On a chilly Saturday morning, a large group of mostly black and brown teens and college students streamed into a New York University gymnasium — not to exercise or play basketball but to discuss their communities’ energy challenges. Clutching computer bags and business card holders, extra large sticky pads of paper and marker sets, the teens filed into the makeshift workspaces. Groups of participants huddled around conference tables swapping names and hometowns….
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 new study revealing California’s healthiest, and least healthy, counties highlights the divide between urban and rural California as well as richer and poorer counties.
The report published last week by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation shows that Southern San Joaquin Valley residents from Merced County to Kern County are among the least healthy in the state.
Wealthier coastal counties in the Bay Area and Southern California, by contrast, have the state’s healthiest residents…
Animal and environmental organizations, joined by several rural community activists, want a U.S. District Court judge to strike down Obama-era regulations that give a break to smaller mid-sized concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).
Beryl A. Howell, chief judge for District of Columbia, is hearing the case, filed against USDA and the Farm Service Agency; along with Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and Farm Service Administrator Richard Fordyce…
Last week, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that he will introduce a tax of up to $10 a month to water customers in order to fund safe drinking water in disadvantaged communities. Valley Public Radio has reported in the past about how many of those communities are right here in the San Joaquin Valley. To learn about Newsom’s plan, we spoke to Jonathan Nelson, policy director at the Community Water Center…
Three significant events took place recently that should improve the quality of life for residents in the San Joaquin Valley.
First, the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition (CVAQ) successfully requested an audit from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) of emission reduction credits that are held in a bank operated by the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District. This has been brought up in the past, but this time the CARB agreed.
These credits allow new sources of air pollution to be established without mitigation…
California Gov. Gavin Newsom revealed new details of his plans to charge water customers in the state a new tax to fund safe drinking water for disadvantaged communities.
He announced Wednesday his plans to charge water customers an extra amount ranging from 95 cents to $10 a month — money that, combined with fees on animal farmers, dairies and fertilizer sellers, he projects would raise $140 million a year that could be put toward testing wells, aiding public water systems and treating contaminated water. The amount paid would depend on the size of one’s water meter…
Today’s World Water Day, which falls on March 22 each year and is often an occasion for plenty of “doom and gloom,” says Scott Bryan. That’s why Bryan, president of ImagineH2O, a nonprofit organization that runs a startup accelerator and other programs aimed at solving water challenges around the globe, holds his organization’s demo day and gala event in the run-up to the day, “in hopes that there might be a story out there that’s a little more positive.”
Looking over ImagineH2O’s 10th cohort—which includes a baker’s dozen of startups offering everything from high-efficiency faucets and showerheads to handheld water-quality scanners, devices to reduce water loss in cooling towers, trenchless water-pipe replacement technology, and more—there is certainly reason for optimism…
Governor Gavin Newsom wants to charge California water customers an extra fee to help clean tainted water in low-income and rural communities.
Erica Fernandez, with Community Water Center, explained she supports this fee.
She said there are about 1 million people without safe, clean drinking water.
“Having safe drinking water is a human right not a privilege,” she said…
Just outside Fresno’s southeastern border lies a road in which the urban rolls into the rural in a juxtaposition common in California’s central San Joaquin Valley.
A trucking yard sits a few dozen feet from residential homes. Children play at an elementary school flanked by farmland – tangled, empty vines and trees sprinkled with white blossoms. The snow-capped Sierra Nevada are unusually visible after February storms pushed out Valley smog…
Farmworker supporters from the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition and the Coalition Advocating for Pesticide Safety announced they believe hazardous pesticide violations are happening in Fresno and Tulare counties on March 20, 2019…