On a clear night in the southern Valley towns of Tulare, Huron and Tranquillity, you sometimes can see a full moon over the thousands of miles of agriculture. On a warm, summer evening, these harvest moons are brilliant to see.
However, disturbing to this brilliant scenery is the stench of spray drift from pesticides that linger at night and the choking thickness of particulate matter, the smog considered one of the worst in the nation, that engulfs the Valley on warm days.
Despite what the San Joaquin Valley Air District says, some doctors believe these are some of the pollutants that cause asthma attacks.
The targets of asthma: Low-income Latino families lead the state for prevalence of asthma, namely young Latinos, and have already been diagnosed. African-Americans are a close second.
News
ARVIN, Calif. — There are more details about the newest violations at Community Recycling, violations that may have been what ultimately pushed county supervisors to close it down.
Tuesday, Cal OSHA revealed Community Recycling blatantly and repeatedly violated the state’s order to stay out of the drainage system where two workers died last month.
California has recently approved its plans to go ahead with one of the very few state-mandated Cap and Trade proposals in the world, placing itself as a global leader in this dubious and business-friendly approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But critics of Cap and Trade continue to express concern over its potential for failing both to reduce emissions and to protect communities at risk from toxic co-pollutants. I recently conducted this interview with Alegria de la Cruz, of the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, to get her perspective on the issue as it affects environmental justice communities in California.
Ken Moore brags about the water quality in Kerman, a Fresno County city of nearly 14,000 surrounded by farmland.
While other Central Valley towns report infamous water problems with nitrates and chromium 6 contamination — issues that include infant deaths, birth defects and cancer — Kerman’s water only needs chlorine added to kill bacteria before it flows through city pipes, said Moore, Kerman’s Public Works Director.
But that situation soon could change as California considers tightening laws regulating chromium 6, a known carcinogen that is an industry pollutant but also occurs naturally in groundwater around the state.
SAN FRANCISCO — It’s well known that California’s San Joaquin Valley has some of the worst air quality in the nation. A new study finds that the impacts of pollution are not felt uniformly across the region, but instead are clustered in urban centers and isolated rural towns.
Researchers at UC Davis used public records to map pollution sources such as hazardous waste facilities, refineries and areas under intense pesticide applications, and they overlay that data with demographic information, including poverty level, education, race/ethnicity and age.
What emerged was a picture of the state as a “patchwork” of intensely colored areas clustered around urban centers, and a string of dark dots, representing rural towns along the I-5 and I-99 from Stockton to Bakersfield.
The Kern County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously late Tuesday night to revoke Community Recycling’s conditional use permit. That means it will have to shut down. Supervisors also fined the facility and its parent company T&R Family Trust $2.3 million for years of alleged violations.
It took seven hours of public comment and deliberations for the supervisors to make their decisions. Several competing interests were represented: workers, environmentalists, state regulators, company lawyers, all pulling supervisors in different directions.
Sitting in the audience was Fastima Ramirez, the mother of 16-year-old Armando Ramirez and his brother, Eladio, who were killed by toxic fumes while working on a drainage canal at Community Recycling.
The county Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday night to revoke Community Recycling’s operating permit, hours after it fined the company $2.33 million for land use and related violations.
Company principal Tom Fry declined to comment after the 10 p.m. vote.
The decision to revoke the permit came after an emotional plea by Faustina Ramirez, the mother of the two brothers believed to have inhaled fatal doses of toxic gases at the plant.
“I want that company shut down,” she told the board in Spanish. “It is a big pain to lose your sons. I am asking for justice.”
Statement from Rey Leon, Founder and Executive Director of SJV Latino Environmental Advancement Project (Valley LEAP):
Valley LEAP’s economic equity arm, the Regional Green Jobs Coalition, is made up of over 300 allies representing, community, entrepreneurs, labor, non-profits, government and business. Being consistent with this reports findings, we are striving to develop a region with a new economy that has a moral character and culture to provide a social structure that cares for people first while enhancing the environment and building local high road jobs and economy.
Study after study has shared the story of poverty and vulnerability. This report helps connect the dots with how pollution is involved and effectively impacts the socio-economic downward spiral that has paralyzed our regions human development.
You’d think the housing bust would at least give the valley’s precious farm land a break from the constant pressure of development.
But no.
Instead of houses, now it’s armies of solar panels that are threatening to crowd out farming.
The conflict has been building throughout the Central Valley over the last year, even sparking a lawsuit against the Fresno County Board of Supervisors by the California Farm Bureau Federation last month.