It started in 2001, and mostly affected the very young and the very old. Peoples’ hair would fall out, their skin would break out in rashes and their eyes would turn red after showers.
“That was how people were hurt on the outside,” said Horacio Amezquita, manager of the San Jerardo Cooperative. “On the inside, we don’t know.”
Amezquita, a former farm worker, lives at the cooperative, which houses about 250 low-income people. Many of the residents work on nearby farms that use nitrogen-based fertilizers to help crops grow.
But the very fertilizers that keep these farms in business leach into the soil and into the drinking water.
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 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced last Thursday that 46 tribal and nonprofit organizations are being granted a combined one million dollars of taxpayer money to fund “environmental justice issues.” According to the EPA, such “issues”translate as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to” the environmental decision-making process.
Environmental justice will be achieved, the agency states, when everyone has “the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards” and equality in obtaining a “healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.”
According to the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment, “Environmental justice as a social movement has grown rapidly since the early 1990s in response to concerns about disproportionate environmental burdens in poor, indigenous and minority communities.” Moreover, the university indicates that “natural resources and environment played an early and important role in helping bring national attention to this emerging social and political problem.”
Sonam Gill MSEM ’13 and MBA ’13 didn’t think twice about giving up her summer vacation to research San Joaquin Valley towns that showed high rates of health defects in children, poor air quality, and pesticide-infected water.
For Gill, the research was more than theoretical. She has family living in the San Joaquin Valley and said that environmental inequalities based on geography, race, ethnicity, or other factors can lead to increased cases of asthma, cancer, and birth defects. She sees her research, part of an internship with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as a steppingstone to a career in raising awareness about low-income, minority, and child populations living in polluted and toxic areas.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded a $25,000 grant to activist group Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice for a campaign focused on reducing residents’ exposure to diesel pollution in western Kings County.
Greenaction is among four California organizations that received the federal grants totaling $99,988. The grants allows these groups to conduct research, education and projects to develop solutions to local health and environmental issues in communities overburdened by pollution.
In the Valley, Greenaction got the money for its project entitled “Kings County Diesel Education, Emission Reduction and Environmental Health.”
The campaign, at work in Kettleman City and Avenal, aims to conduct outreach to educate parents, trucking companies and drivers on the impact of diesel emissions on their community, and encourage equipment changes that will lead to emission reduction. Greenaction is expected to engage in discussion at least 1,000 residents, 75 drivers, 10-20 businesses and three school administrators about the air pollution impacting those communities, EPA said.
On December 8, 2011, the Community for a Better Arvin began their air monitoring project. Because their air was so bad, the Air Board closed down the local monitor in an effort to hide the evidence and ignore the problem. Residents decided to take matters into their own hands. With the help of Global Community Monitoring and the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, Arvin residents are taking charge of measuring their own air.
SAN FRANCISCO — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded $99,988 in grants to organizations in the San Joaquin Valley, Los Angeles, Riverside and Kettleman City for projects focused on reducing exposure to toxins, education about diesel, and drinking water improvements.
In the Valley, Community Water Center got a $25,000 grant for its project, “Protecting Groundwater from the Ground Up.” The project is at work in Merced, Tulare, Kern, Fresno, Kings, Madera, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties.
The project aims to educate select disadvantaged rural communities in the Valley about the causes and effects of drinking water pollution in their communities, and empower affected residents to take specific actions to reduce and prevent contamination of the region’s drinking water sources, the news release said.
We have followed the proceedings in the environmental justice case against the California Air Resources Board’s Cap and Trade Program in prior posts. TheSan Francisco Chronicle reports today that the trial judge has accepted the report from the California Air Resources Board describing its reevaluation and adoption of its alternatives analysis, meeting the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act. This should come as no surprise as the agency dotted its i’s and crossed its t’s in giving a more in depth analysis of the alternatives and responding to public comments before making its new decision. Indeed the plaintiffs did not oppose the presentation by the agency.
California has the worst air quality in the country, according to the state’s air resources board, and 40 percent of the contributing pollution comes from passenger cars and light-duty trucks. In its effort to improve the state’s air, the board, commonly known as CARB, proposed a package of new rules on Wednesday intended to cut vehicle emissions while aggressively increasing the number of advanced clean cars on the state’s roads, as well as fueling stationsto serve them.
The package, called the Advanced Clean Cars program, would apply to light-duty vehicles manufactured from 2015 to 2025. It combines four sets of related standards that were previously tracked separately by the agency: greenhouse gas limits, the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate, the Low Emission Vehicle (LEV-III) program and the newly created Clean Fuels Outlet regulation.
Combining these standards in a single program should simplify rule making and compliance, and help the state reach its greenhouse gas targets, officials said. In a 2005 executive order, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger established a goal to bring greenhouse-gas emissions in 2050 to 80 percent below their levels of 1990.
Which came first – the environmental hazard or the socially vulnerable community?
According to UC Davis’ new report on the inequities of the San Joaquin Valley, the two are closely related and the key to addressing the region’s history of exploitation and neglect.
“Land of Risk, Land of Opportunity” is one of the first efforts to include communities on the frontlines of environmental justice issues facing the valley. The UC Davis Center for Regional Change worked in close collaboration with grassroots organizations, mapping California’s heartland according to environmental, social, and health indicators like the presence of toxins, refineries, waste treatment facilities, poverty and education levels, and life expectancy.
What they found was that a third of the population faces high levels of both environmental and social risk, and that the higher an area’s social vulnerability the more susceptible to environmental hazards.
As dust swirled around the outskirts of the controversial Lamont composting facility Thursday, a group of concerned local residents tried to describe the area’s foul-smelling odors.
“Feces” was the response everyone quickly agreed on.
“There’s something else, though,” said Denny Larson, sniffing the hazy air as if it were a glass of fine wine. “It’s not quite rotten cabbage.”
Larson, a Bay Area-based expert in grassroots air monitoring efforts, joined Arvin residents and air advocates on what they called a “toxic tour” of southern Kern County. The so-called Arvin Bucket Brigade, which is receiving $130,000 from The California Endowment to monitor their own air, wanted to highlight the region’s possible polluters — from dairies and fertilizer suppliers to auto repair shops.
Their hope is that their sampling could persuade government agencies and regulators to pay more attention to Arvin, home of some of the worst air in the country.