Seven state-funded air-quality monitors are being set up around Lost Hills area as part of an effort to protect the health of the area’s largely immigrant community. The monitors, set to begin operation Monday, are planned to provide continuous, real-time air quality data in an area where activists contend emissions from nearby oilfield and agribusiness operations present pollution risks…
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.
As State Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel, puts it, “We’re at a nervous point.” And surrounding that nervous point, there’s a whole lot of water. By the State Water Resources Control Board’s estimates, more than a million Californians don’t have safe drinking water flowing through the pipes into their homes. In Monterey County alone, more than 70 water systems have been cited for contamination….
As State Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel, puts it, “We’re at a nervous point.” And surrounding that nervous point, there’s a whole lot of water. By the State Water Resources Control Board’s estimates, more than a million Californians don’t have safe drinking water flowing through the pipes into their homes. In Monterey County alone, more than 70 water systems have been cited for contamination. In some North County homes, naturally occurring arsenic can be found in unacceptably high levels; in some areas of South County, fertilizer runoff has contaminated systems with nitrates, rendering the water dangerously undrinkable…
Fracking has been a hot topic in the San Joaquin Valley ever since the Trump administration released an environmental review about the possibility of expanding hydraulic fracturing on federal lands in Central California.
The nation’s most populous state and world’s fifth-largest economy can’t provide clean drinking water to more than a million of its residents, but a proposal in California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget is hoping to change that….
Central Valley and Central Coast residents went to Bakersfield last week with the intention of voicing their opposition to new oil drilling leases in the Central California. Instead, they were told the meeting would not be recorded and only written comments would be submitted into the record….
Most Californians, including many environmentalists, are unaware of how effectively Big Oil has captured California regulators. After intense lobbying by the Western States Petroleum Association and the oil companies, a bill to create health and safety zones around oil and gas wells stalled in the Appropriations Committee of the California Assembly on May 16, becoming a two-year-bill….
State Senator Melissa Hurtado (D-Sanger) today announced collaborative efforts with U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein to protect tens of thousands of disadvantaged communities and family farmers in the state of California. The partnership will include coordinating efforts at the state and federal level to address the Central Valley’s most immediate needs of restoring clean water supply by repairing the conveyance capacity on the Friant-Kern Canal….
As more and more companies start to build massive facilities here in Kern County, it means more big-rig trucks driving through the valley. It prompts the question, how will that affect our already poor air quality? Our location makes Kern County a great place for warehousing, distribution, and delivery. Our geography, however, has a knack for trapping pollution from the trucks needed to transport all of the merchandise that would go to and from such facilities….