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.

Desiccated dreams

Article by Matt Black. Published March/April 2011 in Orion Magazine.

THE YELLOW AND BLACK SIGNS announcing the start of California’s new water war began appearing in the spring of 2009: CONGRESS-CREATED DUSTBOWL. The Central Valley’s most productive stretch of farmland, the immense Westlands Water District, had seen its water supply cut by 90 percent to forestall the ecological collapse of the Sacramento Delta, the largest estuary on the Pacific coast and a crucial source of water for wildlife and humans. All along Interstate 5, the state’s main north-south highway, the signs were soon ubiquitous. Parked atop patches of barren farmland, they announced what appeared to be a modern-day agricultural apocalypse: 200,000 acres of the nation’s richest farmland out of production, unemployment above 40 percent in some towns, and bread lines stretching around the block.

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Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment March Newsletter

Newsletter by Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment. Published March.

In This Issue:

Green Paper Launch
Clean Air and EJ Victory
Healthy Communities
Toxic Tour April 9th
Meet Denise Kadara

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The Kettleman City babies – part I

Blog post published March 3, 2011.

A California Environmental Protection Agency and California Department of Public Health report has exonerated pesticides and herbicides, the contaminated water, fumes from diesel trucks, and most of all the huge solid waste disposal facility just outside town from the cluster of babies born with birth defects in the poor farmworker community of Kettleman City, California.

Nope, none of that has anything to do with the abnormal incidence of birth defects states the December 2010 report. The birth defects are just a coincidence, an unsolved mystery. There is no cause. Nope. Experts have spoken.

“While we wish there was an explanation for what caused the birth defects experienced by the children we studied in Kettleman City,” said California Department of Public Health Director Mark Horton, “our investigation finds that no common health or environmental factor links the cases.”

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Petition: Do you want to know how polluted the air is near roadways?

Blog post by Rebecca Plevin. Published March 2, 2011 in Harvesting Health.

Many of us in the San Joaquín Valley travel down Highway 99, State Route 41, or Interstate 5 on a regular basis, whizzing past agricultural land and small communities.

Have you ever paused to think what chemicals your car, and those of the other drivers on the road, are spewing into the air, and onto these roadway communities?

Catherine Garoupa White, director of the Central Valley Air Quality (CVAQ) Coalition, knows that living by a roadway can be damaging to your health. Garoupa White grew up in Madera, “within eyesight” of Highway 99, and now suffers from chronic bronchitis.

Clearing the air – Through the lens of a reporter

Radio by Central Valley Air Quality Coalition. Published February 25, 2011 in KFCF 88.1 FM.

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.

Through the lens of a reporter
Host- Dolores Weller, Co-host – Jim Compton-Schmidt
Guest(s): Rebecca Plevin, Vida en el Valle

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Environmental Justice Lawsuit May Delay California Cap and Trade

Article by Mike Sandler. Published February 23, 2011 in Huffington Post.

In Congress, the polluting industry’s lobbyists are taking aim at federal climate regulations. In California, climate regs are facing a court challenge from a different source.

On January 24, 2011, a San Francisco Superior Court judge issued a tentative ruling that could block the implementation of the AB32 Scoping Plan, the document that details how the state of California will implement the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

Who took the state to court over their efforts to protect the climate this time? Not the oil companies, coal-dependent utilities, or anti-government Tea Partiers. No, this time it was environmental justice (EJ) interests represented by the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment and Communities for a Better Environment, and includingWest County Toxics Coalition, as well as several well-known EJ activists, many of whom served on a stateenvironmental justice advisory committee. The case is called Association of Irritated Residents, et al. v. California Air Resources Board.

River parkway exhibit features Valley’s people

Article by Rebecca Plevin. Published February 16, 2011 in Vida en el Valle.

Last Friday night, Teresa De Anda walked through the Ranch House at the San Joaquín River Parkway and Conservation Trust’s Coke Hallowell Center for River Studies and gazed at photographs of familar scenes.

She saw photographs portraying the San Joaquín Valley’s agricultural abundance. There were images of cows, flowering orchards, agricultural equipment, and water flowing through the California Aqueduct.

She also saw pictures of the people who live in communities that are heavily impacted by the Valley’s agricultural industry. There were images of Tulare County residents demanding clean drinking water and Kettleman City residents fighting for environmental justice.

De Anda, an Earlimart resident who became a champion for pesticide reform after members of her community were sickened by pesticide drift in 1999, even saw photos of herself. In one photo, De Anda walks along the strip of dirt road that separates her home from agricultural fields.

Lawsuit by low-income groups may delay climate law

Article by Sarah Terry-Cobo. Published February 9, 2011 in California Watch.

The latest legal challenge to California’s landmark climate-change legislation isn’t coming from big polluters faced with a series of new regulations. Instead, groups representing low-income residents are challenging the environmental law as unfairly burdening their beleaguered communities.

A handful of community groups, represented by the San Francisco-based Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment have filed a motion that could delay the implementation of parts of the Global Warming Solutions Act, also known as AB 32.

The groups suing the Air Resources Board argue in part that fledgling law violates the California Environmental Quality Act because the air board failed to provide any alternative plans. The plaintiffs also argue that the AB 32 “scoping plan,” which establishes how to reduce air pollution, doesn’t meet the law’s requirement to “achieve the maximum technologically feasible and cost effective reductions” to reduce greenhouse gasses to 1990 levels by 2020.

Photo exhibit!

Blog post by Tracy Perkins. Published February 9, 2011 in The Long Haul.

This Friday opens the latest exhibit of my photos in the “25 Stories from the Central Valley” collection.  They are already online here, but there’s something extra-special about seeing them “in the flesh” too.  I dropped them off on Sunday and had a good time deciding how to group them in the space they’ll be displayed.

Why EJ Groups are Leery of Cap & Trade

Article by Alison Hawkes. Published February 8, 2011 in KQED News.

Environmental Justice groups say they support California’s climate law. So why did they sue?

Environmentalists may seem the most unlikely of sources stalling the state’s landmark climate change law. But the case brought by a group of environmental justice advocates is bringing up issues that have been largely overlooked in the zeal of carrying forward AB 32.

This means that a California power plant can increase CO2 emissions if it buys allowances from another industry that’s reducing emissions, or offsets from, say, a tree farm in Canada.

“The evidence out there is that cap-and-trade is going to fail these communities and will continue to allow polluters to dump on them, and that’s unacceptable and it’s also illegal,” said Alegria De La Cruz, legal director at theCenter on Race, Poverty & the Environmentin San Francisco. The Center is a plaintiff in alawsuit filed by several organizations over the implementation plan for AB 32. Parties in that case are awaiting finalization of a state court ruling that could hold up the scheduled launch of California’s cap & trade plan.

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