“Absurd,” “insulting,” and “insane” were some of the many critiques levied during a public meeting in Bakersfield on Tuesday night against a recent Bureau of Land Management environmental analysis, which brings the agency one step closer to opening over a million acres of federal land to hydraulic fracturing….
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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.
Fracking on more than a million acres of public land in California. It’s just an idea right now, but it has many throughout the Central Valley concerned. The proposal is based on a plan the Bureau of Land Management drew up in 2014 and the land up for grabs has been available for decades. The BLM took public comments on Tuesday in Bakersfield to address the long-time-coming proposal….
The Bureau of Land Management is holding three public hearings around the state this week over controversial plans to expand oil drilling, including fracking, in Central California. The first hearing is tonight in Bakersfield.
It’s a common refrain among extremely online activists to point out that that “Flint still doesn’t have clean water,” and indeed, that Michigan town may still be dealing with unsafe drinking water several years on. But the water problem in California’s Central Valley is many magnitudes larger, and today’s New York Times picks up the story of how more than a million Californians there don’t have clean water either. Some estimates say as many as 1.5 million people have tap water contaminated with arsenic, mercury, and other toxins, thanks to agricultural pesticides and poorly maintained pipe infrastructure in very small California towns….
The Bureau of Land Management is holding three public hearings around the state this week over controversial plans to expand oil drilling, including fracking, in Central California. The first hearing is tonight in Bakersfield….
The Bureau of Land Management is holding three public hearings around the state this week over controversial plans to expand oil drilling, including fracking, in Central California. The first hearing is tonight in Bakersfield….
Water is a currency in California, and the low-income farmworkers who pick the Central Valley’s crops know it better than anyone. They labor in the region’s endless orchards, made possible by sophisticated irrigation systems, but at home their faucets spew toxic water tainted by arsenic and fertilizer chemicals.
“Clean water flows toward power and money,” said Susana De Anda, a longtime water-rights organizer in the region. She is the daughter of lechugueros who worked in lettuce fields and helped make California one of the agricultural capitals of the world. “Homes, schools and clinics are supposed to be the safest places to go. But not in our world.”…
In the earlier post presented was information that consistent with the San Joaquin Valley air becoming less polluted over time (essentially between 1980 and 2016), there has been a far lower incidence of widespread, wintertime fog across the region. Also, introduced was the subject of potential ramifications should the Valley, in this sense, backpedal, that is to say to again experience fog of such an extent that it is not uncommon for the weather phenomenon to linger for months on end.
Today’s discussion, on the other hand, considers – in the face of a growing Valley population what with status-quo development in regards to housing, transportation and the way land is used related to that being what it is – what will need to be done (or not done) so as to avoid an encore of the past. That’s what’s on tap…
Environmental and community groups joined by elected officials will hold rallies this week to blast the Trump administration’s draft plan to open more than a million acres of public land and mineral estate in central California to oil drilling and fracking. The rallies will precede each of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s public hearings in Bakersfield, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara…