say bad air quality attacks membranes in the nose, sinuses and lungs; triggering allergies and, especially asthma…
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.
About four years ago I made a photo of the Fresno skyline on a very clear day. It was the day after a storm and you could see for miles. The snow-capped mountains were even in view. So I made this picture and it ran on the front page of The Fresno Bee. People really loved it and it has been reused in a lot of other places including as the backdrop at an annual City of Fresno meeting. Fast forward to today. The sky is about as hazy as I’ve ever seen it. The air quality is awful and we haven’t had rain in weeks. I decided to make an image of the same place where I shot the photo four years ago to show the difference…
Community leaders representing Building Healthy Communities, The Know, FIRM, Coalition for Clean Air, Fresno Metro Ministry and CCEJN among others, gathered on Thursday at high noon to advocate for the development of a Bus Rapid Transit system in Fresno. The currently proposed bus system would connect two corridors, along Ventura/Kings Canyon and Blackstone avenues, with the Central District in downtown Fresno. Advocates shouted BRT! BRT! as many considered how faster bus service would benefit their life. Yolanda Espino, resident of South East Fresno advocated that walking a little further to the bus stop is a manageable trade for a faster connection to businesses and work…
Last night the Regional Water Board voted to approve the staff recommendation to the permit expansion for Section B-18 of the Kettleman Hills Facility. The public hearing held at the Kettleman Hills Elementary School, began at 5:00pm with an overview provided by staff on their evaluation of the permit expansion in regards to water quality. Greenaction and El Pueblo for Clean Air & Water of Kettleman City were stakeholders to the hearing and were able to raise some important questions to the Water Board staff and Chemical Waste Management staff…
A stagnant, dry winter has created near-historic soot levels in the San Joaquin Valley and around California, perhaps unraveling years of work on federal air standards, Valley air authorities said Thursday.
The Valley was supposed to achieve a federal standard for such tiny particles, known as PM-2.5, by 2015. But the soot siege during the record-breaking drought probably ends any chance the Valley might have had, air officials said…
Today, after a California Senate Oversight Hearing in the Environmental Quality Committee, environmental advocates demanded that Gov. Jerry Brown clean house at the California Department of Toxic Substances Control. The DTSC has been beguiled with mismanagement and malfunction and the advocates called the press conference to say ‘enough is enough’…
We hear in the news about horrible air quality in the developing world. Stories about Chinese air quality are everywhere.
Here in the Central Valley it is conceded that we have the worst air in the nation but surely it is far better than places like China. So, let’s make the comparison.
Who had the worst air over the holiday season, Beijing, China or the Central Valley of California…?
In the wake of the driest recorded year in California’s history, concerned Californians submitted more than 100,000 public comments today denouncing Governor Brown’s proposed fracking regulations and urged him to ban the water-intensive drilling activity. At today’s event, Californians Against Fracking delivered boxes filled with tens of thousands of public comments to DOGGR while chanting, “Climate leaders don’t frack,” a clear message to Gov. Brown, whose legacy as a climate leader is on the line as he green-lights a massive expansion of fracking in the state.
“As California faces a massive drought, the last thing Gov. Brown should be doing is letting oil companies frack our state and contaminate our drinking water,” said Zack Malitz, CREDO’s Campaign Manager. “The only way to protect Californians is with a ban on fracking, not weak regulations that will only encourage more drilling…”
If you thought a “red alert” was bad, try purple.
Each day, scores of schools in Kern County hoist a color-coded flag to let parents, students and staff know what kind of air quality to expect that day.
A green flag predicts good air quality, yellow signals moderate, orange indicates the air is unhealthy for sensitive groups and a red flag — well, that’s bad news for pretty much anyone who breathes…
But early last week, concentrations of microscopic soot particles — known as PM-2.5s — spiked well above 75 micrograms per cubic meter of air. At one point on Jan. 6, levels climbed higher than 100.
Wood, a registered nurse who has worked on school air quality and asthma-related issues for more than 16 years, decided to go to Level 5: the color purple.
She had never called a “purple alert” before…
About 100 people packed into a chamber at the Kern County administration building in Bakersfield to testify at a public hearing Wednesday on the state’s new fracking regulations, saying they are already at a breaking point with pollution in their communities, and that they’ll be impacted the most from the state’s new fracking plan.
The California Department of Conservation’s Division of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) is seeking community input on regulations of a controversial oil extraction method known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, put in place with the passage of SB 4…