Host: Dolores Weller, CVAQ Associate Director
Guest: Charles Ashley, Sierra Club (Tehipite Chapter) Activist, joins the show the timeline of the Jesse Morrow Mountain as a proposed mining site and the latest on Fresno County Board of Supervisors vote.
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 Department of Pesticide Regulation’s (DPR) plan to improve air quality by reducing volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions from pesticide applications has been approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Pacific Southwest Region, DPR Director Brian R. Leahy announced.
Amendments to the State Implementation Plan, or SIP, were approved Aug. 14, including regulations to reduce VOC emissions from fumigant pesticides in several areas of the state that do not meet federal air quality standards.
That last claim, equally as absurd as the other three given to us by George Orwell, is the latest attempt by high speed rail critics to undermine the project by claiming that it violates the principles of environmental justice.
Just because these farmers failed to pay attention in 2005 doesn’t mean that the principles of environmental justice have been denied. Environmental justice is not the same thing as NIMBYism, which is what the Kings County HSR opponents are claiming. Nor is it about protecting the ability of privileged white people from having to own up to their responsibilities to help provide a cleaner environment.
The Department of Pesticide Regulation’s (DPR) plan to improve air quality by reducing volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions from pesticide applications has been approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Pacific Southwest Region, DPR Director Brian R. Leahy announced today.
Amendments to the State Implementation Plan, or SIP, were approved Aug. 14, including regulations to reduce VOC emissions from fumigant pesticides in several areas of the state that do not meet federal air quality standards.
“California is the first state in the nation to specifically regulate agricultural pesticide applications to improve air quality,” Leahy said. “VOC emissions from fumigant pesticides declined significantly in the two years after the regulations took effect in 2008.”
Kings County opponents of California’s proposed high-speed train system have established a new drumbeat to which they are marching: “environmental justice.”
The phrase was repeated over and over to representatives of the California High-Speed Rail Authority and the Federal Railroad Administration during a five-hour public hearing Tuesday in Hanford.
Local critics of the California High-Speed Rail Authority project took a new tact Tuesday by arguing the route violates environmental justice laws.
The next air-quality crisis in the San Joaquin Valley is brewing around a precious $500 million in federal funds for building freeways and roads.
The money — along with road-building jobs — eventually could be frozen if the local air district cannot come up with a plan to clean up tiny bits of soot, diesel, moisture and chemicals called PM-2.5.
California legislators are poised to vote this week on a pair of bills that would help renters and low-income communities go solar.
Darlene Johnson and Christy Salazar were at the mercy of the triple-digit hot spell that occurred two weeks ago.
“I am living in a sweat box,” said Johnson, sitting on the porch of a rental home in Modesto’s Robertson Road area. “We have fans, but I’m pouring down sweat all the time. We had a cooler when we moved in, but the landlord took it out for some reason.”
Salazar said they stayed in the shade outside the home and soaked their faces with a water hose during the spate of searing heat. The two friends and Johnson’s husband share a two-bedroom home that’s unbearable on normal summer afternoons and gets even hotter when the sunlight bears down on the exposed west side of the house after 4 p.m.
Researchers recently predicted that Modesto’s Robertson Road neighborhood will be among the areas of California hardest hit by climate change.
The report from the Pacific Institute, an Oakland-based think tank, looked at the social impacts of atmospheric warming in California — if or when the effects of climate change start to take hold in the decades ahead. Some climatologists believe the Golden State will see more frequent heat waves, wildfires, coastal flooding and erosion with the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.