Yellow shirts were proudly worn at the Capitol West steps on Wednesday, August 28, 2013. This rally served as the culmination of a two day long conference in Sacramento hosted by California Environmental Justice Alliance and many other partner groups. This rally featured legislative speakers as well as community leader speakers and established the presence of an environmental justice movement that is resonating across the whole state. From communities like San Diego, Richmond, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Coachella, Riverside, Fresno, Wilmington, Kettleman, Oakland, Bakersfield, Delano, and many others, the participants stood together to demand environmental justice from the California legislature…
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Central Valley Air Quality Coalition celebrated their tenth annual lobby day by traveling to the state Capitol building on Monday. CVAQ’s annual lobby day focuses on bringing attention, empowering residents, and lobbying for better air quality in the San Joaquin Valley. This year the coalition focused on mobilizing residents and community leaders from across the valley and allies from all over the state…
Central Valley Air Quality Coalition celebrated their tenth annual lobby day by traveling to the state Capitol building on Monday. CVAQ’s annual lobby day focuses on bringing attention, empowering residents, and lobbying for better air quality in the San Joaquin Valley. This year the coalition focused on mobilizing residents and community leaders from across the valley and allies from all over the state.
Together, the members of various organizations arrived at the Capitol early on Monday morning looking to embark in a long day session of legislative visits. During the visits these members explained to members of the legislature about many of the air quality concerns that are very present in the San Joaquin Valley and continue to harm our communities. Pushing for a legislative packet that CVAQ deems would make considerable improvements to the valley air quality, those members began meeting with representatives and staffers.
Among the bills that CVAQ was advocating for are SB 605 by Senator Lara, AB 1330 by Assemblyman John Perez, AB 304 by Assemblyman Das Williams. These bills serve to promote better air quality, government accountability, and investing in environmental justice communities…
Chris Kapheim, the head of Alta Irrigation District, worked a decade on getting fresh Kings River water for seven northern Tulare County towns where people fear their tainted tap water.
He succeeded in getting the water, but many more years may pass before people are drinking it.
River water needs to be treated before going to people’s taps. But for years, a treatment plant project has been lost in a bureaucratic Bermuda Triangle. It has been a struggle to even get public money for a feasibility study…
A water bill moving swiftly through the Legislature would transfer responsibility for the state’s drinking water program from the Department of Public Health to the State Water Resources Control Board.
The Senate Appropriations Committee gave the green light to Assembly Bill 145 last week. The bill is now waiting for consideration by the full Senate, having already passed the Assembly.
Supporters of the bill say the state Health Department has been sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Environmental Protection Agency funding for the state to clean up contaminated drinking water, Many small California towns, most of them in the San Joaquin Valley, have contaminated tap water…
In parts of the Central Valley, water rates are unaffordable, says a new study by the Pacific Institute in partnership with Community Water Center and Fresno State University.
Many households, even within affluent communities, routinely spend over the affordability threshold of 2 percent of their household income on their water bill, the researchers say. The number of water systems with “unaffordable” rates varies by region and measure used…
Confronting a two-year drought and dwindling reservoir levels, speakers at a water hearing on Friday said that San Joaquin Valley residents need to unite in a common front to pressure legislators for more storage capacity.
The hearing was hosted by Assemblyman Rudy Salas, D-Bakersfield, to discuss possible regional solutions to a problem that hasn’t made much headway despite years of agricultural interests calling for additional dams.
Farmers were there to talk about lost income, county officials were there to talk about links to Kings County’s economic health, and environmental justice groups were there to talk about the need for clean, reliable tap water in small, disadvantaged Valley towns suffering from contaminated wells…
Last night the Department of Toxic Substance Control (DTSC) announced that the public comment period for the proposed permit for expansion of the Kettleman Hills Facility will be extended to October 11, 2013. The date of the Public Hearing has also been pushed back to September 18th.
DTSC did not give any reasons for this extension in their formal announcement. However, much of the environmental justice community understands that this is a reaction to DTSC’s admitted failure to properly notify all of the interested parties of the proposed expansion permit and for their failure to provide enough and bilingual community outreach to the people of Kettleman City.
Water issues dot the California policy landscape this summer like weather fronts on a map, some promising much-needed moisture and others bringing dark clouds of controversy and potential problems.
Some issues — like contaminants in drinking water — are clearly and directly related to public health. Others — including delayed distribution of federal funding for water projects, scarcity of water in some areas and diversion of water in other areas — might be indirectly connected to public health in a variety of ways, ranging from reduced supplies of clean drinking water to reduced capacity to grow crops and maintain livestock…
One Tulare County school has used bottled water for a decade to prevent students from drinking from a contaminated water supply.
Tiny, little-known communities such as San Lucas and Monson have worked for years on plans to combat arsenic and nitrates that have rendered their water unsafe for human consumption.
The massive water agency in Los Angeles has $135 million worth of projects lined up to purify water and protect a vulnerable reservoir.
These are a few of the parties that stand to receive money from a drinking water fund under fire for failing to spend nearly half a billion dollars, the highest rate of unliquidated money of any state participating in a federally funded program mandated by a 1996 update to the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Across California, water agencies and other local governments are struggling not only to deal with dirty water, but to navigate a state-run project funding system that critics say is slow to act. Lawmakers are looking to overhaul the way hundreds of millions of dollars are spent to clean up California’s water.