When a child’s health is on the line, moms will often stand up in truly courageous ways. Like the mothers in the small, rural community of Lindsay, California who were concerned about how pesticides were affecting their children.
These central valley moms enrolled in a project back in 2006 to monitor how much chlorpyrifos — a commonly used insecticide — was drifting into their homes from nearby fields and orchards, using a simple “Drift Catcher” tool. They also signed up for biomonitoring, a way to find out how much of that pesticide was then making it into their bodies, and likely also into the bodies of their children…
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.
Over Thanksgiving, a friend asked how the San Joaquin Valley’s air quality might affect someone with a heart problem. It’s a good question now when the most dangerous air issues arrive.
There is evidence that fatal heart-attack risk rises with the increase of winter-time particle pollution, known as PM-2.5.
What’s PM-2.5? Think of tiny soot from wood burning in fireplaces. It also comes from diesel exhaust, chemicals in the air and microscopic moisture droplets.
By chance, an air-quality activist last week sent me a link to an article in progress from the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. It said the odds of a fatal heart attack for nonsmokers rise 22% for each 10 microgram increase in PM-2.5…
Every day, the trucks rumble into the Central Valley by the dozens, chugging over the Grapevine loaded with lawn clippings from Beverly Hills, sewage sludge from Los Angeles and rotting yogurt and vegetables from around Southern California.
Los Angeles officials and others say the daily caravan is an essential step toward recycling thousands of tons of urban waste and turning it into compost and fertilizer in California’s vast agrarian middle. But increasingly, residents of the Central Valley and other rural areas object to the stream of semis and their unpleasant cargo.
“You guys in Los Angeles are dumping all your waste on us,” said Sarah Sharpe, the environmental health program director at Fresno Metro Ministry, a nonprofit group that advocates for environmental justice. “We just don’t think it’s fair…”
Environmental activists and leaders of this impoverished community, outraged by unreported spills of cancer-causing chemicals, are trying to block expansion of a toxic waste dump that is the largest of its kind west of the Mississippi River.
Activists say the history of the troubled Chemical Waste Management dump and new citations alleging failure to report 72 hazardous materials spills over the last four years show the company cannot be trusted to protect public health. The state Department of Toxic Substances Control issued the citations earlier this month — and is the agency that must rule on the proposed expansion.
“If this new case is not enough to demonstrate a pattern and practice of violations, I don’t know what else the agency would need to see,” said Ingrid Brostrom, an attorney with the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment. The 1,600-acre dump is just off Interstate 5 in Central California…
This was to be the first year Jessica Sanchez was in charge of Thanksgiving dinner.
She began preparations Wednesday, crossing through her family’s small kitchen to a bottled water dispenser in the living room and filling a pan to wash the turkey.
She couldn’t use the tap water because East Orosi is one of many Central Valley farm communities where the supply is tainted — by nitrates, arsenic or bacteria traced to decades of agricultural runoff.
Environmental activists and leaders of this impoverished central California community, outraged by unreported spills of cancer-causing chemicals, are trying to block expansion of a toxic waste dump that is the largest of its kind west of the Mississippi River.
Activists say the history of the troubled Chemical Waste Management dump and new citations alleging failure to report 72 hazardous materials spills over the last four years show that the company cannot be trusted to protect public health.
There’s growing evidence that people living in impoverished Latino towns around the San Joaquin Valley are in danger if they drink water from their taps.
Already this year, researchers have announced that dirty drinking water is a threat for 250,000 Valley residents, especially in places like Seville, Orosi and Tooleville in Tulare County. The culprit is nitrates from fertilizers, septic systems, animal waste and rotting vegetation.
This month, a new study reveals people living in similar communities also are at a high risk of drinking arsenic in their water…
The fire in Susana De Anda’s belly is evident as she revs up farmworkers to talk about their communities’ water issues.
This community organizer and co-director of the Community Water Center said that, like a good rock ’n’ roll concert, community meetings need to engage their audience.
“You go for a good time and good theater,” she said. “I make sure people are in tune. As an organizer, I get to be the rock and roller.”
Her infectious fervor for clean drinking water was evident as she coordinated a monthly meeting of A.G.U.A., which stands for Asociacion de Gente Unida por el Agua. After a long day at work in the fields and packing sheds, A.G.U.A. members take it upon themselves to get clean drinking water for their communities…
Consumer Watchdog today praised the Department of Toxic Substances Control for 72 citations of Chemical Waste Management Inc. for failing to report spills of hazardous waste at its hazardous waste and PCB landfill over a four-year period, but said now the department should follow through with a permit denial. The department referred the case to the state Attorney General’s Office. If the company is charged $25,000 for each violation, the fines could total $1.8 million.
“It’s about time the DTSC cracked down on this serial violator of environmental laws,” said consumer advocate Liza Tucker. “But based on the company’s appalling record, the DTSC should deny Waste Management a new permit to expand its operations.”
Room at the hazardous waste landfill began to run out in 2009 and sources say the company can now accept a few truckloads of waste a day, down from a few hundred a day at its peak. The company is waiting for permits from the DTSC and other state regulators to expand the facility. “Unfortunately, even a fine of $1.8 million won’t drive this big company to change its ways,” said Tucker. “We’ve seen that fines have become just a cost of doing business. What will get through is a permit denial. California law clearly states that the DTSC has every right to put serial environmental violators out of business…”
A hazardous waste landfill has been cited for 72 instances of failing to report toxic materials spills, the state Department of Toxic Substances Control announced Tuesday.
Chemical Waste Management Inc., the landfill operator, didn’t appropriately notify the state agency of the spills as required by law, said Brian Johnson, the agency’s deputy director of enforcement.
The agency fined the company $46,000 in 2011 for similar spills and ordered Chem Waste to fully comply with spill reporting requirements, Johnson said. Now the company could face even bigger fines for spills that included herbicides, lead-contaminated soil, PCBs and other chemicals, the agency said in a telephone press conference.