A decision by a California Superior Court may provide the state with a second chance to become a real leader in national and global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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.
A coalition of Environmental Justice groups are committed to continue lifting California forward by stopping Cap-and-Trade and implementing AB 32 equitably. On June 24, 2011 the Appellate Court issued a stay order allowing the California Air Resources Board to move ahead in the planning of a Cap-and-Trade program, jeopardizing AB 32, California’s landmark Global Warming Solutions Act.
On June 29, 2011, ARB Chair Mary Nichols announced Cap-and-Trade is not ready and will postpone enforcement until 2013.
“We know that Cap-and-Trade failed in Europe and we don’t have the luxury to test a failed idea. There is a wealth of policy options available at our fingertips that will achieve the goals of AB 32 and it does not include the creation of a bogus carbon market,” said Bill Gallegos, Executive Director for CBE. “Our communities have a better way, like the GREEN ZONES initiative which targets pollution and emission reductions at the emitting source. We’d like to see Governor Brown step in and direct the ARB to get rid of Cap-and-Trade.”
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California regulators said they would give power plants, refineries and other major polluters another year to comply with a new state program that provides financial incentives to emit fewer greenhouse gases.
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Facing continued litigation, California officials will delay enforcement of the state’s carbon-trading program until 2013, state Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols announced Wednesday.
The delay in the cap-and-trade program, slated to take effect in January, is proposed because of the “need for all necessary elements to be in place and fully functional,” she said.
But in testimony before a state Senate committee,Nichols said the postponement would not affect the stringency of the program or the amount of greenhouse gases that industries will be forced to cut by the end of the decade.
Carbon-market executives mostly shrugged at the news.
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A coalition of Environmental Justice groups are committed to continue lifting California forward by stopping Cap-and-Trade and implementing AB 32 equitably. On June 24, 2011 the Appellate Court issued a stay order allowing the California Air Resources Board to move ahead in the erroneous planning of a Cap-and-Trade program, jeopardizing AB 32, California’s landmark Global Warming Solutions Law.
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If all goes according to plan, construction could begin on a surface water treatment plant in Kettleman City in as little as two years, state officials said last Wednesday night.
Once the treatment plant is completed, residents could begin drinking water from the California Aqueduct. The community’s 1,500 residents, 88.8 percent of whom are Latino, currently rely on two old wells that offer water contaminated with naturally occurring benzene and arsenic.
A 2010 state study into Kettleman City’s inexplicable cluster of birth defects — which impacted 11 infants, and killed three of them, between 2007 and 2010 — identified the community’s contaminated water as a critical public health concern, though the water was not linked to the defects.
California has the legal right to move aheadwith preparations for cap and trade after all, according to an appellate court decision. An earlier ruling had required regulators to halt work pending further review, after environmental justice groups brought suit against the Air Resources Board (ARB) over its plans for carbon trading.
Caroline Farrell of the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, one of organizations involved in the suit, said she was disappointed by the decision, handed down late Friday.
Pour yourself a glass of water from the tap in Kettleman city and you’ll find it’s often yellow and smells of rotten eggs. That would be off-putting enough, but arsenic and benzene levels also make that glass of water unsafe to drink.
But last week Kettleman City residents got good news. In two years construction will begin on a surface water treatment plant, a project that has been debated, postponed, delayed, and set aside for ten years. Meanwhile, those who can afford it drink bottled water. Yet they are still forced to bathe and cook with polluted water. A dewy-eyed innocent such as myself wonders why the State can’t pick up the cost of bottled water until the new plant is on line. They’ve known the ground water was contaminated for years.
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The Central Valley Air Quality Coalition hosts a radio show on KFCF 88.1 FM, which airs on the 4th Friday of every month from 3:00-3:30pm. On the show you will hear interviews with individuals at the forefront of air quality issues, policy and research. KFCF can be heard from Merced to Delano and live at www.kfcf.org. KFCF broadcasts Pacifica’s KPFA station to the Central Valley as well.
6/24/11 – California Pesticide Reform – Stop Methyl Iodide
Hosts- Dolores Weller
Guest(s): Irma Medellin (Quinto Sol), Teresa DeAnda (Californians for Pesticide Reform), Paul Towers (Pesticide Watch)
To listen click HERE
San Joaquin Valley communities with large Latino populations are exposed to disproportionately high levels of the agricultural chemical nitrate through their drinking water, a team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley found in a study published in the June issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.
The study explored whether there were demographics-related inequalities in nitrate exposure of residents in 327 drinking water systems throughout the San Joaquin Valley’s eight counties, from 1999 to 2001. This is the first peer-reviewed study in the United States to directly analyze the relationship between nitrate contamination, race and class.
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