The state on Tuesday gave preliminary permission for Chemical Waste Management to increase by half the size of the West’s largest toxic-waste landfill near Kettleman City.
California Department of Toxic Substances Control regulators said that a “draft permit” would let the landfill expand by 5 million cubic yards. The landfill’s current permit allows 10.7 million cubic yards.
A final permit could be issued at the end of this year after three public meetings this summer in Kettleman City and once the state responds to public comments.
The state’s announcement drew immediate condemnation from environmental groups. They said it was unfair to the residents of Kettleman City, a poor farming community of 1,500 on the Valley’s west side near the landfill who have endured a rash of unexplained birth defects and exposure to bad air from Interstate 5 diesel and auto fumes…
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When I heard the Moms Clean Air Force was launching a new initiative to engage Latino moms and dads in the greater Los Angeles and the Central Valley regions (in both English and Spanish) I was thrilled. Having grown up in Los Angeles, I always knew I wanted to help spark a greater conversation about what climate change means to the Latino community and their families – and the long-term problems they would face if we didn’t address it…
Becky Quintana walks along the gravel shoulder of a rural two-lane road through the sprawling orange groves of California’s Central Valley, the snow-white jags of the Sierra Nevada at her back. “On a clear day, it’s like you can almost touch the mountains,” says the 57-year-old school bus driver, who has lived all her life in Seville, 35 miles south of Fresno. The vast majority of the town’s 500 residents are Latinos, and most toil for meager wages in Tulare County’s vast nut, olive and citrus orchards. The nearby Kaweah River, which flows from headwaters in the high peaks of the Sierra, is cool and clean. But most of its flow is diverted into irrigation canals and delivered to a faraway mosaic of farms and cities…
Every day residents in about 160 communities across California turn on their faucets and out flows water so contaminated that it does not meet public health standards. In unincorporated areas in the Central Valley – like Tooleville and East Orosi in Tulare County – this deplorable situation has dragged on for a decade.
Now, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencyhas shone a glaring spotlight on the problem of tainted drinking water, lambasting the state of California for sitting on $455 million in federal dollars intended for timely water system upgrades…
Earlier this week the Department of Pesticide Regulation held two community meetings in Fresno’s Farm Bureau as part of a series of hearing around the state in regards to the fumigant pesticide Chloropicrin. Chloropicrin is a substance used primarily to cultivate strawberries, almonds, and fruit trees. This substance has been linked to various health hazards and places residents of the San Joaquin Valley at a higher risk of exposure…
Earlier this week the California Senate Committee on Environmental Quality took on 6 Assembly Bills that were proposed as a way of making safe drinking water accessible for all Californians. Traditionally, contamination from agricultural and industrial sources have left thousands of people with little to no access to contaminant-free water for drinking or household tasks…
Fresno is the economic capital of the San Joaquin Valley, the breadbasket of California and the U.S. What was once home to wild grasslands and the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River, has transformed into valuable agricultural land wherelivestock and high-value crops such as nuts, stone fruit, and grapes have created some of the wealthiest farmers and ranchers in the country. However, unemployment in the region has long hovered around 20 percent because of the seasonal nature of farm labor…
A bright metal drinking fountain is mounted on the wall in the community center of this tiny town west of Fresno. No one pays it any mind: The water is drawn from a well that has been contaminated with arsenic for years.
“Can’t drink it, can’t cook with it … about all you can do is flush it,” said Ethel Myles, 75, who came to the Central Valley from Arkansas half a century ago to pick cotton.
Lanare, like scores of other impoverished California communities where the water is unsafe to drink, could be eligible for a share of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal and state funds to improve drinking water tainted by agricultural use and naturally occurring contaminants. But the state has been agonizingly slow to spend the money, snarling small communities in red tape that has delayed fixes year after year, according to drinking-water advocates, community leaders and residents…