For years, Fresno County has been No. 1 on a California list that you won’t find at the chamber of commerce — pesticide detections in water wells. On the latest list, the county had more than one-third of the state’s 286 detections.
But the real news is what the state leaves out of this and other annual pesticide reports, advocates for healthy drinking water say.
There is no mention of perhaps the most dangerous and widespread chemical related to pesticides in the San Joaquin Valley.
News
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Host: Dolores Weller, Associate Director, CVAQ
Guest(s): The American Lung Association’s annual, State of the Air 2012 report grades cities and counties affected by air pollution. Susie Rico-Vasquez, Associate Area Director –American Lung Association Fresno discusses key findings in the Valley.
EPA Region 9 stretches across the arid Southwestern United States and into the Pacific to encompass Hawaii and a string of island territories. Some 97 percent of people living in the region are served by municipal utility systems that meet drinking water and wastewater standards. However, the remaining 3 percent tend to live either in small communities in arid regions or on tropical islands where adequate drinking water and sanitation are a major concern.
Region 9 is geographically and economically diverse. While the region includes some of the largest and richest cities in the nation, it is also home to pockets of poverty in isolated little towns and villages. The islands of Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Marianas typically have median household incomes much lower than on the mainland. And small rural communities and tribal enclaves scattered across California, Arizona and Nevada suffer from a lack of water and financial resources.
Assemblymember Henry T. Perea (D-Fresno) honored three Central Valley women from the Community Water Center (CWC) in Sacramento Monday as part of the 2012 Woman of the Year ceremony.
Susana De Anda, Laurel Firestone and Maria Herrera along with several others, run the CWC with the goal of helping disadvantaged communities in the Central Valley gain access to safe, clean and affordable drinking water.
I got word today that the photos in my 25 Stories from the Central Valley collection have been hung and are already generating good conversation at the Fresno Regional Foundation.
A pesticide used primarily in the strawberry industry is being pulled from the U.S. market by its Japanese manufacturer, a move that comes after criticism from environmentalists and farmworkers who claim the chemical is toxic and may cause cancer.
Nitrogen pollution under some of California’s most intensively farmed areas has posed a threat to drinking water for decades. But the full extent of the problem — and the challenges in correcting it — were laid out in detail last week by a team of scientists at the University of California, Davis.
Pesticide illness cases rose in San Joaquin County in 2009, paralleling a rise in the number of applications, state and county officials reported.
Statewide, the California Department of Pesticide Regulation identified 1,329 cases of illness in 2009 potentially linked to pesticide exposure, an increase of 4 percent increase from the 1,275 cases investigated in 2008.
The Committee for a Better Arvin has been leading the fight for clean air in a city with the worst air quality in the Nation. Here, they show the GCM team around their community.
The University of California at Davis’ Center for Watershed Sciences released a major report on March 19 detailing extensive nitrate contamination in groundwater used as drinking water in the state’s two leading agricultural regions—The Tulare Lake Basin in the Central Valley, and the Salinas Valley on the Central Coast. It finds that nitrate is now polluting the drinking water for a quarter million people, with projections that millions more Californians will be affected in the future. The report estimates that providing safe water to the communities currently affected will cost $20 to $36 million per year. Nitrate has been linked to Blue Baby syndrome, miscarriage, birth defects, diabetes, thyroid disease and cancer.