According to Central California Asthma Collaborative, the Central Valley has seen a spike in kids with asthma. They say a few year’s back one in eight kids suffer from asthma. Now, it is one in six.
Yanni Gonzalez is the Communication Director for Central California Asthma Collaborative. He says there can be many things that could trigger asthma. But, one thing that stands out is the high volume of pollutants in the valley’s air.
“The San Joaquin Valley has really poor air quality especially this region,” says Gonzalez…
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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.
When Gov. Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 617 last year, resources were allocated to reduce air pollution, improve the quality of life and help the San Joaquin Valley meet its clean air mandates.
Shafter is one of the first communities prioritized to receive additional resources under the Community Air Protection Program (AB617). Other south Central Valley communities selected are Calwa and Malaga in Fresno County. Other communities will be chosen in coming years…
Gov. Gavin Newsom highlighted a highly significant but less visible power of his office in his first State of the State speech earlier this month: selecting appointees who can reshape California government in his image and help deliver on his ambitious policy agenda.
After condemning the lackluster oversight of a $77-billion California bullet train plagued with cost overruns, Newsom punctuated the call for change by announcing he was appointing one of his top economic advisers to take the helm of the High-Speed Rail Authority…
SOMAH is designed as a 10-year endeavor, with spending caps of $100 million per year to meet a goal of 300 megawatts. At least 51% of the system’s electric output must directly offset tenant load and be provided to tenants in the form of virtual net energy metering (VNEM) bill credits. Funding for the program will come from utility greenhouse gas (GHG) auction revenue.
“California is way out in front of other states with this low-income solar program, and it is unprecedented in scale. It will save on electricity bills for thousands of customers and will create jobs,” Walker says. Each project will include at least one or two solar job trainees from the host housing population; the program should train 3,750 workers over the lifetime of the program, he says…
The city is moving full steam ahead on its Transform Fresno plan, which is expected to pump $66.5 million into downtown, Chinatown and southwest Fresno.
The Fresno City Council on Thursday is poised to approve the Transformative Climate Communities grant agreement with the state Strategic Growth Council for money geared toward projects that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Both Mayor Lee Brand and Council Member Miguel Arias said Tuesday the council is expected to unanimously approve the agreement…
Technically, California’s San Joaquin Valley – the drainage plain of the San Joaquin River – begins a few miles south of Sacramento and ends a few miles south of Fresno.
However, in political and economic terms, it stretches even further south to the Tehachapi Mountains, south of Bakersfield.
The 300-mile-long valley is the heart of California’s largest-in-the-nation agricultural industry and much of its oil production, home to 4 million people (10 percent of the state’s population) and, unfortunately, has some of the state’s deepest poverty and most polluted air…
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s references to water in his first State of the State address were brief and a bit patchy, but they were enough to make fiercely competing factions each believe the new governor had their backs. Newsom made clear that Jerry Brown’s two-tunnel project to pipe Sacramento River water under the delta to points south was dead, in favor of a single tunnel. The gratified reaction of environmentalists was, essentially: “We killed a tunnel!” The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California said, more or less: “We get a tunnel!”
But water policy in California is never that easy. Two weeks later, we still don’t know much about Newsom’s plans. Knowing we’ll have one tunnel instead of two tells us little. How big? How expensive? For what purpose? The new governor and his team are still working through those questions…
As the deadliest wildfire in a century raged in Butte County last year, leaving 85 people dead and thousands without homes, hundreds of young people filled the halls of Congress to demand a Green New Deal.
This sense of urgency is long overdue. For decades, our alliance has brought together parents, students, workers and elders living next to oil fields, fracking wells, dirty power plants and massive refineries to stop California’s biggest polluters from poisoning our families and destabilizing our climate.
Five years ago, in the Kern County community of Arvin, a gas pipeline leak forced dozens of families out of their homes. First, people complained of headaches, strange smells and fainting…
Vehicle tailpipe pollution is being inhaled by Black Americans, Latinos, Asians, and low-income people in California significantly more than other demographic groups in the state, putting them at increased risk for health problems, a new analysis has found.
On average, Black Americans and Latinos breathe in about 40 percent more particulate matter from cars, trucks, and buses than White Californians, according to the study by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Asians are exposed to about 20 percent more pollution.
Households earning less than $20,000 a year and people who don’t own cars suffer vehicle pollution levels about 20 percent higher than the state average, the findings show…
The San Joaquin Valley—California’s largest agricultural region and an important contributor to the nation’s food supply—is in a time of great change. The valley is ground zero for many of California’s most difficult water management problems—including groundwater overdraft, drinking water contamination, and declines in habitat and native species. Local water supplies are limited, particularly in the southern half of the region. To irrigate their crops, many farmers use water imported from the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta. But in many places farmers have also relied on groundwater overdraft—pumping groundwater in excess of the rate at which it is replenished. Worsening droughts, increasing regulations to protect endangered native fishes, and growing demand by Southern California for Delta imports have compounded surface water scarcity…