California has failed to spend $455 million of federal money meant to improve water infrastructure in the state, while thousands of people rely on groundwater laced with nitrates and other contaminants, federal regulators said Friday.
The state has received more than $1.5 billion for its Safe Drinking Water State Revolving Fund over the past 15 years, but has failed to spend a large part of it in a timely manner, according to a noncompliance letter from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to the state’s public health department. The amount is the program’s largest unspent sum in the nation, the EPA said…
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A federal official announced Friday that California hasn’t spent $455 million of safe drinking-water funds — a fraction of which would fix many small-town water problems in the San Joaquin Valley.
The state could lose some of these federal funds if the problem isn’t addressed, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The federal money is sorely needed in the Valley where contamination threatens the drinking water of 250,000 people in rural towns. But residents often face years of delay to get through the state bureaucracy for funding…
California’s air is getting cleaner, but nobody is breathing a sigh of relief.
The latest figures from the state’s air pollution control districts show a dramatic improvement in the past decade, but the air in most of the state is far from pristine, and the San Joaquin Valley’s air quality remains the worst in the nation…
A local oil company is in hot water with the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board (the Board) after a YouTube video appeared to show the company discharging hydraulic fracking wastewater into an unlined retention pond during a fracking operation. The Board announced yesterday that it issued an investigative enforcement order to Vintage Production California LLC after the video was brought to its attention…
Kings County supervisors on Tuesday authorized staff to protest proposed new groundwater regulations for farmers.
The rules, feared by local farmers because of their potentially high cost, have been proposed by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board to prevent agricultural fertilizer from contaminating groundwater with nitrates.
Nitrate contamination has made the water undrinkable in several disadvantaged San Joaquin Valley communities.
The main source of nitrates in the Valley is agricultural fertilizers that have been applied for decades, according to a 2012 study by the University of California, Davis…
The fracking story Sunday from my colleague Lewis Griswold outlined the vast and lucrative oil opportunities in Monterey shale along the San Joaquin Valley’s west side.
The Valley, indeed, could be a key place to do this business, but not without controversy. The fight has been under way for some time, and land in Fresno County is involved.
On Monday, environmentalists cheered a federal court decision that probably will slow fracking exploration in a small part of west Fresno County near Coalinga and a larger piece of land in Monterey County.
It could be an important ruling in California and elsewhere for this hot topic…
An oil drilling rig off a rural road in southern Kings County and others like it springing up in the Valley could be the key to newfound wealth and prosperity for California, although at an uncertain cost to the environment.
The exploratory wells are seeking Monterey shale, a massive and deep formation of oil-bearing rock that lies under much of the western San Joaquin Valley from Modesto to Bakersfield…
An almost-full hazardous waste landfill operated by Chamical Waste Management a few miles away from this small Kings County town was hit with a $311,194 fine for not reporting spills of toxic materials, the state Department of Toxic Substances Control announced Wednesday.
“This is a substantial and aggressive penalty which reflects the seriousness with which DTSC views these violations,” said Brian Johnson, DTSC’s deputy director of enforcement, in a conference call.
The fine covered 72 unreported spills at the facility dating as far back as 2008. The facility was cited with the violations last November. Most of the spills were small and did not threaten public health, according to Johnson…
Chemical Waste Management must pay $311,194 for failing to report dozens of spills at its Kettleman Hills toxic waste landfill, the state Department of Toxic Substances Control said Wednesday.
But there’s “no evidence to suggest” that toxic waste left the landfill or harmed the public, DTSC deputy director of enforcement Brian Johnson said.
Chem Waste, operator of the largest toxic waste landfill in the West, said it won’t fight the penalty, which included $291,208 in fines plus departmental costs. Spills were small and “were all immediately cleaned up,” the company said…
Researchers have linked air pollution and birth defects among pregnant women in the San Joaquin Valley, according to a study by Stanford University School of Medicine.
The study looked at women between 1997 and 2006, including 806 whose pregnancies were impacted by birth defects and 849 not impacted. Researchers determined that the women who spent their early weeks of pregnancy living in areas with worse air pollution had a higher risk of having a birth defect in their babies.
Women who breathed the highest levels of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide were more likely to have a baby with a spinal column problem or an underdeveloped brain, according to the study…