Born and raised in California and coming from a family of activists, I was raised around community and union organizing with my father and grandpa in the United Farm Workers Union in Central and Southern California. As a child I soon embraced and lived by the social equality emphasis my parents evoked on me as farm workers. As a teen still in Middle and High School, I organized and was in charge of walking precincts in political campaigns in the Los Angeles area as well as in the Coachella and Central Valley…
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.
Many of our region’s most vexing problems don’t get cured per se, but sometimes we do see signs of progress. It’s important to acknowledge the improved outlook on two fronts:
Promising sign No. 1 – better air
The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control district believes it has met the federal one-hour ozone standard, so the Valley should be relieved of the $29 million annual fine that is paid primarily through higher vehicle registration fees. It could take a year to learn whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will remove the penalty, but we think the progress is worth applauding…
San Joaquin Valley air officials celebrated, although they stopped short of high-fives and chest bumps.
They’ve done it. They’ve made history.
The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District declared recently that the region has achieved a federal pollution standard. It needs a stamp of approval from the Environmental Protection Act before it’s official…
Central California Environmental Justice Network joined Fresnans Against Fracking on Saturday, October 19th for a demonstration in River Park. The event was a part of a global event aptly titled “Global Frackdown.” Over 250 events in over 25 countries were hosted on Saturday, all recognizing the collective state that there is no safe way to frack, and that fracking should be stopped…
Last week the Regional Water Quality Control Board announced that Vintage Petroleum would be fined $60,000 for discharging fracking fluid into an unlined dirt sump in Shafter, CA last October. This violation was filmed by local activist, Tom Frantz, who actively advocated for an investigation from the RWQCB. ..
The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday that she was disappointed by the slow progress state, federal and local governments have made in bringing potable drinking water to small towns in the San Joaquin Valley.
“We’ve got rural communities that don’t have clean water and there’s no plan on how to get it to them,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a meeting with Los Angeles Times editors and reporters.
McCarthy’s comments follow the federal government’s threat this spring to cut off clean drinking water funding because state officials have been sitting on more than $455 million in unspent federal money. The EPA also faulted the state Department of Public Health for a lack of financial accountability with the funds…
The air Central Valley residents breathe is getting a bit cleaner.
For the first time in recorded history, the San Joaquin Valley had zero emission violations in 2013 for the standard established under the federal Clean Air Act. Having reached this once thought unattainable goal, the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District will submit a request to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), asking them to declare the Valley in attainment of the key standard and lift the $29 million penalty mandate which Valley residents have been paying since late 2010…
The chief of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says the lingering dirty drinking water in many rural San Joaquin Valley towns would surprise people from other parts of the country.
Saying she is serious about the agency’s role as a watchdog over federal clean-water funding, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said people shouldn’t have to wait years for money that’s already available for fixes…
Clean air, or perhaps more precisely, environmental perfection is the killer of blue collar head-of-household jobs in the San Joaquin Valley.
The 118 men and women who are about to lose their paychecks at one of Lathrop’s most high profile and longest employers — the Pilkington flat glass manufacturing facility — are the latest victims…
Year after year the trucks rolled in, dumping loads of sewage sludge and contaminated dirt at a soil-recycling plant in this tiny desert community.
Thousands of deliveries were dutifully recorded in a state database. Anyone who checked it would have seen that the plant had no state permit to accept hazardous waste.
Yet the dumping went on for seven years — because state regulators either did not look at their own records or did not act on the information. The waste piles grew, rising 40 feet above the Coachella Valley floor. The stench worsened too.
Eventually, noxious odors swept over Saul Martinez Elementary School, more than a mile away. Children vomited. Teachers gasped for breath. Even then it took a storm of publicity and pressure from a U.S. senator before regulators stopped the dumping in 2011.
“It was just blatant negligence,” said Celia Garcia, then a teacher at the school, where two of her children were students.
The episode is emblematic of California’s chronic failure to keep track of thousands of tons of dangerous chemicals and toxic metals shipped for disposal on the state’s roads and railways, a Times investigation found…