Poor and Minority Enclaves Are Cutting Through the Haze

If Alan Lloyd, California’s top smog fighter, had any doubts about the direction he was to take the powerful Air Resources Board, they were quickly dispelled when a state lawmaker summoned him to his predominantly Latino neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley earlier this year.

The gist of the message to Lloyd from Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D-Panorama City): Get serious about improving environmental conditions for California’s poor and minority groups.

It was part of a yearlong drive by Latino lawmakers to reshape policies that affect California’s air, land and water. That effort now is beginning to translate into more money and attention from Sacramento to address environmental problems in poor and nonwhite communities from Oakland to the Central Valley to South Los Angeles.

Leaders in those and other communities, frustrated by what they perceive as excessive pollution and government indifference, are seizing the opportunity to address complaints and promote “environmental justice.”

The symbolism was unmistakable when Cardenas met with Lloyd last spring. The meeting took place in a crowded Pacoima Middle School auditorium, where Cardenas, chairman of the Assembly committee that wields power over the air board’s budget, was seated high above Lloyd on a stage and flanked by leaders of the state Environmental Protection Agency and the Legislature.

“He was trying to make sure we had to be sensitive to those issues,” recalled Lloyd, a bespectacled chemist from Britain. “It was clear that if we ignored his request, we’d be hearing from him. We learned a lot from that experience.”

That encounter was one in a series during the last several months between the state’s environmental czars and members of the Latino Legislative Caucus.

“What we are seeing is a paradigm shift, a correction,” Cardenas said. “We’ve done wonderful and great things with cleaning up the environment in this state, and we need to continue on this track, but we need to increase the number and types of people at the table and the approaches we are using.”

One important step along that path will occur Thursday when the state air board meets in El Monte to consider a sweeping, new environmental justice initiative that aims to reform how the agency attacks pollution. As a complement to its strategic mission of achieving healthful air for all Californians, the plan calls for narrowly tailored measures to reduce emissions in certain communities, involve more people from those neighborhoods in decisions and provide more information about pollution to minority communities.

Among other reforms being proposed, the air board plans to examine major new regulations for their effect on low-income and minority communities and study air quality in neighborhoods with a disproportionate share of pollution sources.

Lloyd said the plan was developed in response to concerns of Latino lawmakers and to halt their attempt to overturn a state law requiring auto makers to build and sell nonpolluting cars in California.

“It’s a recognition that things are changing at the state level and with state demographics,” Lloyd said.

Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill into law two years ago requiring state agencies to promote environmental justice. Yet, since then, community activists and some lawmakers have grown frustrated at the pace of reform.

This year, that discontent boiled over during debate over the so-called zero emission vehicle mandate, a state law that requires Detroit and Japanese auto makers to produce smog-free cars. Latino leaders in the Legislature singled out the law for ridicule, calling it a boutique measure that will cost millions of dollars, do little to cut tailpipe exhaust and result in a few hundred limited-use, battery-powered cars in the garages of wealthy people.

Critics say greater health benefits could be achieved by cleaning up pollution from diesel trucks and buses as well as factories, especially in minority and low-income neighborhoods.

Environmental Justice Initiative Developed

In a move that blindsided state air quality officials, Assemblyman Marco Firebaugh (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the Latino Legislative Caucus, introduced a bill to repeal the zero emission vehicle mandate.

In response, Lloyd said his agency developed the environmental justice initiative. Firebaugh, in turn, amended the bill to keep the electric car mandate as long as half the money the agency spends to clean up diesel trucks and buses goes to low-income and minority communities. This year, the total expenditure amounts to about $16 million, according to the air board.

“We want to see results, not just ZEVs [zero emission vehicles],” Cardenas said. Government officials and mainstream environmental groups “have become very myopic and narrow. They go to wine and cheese parties, talk about the environment but don’t go into the low-income communities or go out to parents and talk about the health of their children. It’s very patronizing.”

California has posted impressive gains protecting the environment in the face of rapid growth in the last 20 years. Ozone, a harmful gas and key ingredient in smog, has been cut in half, and many toxic air pollutants such as lead and benzene have been dramatically reduced as well. Meanwhile, waterways are cleaner, and hazardous-waste dumps are being remedied.

But the benefits are not always evenly distributed. Critics, including community activists and some lawmakers and scholars, say poor and minority communities are home to more sources of pollution, ranging from metal plating shops to industrial centers to rail and truck yards spewing diesel soot.

Toxic Emitters Near Latino, Poor Enclaves

A study released in October by researchers at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment found that communities surrounding the 100 largest industrial toxic emitters in Los Angeles County tend to be predominantly Latino and poor. Six in 10 of the facilities are surrounded by neighborhoods that contain a higher proportion of racial minorities than the Los Angeles countywide average, the study shows.

Black children have higher levels of lead in their blood than white children, and people in minority and low-income neighborhoods are typically exposed to more air pollutants, hazardous-waste facilities, contaminated fish, agricultural pesticides and chemicals in the workplace, according a national survey by the EPA.

“It’s a fact some communities because of their location and proximity to air pollution sources have significantly higher air pollution levels and many of those communities are low income or communities of color. That is the heart of the environmental justice concerns,” said Barry Wallerstein, executive officer for the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Other efforts are in motion to remedy some of those inequities.

In the Central Valley, activists are suing state and local air quality officials to get tough with the valley’s pall of smog. The San Joaquin Valley is home to some of the nation’s worst air pollution and some of California’s poorest residents.

In the Los Angeles region, the AQMD, led by board Chairman William Burke, launched an environmental justice program three years ago. That effort led to improved controls over toxic emissions as well as a series of measures to clean up exhaust from trash trucks, school buses, taxicabs and street sweepers. AQMD executives, too, have been conducting town hall meetings from Commerce to Pacoima to Mira Loma to listen to complaints.

Barrio Logan in San Diego is one of six communities where government researchers are assessing whether air pollution standards protect children. Other communities, many of them home to residents of color or low incomes, in the study are Boyle Heights, Wilmington and Fresno, as well as Fruitvale and Crockett in the Bay Area. Legislation by Martha Escutia (D-Whittier), a member of the Latino Legislative Caucus, launched the program.

Other Cal/EPA agencies are beginning to develop environmental justice programs as well. The state Integrated Waste Management Board announced in October that it will formulate a plan to target problems in low-income and minority communities, similar to the one proposed by the air board.

The agency oversees landfills and management of the 60 million tons of refuse generated in California annually. Meanwhile, the state Department of Pesticide Regulation is conducting more training to help protect farm workers exposed to agricultural chemicals, said Romel Pascual, assistant secretary for environmental justice for Cal/EPA.

“This is going to be a long process to make sure we address these issues,” Lloyd said. “We’ve got major challenges and difficulties ahead of us, and there’s a big job to do in this area.”