Jared Blumenfeld, a regional chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, whisked through Stockton the other day, announcing a plan to clean Valley pollution.
“Four times more people die in the San Joaquin Valley from air pollution than they do from traffic fatalities,” Blumenfeld said.
“If we had a tornado that swept through the Valley and 200 people died, it would be a huge national crisis. We have literally thousands of people dying from air pollution, but it’s invisible. You just don’t see those people.”
Excuse me. We see those people.
We have lived with the Valley’s appallingly degraded environment all our lives.
News
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Fifty years ago, the country of Finland and the state of California incarcerated their citizens at about the same rates. Since then, California’s prison population has grown five times larger, while Finland’s has been cut in half. On Friday, Mikko Aaltonen, a doctoral candidate at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and Fullbright scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Population Studies Center, came to the Alice Peters Auditorium to talk about the different ways crime and punishment are handled.
Joanna Mendoza, 16, has always guzzled bottled water at home, since the tap water in her Tulare County community of Cutler is contaminated with the long-banned pesticide DBCP.
She also brings bottled water to Orosi High School, where the water is contaminated with nitrates.
“I have grown up not being able to drink my tap water, which I think is something that is not really right,” Mendoza told Jared Blumenfeld, regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and other local, state and federal government officials last Wednesday afternoon.
“Why should I have to pay double for water?”
As part of a two-day tour of the San Joaquín Valley, Blumenfeld last Wednesday afternoon visited the small, east Tulare County communities of East Orosi and Seville to hear from Mendoza and other community residents who for years have fought for clean drinking water.
His visit coincided with the launch last week of the EPA’s San Joaquín Valley Strategic Plan, which pledges to support efforts to address drinking water issues, improve public health, and uphold environmental justice in the region.
Standing in front of a recently retrofitted train, emblazoned with the phrase, ‘Ultra Low Emission Locomotive,’ the regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last Tuesday announced $5 million in funding and a new strategic plan, both intended to improve the San Joaquín Valley’s polluted air and improve public health.
“When the Clean Air Act was signed 40 years ago, the goal was to make sure every American could breathe the same air,” Jared Blumenfeld said at a morning press conference at Central California Traction Rail Company, during the first stop in a two-day tour through the region. “That promise has still never been realized in the San Joaquín Valley.”
To combat the Valley’s dirty air — Sacramento has the country’s fifth worst ozone pollution, Modesto boasts the country’s 10th worst year-round particle pollution, and Stockton offers the 16th-worst short-term particle pollution — Blumenfeld announced $5 million in funding to pay for cleaner locomotives throughout the region.
Blumenfeld also launched the San Joaquín Valley Strategic Plan, which is intended to guide the agency’s future work in improving air quality in the Valley.
The plan — the EPA’s first for the region — also includes goals to improve regional water quality, protect public health, and uphold environmental justice.
Recently, Honorable Judge Ronald M. Gould, writing for a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, found theEnvironmental Protection Agency’s (“EPA”) 2010 approval of the San Joaquin Valley’s 2004 1-hour ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standard plan (“2004 SIP”) was arbitrary and capricious, citing EPA’s failure to adequately address the potential staleness of mobile source emissions data used to formulate the plan’s emissions inventory. The court’s decision invalidates EPA’s approval of the plan and requires the agency to conduct its review process anew. The case potentially signals EPA’s more stringent review of the accuracy and currency of emission inventories during its plan approval process.
Last month we saw a San Joaquin Valley December with more violations of the PM 2.5 air quality standard than ever before recorded. Data only goes back to 1999 so there is no way to confirm that air was better or worse in the 1980′s.
WASCO, Calif. — The Association of Irritated Residents (AIR) requested a hearing to challenge a request from Mt. Poso for a renewal of a coal-burning permit.
AIR said the Mt Poso facility has been in operation since 1989 using coal, tires, and petroleum coke for fuel. The coal comes by rail from out of state to a depot in Wasco and is delivered by truck to the site.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency, which has been longer on rules than protection, discovered the Valley last week.
EPA Regional Administrator Jered Blumenfeld rolled through the Valley for a series of photo-op stops to tout the agency’s newfound interest in cleaning up some of the nation’s worst polluted air.
“Four times more people die in the San Joaquin Valley from air pollution than they do from traffic fatalities,” said Blumenfeld, who heads the EPA’s San Francisco office.
That wasn’t exactly a news flash to Valley residents.
In 2008, Senate Bill SBX2 1 (Perata) was signed into law (Water Code Section 83002.5), requiring the State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board), in consultation with other agencies, to prepare a Report to the Legislature to “improve understanding of the causes of [nitrate] groundwa- ter contamination, identify potential remediation solutions and funding sources to recover costs expended by the State… to clean up or treat groundwater, and ensure the provision of safe drinking water to all communities.” The University of California prepared this Report under contract with the State Water Board as it prepares its Report to the Legislature.