In December of 2010, Environmental Working Group (EWG) published the results of the first national investigation of suspected carcinogen chromium-6 (also known as hexavalent chromium) in the drinking water of 35 cities around the United States. EWG supporters submitted tap water samples from their own communities—this study represents a consumer-driven groundswell of interest in water safety by an increasing number of you who are taking proactive roles regarding your health.
Unfortunately, the results of the study were disturbing.
Chromium-6 was detected in 31 of the 35 city water supplies tested. Even though this report stirred controversy, the EWG’s findings were confirmed by a number of independent tests by various water utility companies.
Hexavalent chromium is classified as “likely to be carcinogenic to humans” by the U.S. EnvironmentalProtection Agency (EPA).
News
We are thrilled to announce the launch of Jill Iscol’s debut, Hearts on Fire, which features a chapter on our very own Co-Executive Director, Susana De Anda, and our work at the Community Water Center. Proceeds from the book will help support CWC and the other amazing organizations led by the inspiring young leaders highlighted in this book.
Jill Iscol’s Hearts on Fire is a call to action to people from all walks of life to roll up their sleeves and extend a helping hand to others. Fourteen extraordinary individuals tell their stories directly, honestly and passionately in a series of interviews. What are their hopes for the world? What are their dreams for the future? What are their fears? How are they changing the world one step at a time? Just in time for an important election cycle, Hearts on Fire gives a face to today’s global activists. At a time when headlines are overwhelmingly filled with economic crisis, warfare and natural disaster, Jill Iscol’s personal and inspiring message of hope will instruct and inspire the next generation of world leaders. Hearts on Fire is more than a book, it’s part of a social movement.
On November 3, 2011, the proposed Avenal Energy Project, a 600-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant proposed in the city of Avenal near Kettleman City in Kings County, California, encountered another legal challenge to providing electricity to the southern San Joaquin Valley.
California’s new greenhouse rules offer dairies two reasons to be thankful — an exemption from the limits and a chance to make money by voluntarily cutting back climate-warming methane.
But industry officials say it’s unlikely that many dairies will get involved because it’s too expensive to build a methane-capturing system.
“It’s got to pay for it to work,” says Michael Marsh, chief executive officer of Western United Dairymen, representing 1,000 dairies in the state. “We don’t think it does.”
It’s one of the growing pains for California’s newly approved cap-and-trade program, which is supposed to drop greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the end of this decade.
California has gone to extremes to improve the state’s air quality, pushing out coal-fired power plants and implementing the strictest auto emissions standards in the nation. L.A.’s persistent smog layer may be a shadow of its former self, but it hasn’t been enough. Lots of people and too many cars means California still has seven big cities that rank among the 20 most polluted in the nation.
L.A. ranks No. 2 on our list of America’s Dirtiest Cities, and San Diego is no. 9, but some of the worst air in the country is in smaller cities in the San Joaquin Valley, where a ring of mountains traps a stagnant stew of ozone and particulate matter. According to data that Forbes crunched from The American Lung Association’s State of the Air 2011 report, the most hazardous breathing in America is in Bakersfield. Hot, dusty, adjacent to California’s biggest oil fields, Bakersfield has 60 days a year of unhealthy air, 10 times a level considered acceptable. Its ozone levels are better than at any time in the past 15 years, but still unhealthy for 100 days out of the year.
AVENAL, Calif.—Environmental groups are appealing the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of a natural gas-fueled power plant in the San Joaquin Valley. The appeal, filed Thursday with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, challenges the EPA’s granting of an air pollution permit which would exempt Avenal Power Center, LLC from current air quality standards.
The permit authorizes the building and operation a 600-megawatt plant near the rural communities of Avenal and Kettleman City, which already has some of the most polluted air in the country.
OAKLAND, Calif.— A coalition of conservation and environmental justice groups today challenged the federal air pollution permit for the Avenal Power Plant proposed in the San Joaquin Valley. In a controversial decision, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency exempted the project from several key air pollution standards. The facility, proposed to be built by Texas-based Macquarie Energy, is targeted near the rural communities of Avenal and Kettleman City in California’s San Joaquin Valley, which already has some of the most polluted air in the country. The coalition filed legal papers with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals challenging the permit issued by the EPA.
On May 27, EPA announced that it would not require the project to comply with current pollution control requirements because, according to agency officials, EPA took too long to process the permit application. Instead, the agency “grandfathered” the project from requirements to show that it would not cause unsafe levels of nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide pollution, and to install the best available controls for greenhouse gases.
The Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, and Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, represented by national public-interest law firm Earthjustice, first challenged the permit at the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board in June. On Aug. 18, a panel of three administrative law judges at the Board said they did not have time to fully consider the grandfathering issue and allowed the weaker permit to remain.
The Citizen’s Advisory Committee (CAC) held a special meeting November 1, 2011 to discuss the results of the recently ended ozone season and public messaging.
The misinformation presented to the CAC at this meeting was alarming. The public must insist that the Air Board be honest if it is to be taken seriously in it’s role of protecting public health. Information presented at this meeting is a prime example of how the Air Board lies to itself and to the public with repeated omissions, statistical lies, and outright falsehoods.
Here is a page from the staff presentation given to the CAC at this meeting. Each point indicated by a red letter is discussed below.
A Lamont composting facility has been ordered to keep employees away from a storm-drainage system where two brothers were overcome by hydrogen sulfide.
Today, KQED’s Sasha Khokha outlines how the lack of effective air monitoring policy in the San Joaquin Valley could be harming the people who live there. As she reports, a recent study from UCSF [PDF] finds a direct link between air pollution and asthma-related ER visits. The study found what researchers call a “linear association” between certain components of air pollution and asthma ER visits. In other words, as air pollution goes up, the likelihood of an asthmatic child heading to the ER goes up, too.
The San Joaquin Valley has some of the dirtiest air in the country and high rates of childhood asthma.
The culprits are two components of air pollution: ground-level ozone and particulate matter. Ground-level ozone can have corrosive effects on the lungs, decreasing lung function. Particulate matter are tiny particles, like soot. The simple act of breathing carries these particles deep into the lungs where they stick and can cause breathing and heart problems.