On August 24, 2011, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) once again unanimously approved its alternatives and environmental analysis supporting its greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program. This second round of approval, this time after a more thorough environmental review, and after providing its response to comments, was made to address the outstanding lawsuit against its past approval of the program, which has been followed on this blog. The question remains, however, whether CARB still plans to address the environmental justice issues that have been raised with real mitigation.
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 widespread but virtually invisible problem of pesticide drift–the airborne movement of agricultural pesticides into residential areas–has fueled grassroots activism from Maine to Hawaii. Pesticide drift accidents have terrified and sickened many living in the country’s most marginalized and vulnerable communities. In this book, Jill Lindsey Harrison considers political conflicts over pesticide drift in California, using them to illuminate the broader problem and its potential solutions.
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On Friday, in a move that shocked enviros and public-health advocates, President Obama asked the Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw its proposal to tighten a key air-quality standard. The request, Obama said, is part of the administration’s efforts to reduce “regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty.”
The EPA has been at work on new rules on ozone pollution, better known as smog, since September 2009. The agency rolled out new, tougher draft standards in January 2010, only to have the release of the final rules repeatedly delayed. In a statement, Obama said he has asked the agency to wait until 2013—you know, after the next election—to improve the standard.
Casi toda el agua del Valle Central está contaminada y quieren que todo californiano tenga derecho a agua limpia.
California has acquired a reputation over the years as a national “leader” in environmental policy, but this reputation proves to be false when one considers the state’s often deplorable record on water, fisheries and environmental justice.
In fact, California’s failure to provide clean, safe drinking water to its residents is so alarming that it captured the attention of the United Nations in a special report released in August as a package of “human right to water” bills proceeds through the State Capitol.
Celina Romero is not an expert on air quality or pesticides, but she is all too familiar with their impacts on her sons’ health.
Her sons — Arturo, 15, and Ramses, 12 — suffer from severe asthma and are forced to rely on nebulizers and inhalers to breathe more easily, she said. They are among more than 19 percent of kids in Merced County who suffer from asthma, according to KidsData.org.
“I fear the winter, because that’s when their asthma is the strongest,” Romero, an unemployed cannery worker, said in Spanish. “They have to use the (nebulizer) three or four times per day.”
Romero and her husband José Antonio believe the San Joaquín Valley environment is culpable for their sons’ health problems, so they participated in the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition’s annual Clean Air Action Day last Tuesday.
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Researchers at the University of Southern California have found that men exposed to certain pesticides in Central Valley neighborhoods are at increased risk for prostate cancer, according to a study in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
The use of pesticide methyl bromide in California, approved annually by state regulators, discriminated against Latino school children, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said last Thursday. The federal agency reached a settlement with the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR), resolving a civil rights complaint from 1999. The complaint alleged that DPR’s yearly approval of the fumigant disproportionately and adversely affected Latino schoolchildren, whose schools were near crop fields that were sprayed. Attorney Michael Meuter with California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA), one of the law firms that filed the 1999 civil rights complaint on behalf of farmworker clients, called the EPA finding “historic.” NAM editor Ngoc Nguyen spoke with Meuter about the significance of the case.
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Californian’s failure to provide clean, safe drinking water to its residents has captured the attention of the United Nations in a special report released this month. Reporting on her mission to the United States last winter, U.N. Special Rapportuer on the Human Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation Catarina de Albuquerque, cited a host of worrisome conditions in the Golden State.