On April 6th the Committee for a Better Shafter and the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment celebrated the groundbreaking of a four acre community garden. The community hopes to use the land to grow healthy, organic fruits and vegetables that could eventually be sold at their own farmers market.
It is part of CRPE’s Green and Just Economic Development campaign which aims to put the new “green economy” in the hands of the community and in the communities that need it the most…
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 San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District has always had a difficult story to tell.
Each year district officials assert that significant progress has been made in improving the valley’s air quality. And each year, Bakersfield is listed among cities with the worst air in the nation.
It’s a dichotomy that is not immediately apparent in the air district’s annual “Report to the Community” released Tuesday…
In the early 1960s, Carrie Bonner was pregnant with her eighth child and widowed after her husband was shot dead in a juke joint here. She moved to a small rental and could never afford to leave Lanare.
That’s fine with Bonner. She likes it here. Sitting in the Lanare Community Center, a leaky old building with no air conditioning or heating, the 89-year-old says she relishes her role as one of four members in the town’s only church.
But, while Lanare has no more juke joints and violence now is uncommon, Bonner knows this isn’t pristine country living. In the wide-open spaces of southwest Fresno County, the town of 590 is deceptively risky.
“We don’t have a health clinic or sewers or even crosswalks,” she says. “Two people were hit by cars and killed in the last year. And you don’t drink the tap water if you can afford bottled water.”
Scientists agree with Bonner. People in Lanare’s ZIP code die a decade sooner than those in the Woodward Park area of northeast Fresno, according to “Place matters for health in the San Joaquin Valley,” a Fresno State study released last year.
This week the California Environmental Protection Agency issued a disturbing but worthwhile report on environmental justice issues in California. That report confirms what many environmental justice advocates and state residents already assumed: that the San Joaquin Valley is–far and away–the most environmentally-challenged region of the state…
A far-reaching plan by the state to protect a large part of the San Joaquin Valley’s groundwater drew criticism from farmers who say it is too costly and from environmentalists who say it doesn’t go far enough.
About 75 people representing growers, community members and agriculture leaders voiced their concerns Thursday during a workshop held by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board in downtown Fresno.
The proposed rules that have been in the works for years would create a system for monitoring groundwater and controlling discharges of contaminants such as fertilizers and pesticides. The rules cover 850,000 acres of farmland in the broad Tulare Lake Basin, the nation’s richest farming region…
On April 23, 2013, the California Environmental Protection agency released its California Communities Environmental Health Screening Tool, or CalEnviroScreen. This mapping tool was developed jointly by CalEPA and the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) “for evaluating multiple pollutants and stressors in communities.” The mapping tool is intended as the next step in implementation of CalEPA’s 2004 Environmental Justice Action Plan, which called for guidance on the analysis of multiple pollution sources and their impacts on California communities…
Central Valley communities are among the hardest hit in California under a unique new misery index that provides statewide mapping on community pollution, health and well-being.
The state Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday unveiled a new environmental screening tool that reveals – by ZIP code – how neighborhoods are affected by pesticides, truck fumes, hazardous waste and other toxic factors.
The index also tracks community health and well-being, based on such things as the number of residents living in poverty, their education levels and rates of asthma…
California cities, including Modesto, Fresno and Merced, continue to have some of the worst air in the United States, according to the American Lung Association’s “State of the Air 2013” report.
The annual report, which tracks air pollution across the country, ranked Bakersfield as the sootiest city in the country, followed by Merced and Fresno. Modesto was No. 6. Many California cities also ranked high in ozone pollution, particularly in the summer…
One major air pollutant got better and one got worse, but both are still worthy of an “F” grade in the eyes of the American Lung Association.
The association’s annual State of the Air report, released today, shows considerable improvement for San Joaquin County in the number of days considered hazardous for summertime ozone pollution…
American Lung Association executives delivered perennial bad news Tuesday but with a dose of encouragement: Bakersfield and the San Joaquin Valley still have some of the nation’s worst air quality, but there are points of improvement.
Bakersfield-Delano ranked first in the nation for short-term and annual particle pollution, and third in ozone pollution in the Lung Association’s “State of the Air 2013” report…