The California Environmental Justice Alliance and the Sierra Club are co-hosting a Distributed Generation Stakeholder Convening in Los Angeles on Thursday, January 26, 2012.  

The overall goal of this convening is to develop alignment on values and a unified voice on policies related to the Governor’s pledge of 12,000 MW of renewable distributed generation.

Participants will include representatives from a broad range of stakeholders who have an interest in helping the state to develop a distributed generation system that is efficient, equitable, helps California to achieve the goals of AB 32 for reducing GHG emissions, and stimulates economic development and jobs for the state’s low income communities.

CEJA is hosting a Green Zones event in conjunction with the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference on Thursday, February 2 at 8:00am in San Diego.

Following the event, the Environmental Health Coalition will lead a Tour of Environmental Injustice to Community Uprising where community members will show how the built environment affects the community’s health.

Read how Communities for a Better Environment helped to strengthen key energy policy in California!

California Regulators Add Teeth to Landmark Clean Energy Policy

Public Utilities Commission orders utilities to use renewable sources before electricity from fossil fuels

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Read CEJA’s latest newsletter to find out what we have been up too.

Check out this new video describing the amazing campaign to defeat Proposition 23 that CEJA helped lead!

Read the great article below on Communities for a Better Environment’s Green Zones pilot project, the Clean Up Green Up campaign.

Wilmington activist backs Clean Up Green Up proposal

10:24 PM PDT on Wednesday, September 7, 2011

BY DAVID DANELSKI STAFF WRITER ddanelski@pe.com

State Attorney General Kamala Harris has joined a community’s legal battle to block construction of warehouses and a business center planned near a northwest Riverside County neighborhood already plagued by air pollution.

Harris contends in court papers submitted this week that Riverside County failed to adequately analyze the environmental consequences of the planned Mira Loma Commerce Center, especially its effects on traffic and air pollution from diesel trucks in the area. Mira Loma has among the worst air quality in the nation.

Harris is scheduled to visit the area today, then meet with residents at the offices of the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice. The Glen Avon-based environmental group filed a lawsuit in July, seeking to rescind Riverside County supervisors’ unanimous approval of the business center. Kamala Harris The project site is near Mira Loma Village, a neighborhood of mostly low-income, Hispanic families. Hundreds of diesel trucks pass nearby on their way to and from the dozens of warehouses that dominate the landscape near the Highway 60-Interstate 15 interchange.

“We are absolutely thrilled the attorney general is stepping in to protect these families,” said Penny Newman, executive director of the environmental group.

Riverside County spokesman Ray Smith said county attorneys need to review the information submitted by the attorney general before they decide how to respond.

Harris’s motion to intervene in the lawsuit is scheduled for a hearing Sept. 16 in Riverside County Superior Court. Harris will explain today why she wants to be involved in the litigation, attorney general spokeswoman Linda Glenhill said.

Papers the state submitted to the court say the project could harm the health of people living in Mira Loma Village, 101 homes on the east side of Etiwanda Avenue, north of Highway 60. The business development would border the village on the north and east.

“The diesel exhaust from the trucks accessing the warehouses poses a serious risk of cancer, respiratory illnesses, and other adverse health effects,” state attorneys said in court papers.

The commerce center would consist of 24 industrial buildings with a total area of 1.1 million square feet. The buildings would be on six sites across 65 acres straddling Mira Loma and Glen Avon, communities that are within the newly incorporated city of Jurupa Valley.

The developers include the Japan-based Obayashi Corp., Investment Building Group RGA Office of Architectural Design and OC Real Estate Management LLC. Representatives of the companies could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

County supervisors approved the plan in May, disappointing residents who had opposed it vigorously in numerous hearings over nine years. Supervisor John Tavaglione, who represents the area, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Newman’s group has been opposing warehouse development in Mira Loma since the 1990s because of the area’s pollution problems.

Mira Loma for decades has been identified by air quality officials as an air pollution hot spot. In 2000, a study by USC’s medical school researchers blamed the high levels of fine-particle pollution for stunted lung development in children. Diesel exhaust is the most toxic component of fine particles, a form of pollution linked to heart disease, depression and other ailments.

Harris’ involvement shows “the seriousness of the situation and how nonchalant the county has been in addressing the damage they are doing to the community,” Newman said. County officials have said the warehouse industry has bolstered the Inland economy and uses land left vacant by dairy farmers who have moved their operations to the San Joaquin Valley and elsewhere. Harris contends in court papers that the county did not adequately examine the project’s impact on a community that already has a “disproportionately high amount of distribution warehousing”; failed to adopt measures that could have made the project more compatible with the community; and did not adequately consider reasonable alternatives.

Newman said the project would put the industrial buildings too close to people’s homes, among other issues.

By CEJA

Along with Communities United Against the Dirty Energy Proposition, we mobilized communities of color to vote no on Prop. 23! Equally important, we must work hard to make California’s Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) a plan that really works.

Our victory on Prop 23 gives us momentum that we will use to keep fighting. And winning. Communities United will continue as a long-term alliance to channel the power and voices of people of color in California for clean air, good jobs, climate action and social equity. Click here for more info on how we won Prop 23 and our next steps.

The Prop. 23 battle is between environmental activism and big money

By Kelly Davis, San Diego CityBeat »

It’s easy for a layperson to get lost in AB 32— California’s aggressive, yet complex, anti-global-warming law that seeks to roll back greenhouse-gas levels in the state to what they were in 1990. When José Medina, a board member for the Environmental Health Coalition, tries to explain AB 32 to his community—he lives on the west side of National City, in a neighborhood bisected by Interstate 5—he puts it simply: “With the mandate calling for cleaner-burning engines, that’ll make less pollution from the 5 coming over to our neighborhoods.”

According to a recent poll, California’s Latino voters care more about the environment than white voters, largely because they’re more likely to live in neighborhoods where air pollution is a problem. That poll, conducted in July by the Public Policy Institute of California, found that Latinos—as well as other communities of color—favor stricter government regulation of air quali ty and greenhouse-gas emissions.

Even so, Latinos—and, to a lesser extent, Asians and African-Americans—are being courted by supporters of Prop. 23, the November ballot measure that seeks to suspend AB 32 until the state’s unemployment rate drops to 5.5 percent and stays there for at least a year—something that’s happened only three times in the last 40 years, according to California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Prop. 23′s supporters call AB 32 a job killer, arguing that the law will disproportionately impact minority-owned small businesses—through increased energy costs—and low-skilled workers in industries targeted by AB 32′s clean-air mandates (like oil refining and trucking).

This tack could be working: According to a Field Poll conducted last month, while white voters overwhelmingly oppose Prop. 23, Latinos were almost split, with 42 percent supporting the measure, 45 percent opposing it and 16 percent undecided.

Bruce Mirken, a spokesperson for Communities United Against Prop. 23, a coalition of environmental-justice organizations from throughout the state, gets why the economic argument might resonate with Latino voters.

“When you’re in a state with an unemployment rate at 12.5 percent, and in some of these minority communities, unemployment’s running 3 or 4 points higher than that, it’s understandable that that’s an argument people are going to be interested in,” he said.

CityBeat reviewed numerous studies on Prop. 23 and AB 32 for this story. The law’s true economic impact is anything but clear. “Neither side really knows,” said Eric Bruvold, president of the National University System Institute for Policy Research.

Indeed, for each study arguing that AB 32 will result in increased energy costs for consumers and businesses, there’s another study arguing that savings will come from greater energy efficiency. In the jobs realm, while AB 32 has spurred growth in the state’s “clean tech” sector, its impact on jobs in the less-than-clean-energy sector is reflected in the donations to Yes on 23 that have poured in from oil and petrochemical companies.

The San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council—an umbrella group for labor unions—was an early opponent of Prop. 23, but, Evan McLaughlin, the labor council’s political director, acknowledged that there are “real concerns about workers in certain industries that no one should take lightly.”

One argument that Prop. 23′s supporters haven’t broached with much success is the public-health benefit that comes with cleaner air. Prop. 23 spokesperson Anita Mangels, who didn’t respond to CityBeat’s phone calls by press time, told the liberal blog Think Progress that greenhouse-gas emissions “have no direct impact on the environment or health in California,” yet, the Legislative Analyst’s Office—in addition to a number of other studies—said that suspending AB 32 “could halt air quality improvements that would have public health benefits, such as reduced respiratory illnesses.”

Sonja Petek, a research associate with the Public Policy Institute of California, said PPIC’s research doesn’t indicate that, among Latino voters, economic concerns argument trump environmental-health concerns.

“What we were seeing is that communities of color are not necessarily pitting economic goals against environmental goals,” she said. “And, in fact, they see environmental goals as potentially helping the job situation as opposed to hurting it.

“The opponents of Prop. 23 have definitely brought up the environmental-justice angle while proponents are using the job-killing angle to advance their position, so I think it will come down to who does a better job of reaching these voters,” Petek said.

Like with any election, it comes down to money and how they each side touts its endorsements, Bruvold said. Mirken readily admits that Prop. 23′s opponents are “massively outspent”—as of Sept. 14, for instance, bigoil companies Valero and Tesoro have, combined, donated more than $5 million to support the measure.

Bruvold said the coalition that No on 23 has built, with its network of environmental-justice organizations up and down the state, some of which have spent decades helping low-income neighborhoods fight polluters—building “street cred,”as Bruovld put it—could beat out Yes on 23′s massive spending.

“It’s who do voters trust,” Bruvold said, “and who do they believe reflects their values?”

Source: San Diego CityBeat »

By the Ella Baker Center and CEJA

The Ella Baker Center and the California Environmental Justice Alliance today released a study that reveals that Valero and Tesoro, the two Texas oil companies bankrolling Proposition 23 to repeal California’s clean air and energy standards, have been repeatedly cited for producing deadly chemicals at their refineries that are exposing millions of California families to harm. Read the Full Report »

The study, titled “Toxic Twins,” found that not only does the two Texas-based companies’ oil refineries in the Bay Area and Los Angeles regions “annually produce hundreds of thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals, but also “the people who bear the biggest health burdens from these facilities are disproportionately people of color.” Populations residing within 2.5 miles of Valero and Tesoro’s toxic facilities in Los Angeles and the Bay Area were 63 percent African American, Latino and Asian/Pacific Islander.

The study goes on to demonstrate that Valero and Tesoro have repeatedly violated pollution laws in California by releasing chemicals into the air. Over 44 violation notices within a three year window have been settled between Tesoro and the Bay Area Quality Management District. This January, “Valero disclosed that it had 29 outstanding Violation Notices from the South Coast Air Quality Management District and is pursuing a settlement,” according to the report.

“This study reveals what Prop 23 is really all about,” said Mayor Newsom. “Prop 23 is a deceptive ballot measure that will harm the emerging clean energy industry, negatively impact the health of Californians, and discourage innovation.”

“We have known all along that Proposition 23 was a deceptive ballot measure,” said Tom Steyer, co-chair of Stop Proposition 23. “While Valero and Tesoro are making their greatest profits in years, the people of California are suffering due to the negligence and dirty business practices of these Texas oil companies.”

“Proposition 23 will hurt all of us – and will be particularly bad for people of color, who live disproportionally close to oil refineries,” said Kim. “We already have too much pollution and too much poverty in California, especially in communities like the Bayview. Clean energy standards have led to hundreds of thousands of jobs and are leading our economic recovery. Californians will not allow out-of-state companies to come in and take these jobs away.”

This study builds on a report by the University of Massachusetts Amherst Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) “Toxic 100 Air Polluters” report which named Valero and Tesoro as the #12 and #32 polluters in the nation.

We released at a press conference at San Francisco’s Bay View Park attended by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom; No on Prop 23 Campaign Committee Co-Chair Tom Steyer; DeAnn McEwen, California Nurses Association; Jane Warner, President, American Lung Association in California; and Ian Kim, Director of the Green-Collar Jobs Campaign, Ella Baker Center.

Other organizations at the press conference opposing Proposition 23 were the American Lung Association of California, the California Nurses Association.

By CEJA

Amy Vanderwarker has been involved in the environmental justice movement for the past seven years. As the Outreach Manager for the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water (EJCW), she worked with a diverse group of community-based organizations, tribes and nonprofits throughout the state to address the water-related issues impacting low-income communities and communities of color. At EJCW, she worked on both local community campaigns and statewide policy initiatives for water justice. Most recently, she continued her water and environmental justice work as a communications consultant to organizations such as the Community Water Center and the Pacific Institute. As a volunteer with the California Prison Moratorium Project, she worked to stop prison construction in the Central Valley and build bridges between the anti-prison and environmental justice movement, and continues her anti-prison work as a volunteer with Critical Resistance. She is also a member of the San Francisco Print Collective, a collective that produces political prints for Bay Area social justice campaigns and organizations.

By Janet Zimmerman, The Press-Enterprise »

The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made a swing through Southern California on Thursday, with an unusual stop to meet with representatives of environmental justice groups and hear their concerns about the region’s most pressing issues.

The outreach by EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson is unusual, said Bill Gallegos, executive director of Communities for a Better Environment, which combats pollution in disadvantaged neighborhoods around Los Angeles. About 15 groups met with Jackson at a Wilmington youth center to present their ideas.

“It was a positive meeting in the sense that we haven’t had this happen before. Never with Bush or Clinton,” Gallegos said.

The group also included Penny Newman, executive director of the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice in Glen Avon in northwest Riverside County. Newman told Jackson of the need to reduce rail emissions from the movement of goods to the Inland area from ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Her group has sought more pollution-control measures for the BNSF yard in San Bernardino, which a state study found poses the highest cancer risk to nearby residents of all the rail yards in California.

Earlier in the day, Jackson announced $26.5 million in federal stimulus grants for clean-air projects in the South Coast Air Basin, which includes Riverside, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange counties. The grants, paid for by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, will reduce diesel emissions by replacing and updating engines in school buses, heavy-duty trucks, locomotives, construction vehicles and cargo-handling equipment.

Among the awards is $8.9 million to put smaller, cleaner-burning engines on switching locomotives that move cars around rail yards.

The engines, which cost $1.5 million each, will reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter by up to 90 percent, said Harold Holmes, manager of engineering evaluation with the California Air Resources Board. Applications for the grants, due from railroads Nov. 2, will be judged on how much money the companies can contribute and the amount of emissions reduced.

Representatives from the environmental justice groups said they were encouraged by Jackson’s reception.

During the meeting, Gallegos pushed for controls on oil companies that are refining dirty and heavier grades of crude, which increases releases of selenium, mercury, toxic sulfur compounds and greenhouse gases, he said. Jackson took notes on the presentations but did not comment, he said.

This was his third meeting with federal officials. Gallegos met with President Barack Obama’s transition team and had a follow-up meeting with leading members of the EPA, Department of the Interior and other departments.

“I am cautiously heartened,” he said. “We want to see some action. A lot of these issues have been brought to her attention. I think now there needs to be some follow-up.”

Diane Takvorian, executive director of the Environmental Health Coalition near San Diego, called Jackson’s efforts “phenomenal.” She pushed Jackson for EPA incentives for local renewable energy plants.

Power from those plants could help provide electricity to ships docked in Los Angeles and Long Beach, she said. In 2014, the ships will be prohibited from idling in port while they load and unload.

Takvorian said she was impressed by the availability of Jackson’s high-level staff before and after the meeting.

“It’s a really positive sign in terms of her attention to environmental justice groups and the issues we’re grappling with,” she said.

Source: The Press-Enterprise »