Isabel Solorio can see the water treatment plant from her garden across the street. Built to filter out the arsenic in drinking water, it hasn’t been active since 2007 – it shut down six months after opening when the California town of Lanare went into debt trying to keep up with maintenance costs…
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.
When the Arvin City Council began working on an ordinance that would place restrictions on new oil and gas operations near neighborhoods in Arvin, the local oil industry began to get a little nervous. On Tuesday night, the council voted 3-0 (with two members absent) in support of the ordinance that will create expanded buffer zones between new oil and gas operations and “sensitive use” locations such as homes, parks, schools and hospitals…
Last week California celebrated a big milestone: The state announced it had succeeded in bringing down its carbon emissions to levels it hasn’t seen since the 1990s. And the Golden State managed to hit that benchmark four years earlier than it had set out to, all while laying to rest the tired old argument that an economy can’t grow while emissions shrink…
California’s 1st District Court of Appeal recently ruled that the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) did not abuse its discretion when it set the maximum allowable dose level (MADL) for lead as a reproductive toxicant. The appeals court opinion filed June 21 affirmed the decision made by the Alameda County Superior Court. Appeals Justice J. Anthony Kline authored the opinion with Justices Therese M. Stewart and Marla J. Miller concurring…
If you’ve been to Disneyland, Cambria, many parts of Los Angeles, then you most likely had a swig of highly treated recycled water. Recycled water meaning, yes, it was once in a sewage treatment plant. For many years this recycled water has helped Orange County meet the needs of its growing population and reduce the toll on its declining aquifers. Soon, the same kind of water may be coming to Clovis and Fresno’s drinking water…
Several environmental groups from across the state are hesitant to celebrate the milestone of greenhouse gas reduction. Amy Vanderwarker from the California Environmental Justice Alliance says there’s still plenty of work to do to combat climate change in the Golden State..
Sixteen-hundred people have signed a petition in hopes of stopping plans by the Lawrence Livermore Lab to increase hazardous explosive testing just outside of Tracy. It’s all just 7,000 feet from a planned housing development. A full environmental review of such proposals are required under state law if there’s significant public concern…
State officials dispute some of the conclusions reached by researchers on the cap-and-trade program not providing the kind of benefits it is designed to reach. “The study does not show how cap and trade caused a disproportionate impact, and provides no real evidence to support that claim,” Dave Clegern, public information officer for the Climate Change Programs of the California Air Resources Board, said in an email response to questions by the Daily Republic…
State officials want to use a local air quality monitoring program as a model to be used statewide in the fight against air contamination. Senator Ben Hueso and Assembly Member Eduardo Garcia announced a half-million dollar grant for Comite Civico del Valle’s air monitoring program which warns people daily of air quality that goes from good through dangerous through a countywide system of monitors that feed information to the website www.ivan-imperial.org…
A Fresno Superior Court judge has granted an order for the California attorney general’s office to intervene in an environmental justice case against the city of Fresno and a local developer. Judge Rosemary McGuire granted the order allowing the attorney general’s office to join plaintiff South Central Neighbors United in seeking a mandate voiding the Fresno City Council’s approval of the project, plus an injunction to prevent the city or developer from moving forward on the project until a full environmental review is conducted and measures are taken to offset any negative effects on neighbors…