The federal government is long overdue in updating standards for fine particulates, one of the most lethal types of air pollution and one that is prevalent in high concentrations in the San Joaquin Valley. Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed to finally update the current standard, set in 1997, to a more protective level. This new standard must be adopted.
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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.
Carmina Ramos vividly recalls the night her son, Francisco, then age 2, was in his car seat suffering from an asthma attack and gasping for air as her boyfriend barreled 80 miles an hour on a two-lane, country road to Children’s Hospital of Central California, about 45 miles away.
Police stopped the car, and drew their guns as they shouted instructions.
Francisco eventually made it to the hospital emergency room that night.
That frightening scene — minus the police stop — has become too common for Latinos in the San Joaquín Valley.
With attention still focused on the toxic-waste disposal site near Kettleman City, state public health officials will offer new information tonight on birth defects in the small, unincorporated Kings County community.
The meeting, starting at 6 p.m. at the Kettleman City Elementary School, is an update to a 165-page study released in December 2010 from the California Department of Public Health that found no link between a cluster of birth defects and the toxic-waste facility near the town.
I have previously blogged about the ongoing battle between environmental justice activists and the California Air Resources Board (“CARB”) over CARB’s adoption of its scoping plan for its AB 32 program to reduce global warming emissions. I focused upon the issues under the California Environmental Quality Act, basically CARB’s initial failure to thoroughly consider alternatives and its leap to judgment before considering its response to comments. A San Francisco Superior Court judge issued a writ to correct those errrors, CARB complied and the issues were resolved.
Residents Kettleman City have been outraged and want answers as to why they’re experiencing so many birth defects. The california Department of Public Health is holding the meeting tonight after new studies just came out. The state says the number of birth defects for 2010/2011 is down. They’re finding the numbers to be returning to rates seen prior to 2008 before the increase. The CDPH also released that there’s no patterns among the cases, suggesting that there’s not a common underlying cause to the birth defects in Kettleman City. But Bradley Angel with the environmental group green action claims state health officials are withholding vital information. Angel says there have been more birth defects, a higher number of miscarriages and several cases of childhood cancers.
An alarming increase of birth defects in the farmworker community of Kettleman City appears to be reversing, state health leaders said Tuesday.
But the latest birth defects report is not complete, and it is raising criticism from some residents. They say the state rushed the report and didn’t speak to anyone in town over the last 18 months.
California environmental justice groups filed a complaint last week with the federal Environmental Protection Agency arguing that California’s greenhouse gas (GHG) cap-and-trade program violates Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act, which prohibits state programs receiving federal funding from causing discriminatory impacts. They allege that the cap-and-trade program will fail to benefit all communities equally, and could result in maintaining and potentially increasing GHG emissions (and associated co-pollutant emissions) in disadvantaged neighborhoods that already experience disproportionate pollution.
When I first came to California many years ago, it took me a long time to get used to the idea that I could buy fresh strawberries in the middle of winter. For this Pennsylvania girl, fresh strawberries meant late spring, time to hit the local farm stands with my mom, looking for the plumpest specimens for her light-as-air shortcake.
The Center on Race, Poverty and Environment has opened a new front in its war against California’s Cap & Trade program, which is intended to reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions. The Center on behalf of a number of environmental organizations has filed an administrative complaint under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §2000d, with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“US EPA”), alleging that the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) Cap & Trade program will either deny people of color or ethnic minorities the benefits of this program or actually exacerbate emissions in their neighborhoods.
A coalition of environmental justice and civil rights activists has filed a complaint alleging that cap-and-trade provisions in California’s pioneering program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions discriminate against people of color.