It is outrageous that in 21st-century California we still have communities with tainted drinking water. Much of that bad water is concentrated in the San Joaquin Valley’s poorest communities, which don’t have the political clout to demand clean drinking water.
State and local officials talk about finding solutions, but they have little to show for their political posturing on the issue.
News
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No one likes getting a bad grade, even if it’s for air quality.
Next week, the American Lung Association plans to release its annual State of the Air report, which issues letter grades to counties nationwide.
So on Tuesday, a group of California air pollution officials sent out its own annual evaluation that details efforts made to clean the air in the state’s 35 air quality management districts.
Representatives from the California Air Pollution Control Officers Association were clear that they timed the release to counter the negative press that may come with the Lung Association’s report.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved a cap on ozone-making gases coming from farm pesticides, but it’s not going to make air-quality activists happy.
Jared Blumenfeld, EPA administrator for this region, told me the cap is 18.1 tons per day of volatile organic compounds or VOCs in the San Joaquin Valley. VOCs? Think of fumes coming from the chemicals.
Environmentalists have fought this 18.1-ton proposal since the state began using it a few years ago. The Valley’s farms are only putting out 16.8 tons right now. So, activists are asking how this makes the air any cleaner.
A bill [PDF] before the California Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce this month seeks to equalize renewable energy installation in the state by promoting small-scale solar rooftops in the disadvantaged communities.
The bill targets neighborhoods with high unemployment rates and those that “bear a disproportionate burden from air pollution, disease, and other impacts from the generation of electricity from the burning of fossil fuels,” the bill said.
De vez en cuando, Giovanni Mendoza, de 11 años, sale de la ducha con manchas rojas en su piel.
“Mamá, tengo itchy,” él grita cuando sucede.
Después de tantas veces de lo mismo, su madre, Verónica Mendoza, ya está preparada.
“Yo siempre tengo crema Benadryl para las alergias,” dijo ella.
No está segura, pero Mendoza sospecha que las ronchas rojas aparecen en la piel de su hijo cuando el agua en su comunidad agrícola está especialmente contaminada.
Como muchas comunidades en el Condado de Tulare, el agua subterránea en Cutler está contaminada. Aquí, el agua está contaminada con el pesticida DBCP, el cual ha sido prohibido por muchos años.
The West Fresno neighborhood near Church and Fruit is pretty quiet. There are no people in the park and the streets are empty. Residents say there’s something in the air.
Arogeanae Brown said, “it smells like dog food mixed with throw up to me, it’s very nasty.
Mary Curry said, “it’s very sickening, it makes you want to up-chuck.”
Marry Curry has been fighting the odor since 2005. She said it comes from Darling International, a meat rendering plant across the street.
“We recognize there’s a need for the kind of work they do but they need to relocate. They’re sitting in the heart of a community,” Curry said.
Nearly every day, Modesto Junior College student Arleen Hernandez battles an aging septic tank that backs up into her toilet and shower, bringing with it “bits of paper and chunks of mold.”
Hernandez has learned to take quick showers and work swiftly with a mop. She has also tried to fix a leaking toilet herself, but her home repair skills have been no match for an outdated system with clogged piping.
When Hernandez’s parents moved to Parklawn in 1986, they didn’t realize the extent to which their new neighborhood, an island of county land within the city of Modesto, lacks basic public services.
When he began organizing farmworker communities around environmental justice issues in the early 1990s, Lupe Martínez said Latinos — himself included — did not identify with the environmental movement.
“To me, it was either hugging the owls, or hugging the trees,” said Martínez, who today is the assistant director of the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment in Delano.
Since then, he has seen a huge shift in Latino support for environmental issues. Today, he said, the environment has become a very personal issue for Latinos across the state.
Entering Lupe Martínez’s office is like stepping into a museum exhibit featuring two of the state’s great social justice movements.
A huge red poster emblazoned with the United Farm Worker’s symbol — a black Aztec eagle — is propped against a filing cabinet.
A picture of residents from the farmworker community of Kettleman City — considered a birthplace of the environmental justice movement — hangs on a bulletin board behind his desk.
If his office is a museum, then Martínez — a stocky, 58-year-old with a bushy, salt-and-pepper mustache and sideburns — is the perfect docent.