In This Issue:
EJ Tour a Success
Cap & Trade Violations
Kettleman City appeals
EPA visits the Valley
Cesar Chavez Day
Earth Day Tree Planting
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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 San Joaquin Valley is a unique region of California faced with serious social, economic, racial, and environmental inequities and challenges. Community leaders and resi- dents across the San Joaquin Valley are optimistic about the potential of the emerging “green economy” to help solve the complex problems facing the region. There is particular enthusiasm for the promise of green jobs and a healthier environment among residents of rural cities and unincor- porated communities where the need for economic and environmental justice is the greatest.
A group of Valley residents from rural communities say they don’t want economic help at the expense of pollution in their areas.
FRESNO — When Norma Ventura moved to West Fresno about a year ago, she considered the stench that wafted from Darling International Inc.’s nearby rendering plant as little more than a bad joke.
“In the beginning, it was kind of funny,” Ventura said. “We would pass by it, and sometimes it smelled like dog food, and sometimes it smelled like Doritos, and sometimes it smelled like something else.”
Ventura began viewing the odor as a more serious issue, though, when she heard that the site has been operating as a rendering facility, and processing up to 850,000 pounds of raw material daily, even though it is permitted — through a variance issued by Fresno County in 1953 — to be a slaughterhouse with a small rendering facility to support its operations.
Because Darling has not applied for a conditional use permit for its current use at the site, the facility’s potential environment impacts on the physical environment and on the health of West Fresno residents have never been comprehensively analyzed, a West Fresno community group and their lawyers allege.
When I talk to people about my research in the San Joaquin Valley, one of the things they are surprised to learn is that many small communities there don’t have safe drinking water. It’s the kind of problem people associate with third world countries, not the USA. Nonetheless, pollutants from pesticides, fertilizers, mega-dairy sewage and old pipes as well as naturally occurring arsenic get into the drinking water in some Valley towns. Sometimes what comes out of the tap is brown and smells like sewage.
Two years ago former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have made access to clean water a legislative mandate. Now community advocates and legislators are trying again.
The Human Right to Water package – consisting of six bills – would expand efforts to improve water quality. Proponents say incorporating a basic human right to water into state water policy would help eradicate pollution problems that have plagued communities throughout California.
Changes include requiring water agencies to post health warnings in multiple languages and improving access to funding for cleaning up contaminated water. Last week all six bills passed state Senate and Assembly committees and are headed to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
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Consider this: even one of the wealthiest states in the wealthiest nation on the planet has not fully implemented the human right to water. This state is California, a place which holds a special position in our collective consciousness as the land of “milk and honey,” producing tremendous agricultural bounty that feeds the nation and the globe. Yet despite boasting the eighthlargest economy in the world, with a state GDP of $1.9 trillion, approximately one million Californians lack reliable access to safe, affordable drinking water on a daily basis.
Just 12 miles apart in the belly of California, a pair of 12.5 megawatt power plants fouled the air with a toxic brew of pollutants — nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, ammonia and particulate matter. They released thick plumes and visible dust. They failed to install proper monitoring equipment, and failed to file reports on their emissions.
Another instance of coal plants polluting the environment?
Not quite. These are biomass power plants, part of the so-called green wave of the future.
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.
Earth Day Special: History of the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition & the San Joaquin Valley Clean Air Movement
Hosts- Dolores Weller & Jim Compton-Schmidt
Guest(s): Kevin Hamilton & Kevin Hall, CVAQ Founders
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