Environmental injustice in a nutshell

The essence of environmental injustice

Of 20 children known born in Kettleman City between September 2007 and November 2008, five had a cleft in their palate or lips, according to a health survey by activists. Three of those children have since died. Statewide, clefts of the lip or palate routinely occur in fewer than one in 800 births, according to California health statistics.
Besides these health problems, activists point to the high asthma and cancer rates in this largely Spanish-speaking farming community. -- Sacramento Bee, 12-22-09

Kings County is one of California's poorest counties. home of the nation's largest cotton corporation, endless vistas of nut trees, and several prisons. The county apparently gets its largest chunk of private revenue from fees from toxic waste dumped near one of its poorest communities, Kettleman City, on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. Places like Kettleman City just traded the Dust Bowl for la Olla de Polvo at a certain point. We take poverty surrounded by agribusiness wealth so much for granted we don't even notice because we Valley residents have been taught since kindergarten that treating farm labor decently, providing them decent wages and safe living conditions would be the end of civilization as we know it. Travelers on I-5 stop at off-ramp gas stations, not in town. The west side has always been a place for dumping toxic wastes and poor people, a place back in "natural times" before it started sucking water from the Delta, coyotes, roadrunners, and sagebrush roamed and oil wells bobbed. Now, after decades of subsidized farming, increased subsidized water supplies and corrupt deals between special interests and government, complete with the constant stream of propaganda about how all this wealth generated by agribusiness in the region would improve the lot of working people, this is what you got for your tax dollar.
What passes for political leadership in the San Joaquin Valley constantly whines for more government funding, more government-subsidized water, more exemptions from any law that stands between agribusiness or development corporations and their profits. But, what the Hell have the bigshots done but bring us shameful things like this, phony water rallies, countless foreclosures and regional economic depression after skimming the booms? What exactly have these "leaders" ever done -- during all the generations between the beginning of agriculture and development here and the present to deserve the respect of anyone not directly profiting from their deals?
For years at the Kettleman City public swimming pool, they had a "nose-bleed bench." PG&E settled a lawsuit with Erin Brockovich in 2002 for its contamination of local groundwater with chromium-6.
To repeat the gist of comments Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers, made to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar last summer, decent political leadership would demand farmworkers get unpolluted water and a basically healthy environment in which to live before -- not after -- their bosses get irrigation water.  It is an object of national shame that the public should even have to make such a demand in the 21st century.
Badlands Journal editorial board

12-22-09
Fresno Bee
Kings Co. supervisors to hear landfill plan...Lewis Griswold
http://www.fresnobee.com/updates/v-print/story/1757145.html
The Kings County Board of Supervisors today will take up Waste Management Inc.'s plan to expand its hazardous waste landfill near Kettleman City.
The Planning Commission in October approved the expansion, but opponents, citing a high number of birth defects among newborn children in Kettleman City, filed an appeal with county supervisors.
Opponents said five babies born in the Kettleman City area during a 15-month period had birth defects, and three of the babies died. The area has about 1,500 residents.
The county has confirmed the birth defects, and the Board of Supervisors last week asked the state health department to investigate.
Waste Management says it has no problem with a study on the birth defects, but it needs to expand its Kettleman Hills facility to stay open another 32 years. Otherwise, it will fill up by 2011.
The landfill, about three miles southwest of Kettleman City, takes paint, lead, battery waste, arsenic, contaminated soil, pesticides and other substances.
Sacramento Bee
Calif. county considers toxic waste dump expansion...Associated Press Writer
http://www.sacbee.com/state_wire/v-print/story/2412699.html
LOS ANGELES -- Officials overseeing a tiny farming community in central California are expected to make a decision Tuesday on the proposed expansion of the largest toxic waste dump in the West amid growing concerns about a spike in the town's number of birth defects.
Chemical Waste Management Inc. wants to increase the size of its 1,600-acre facility near Kettleman City, a town of 1,500 about three hours north of Los Angeles in the San Joaquin Valley. The proposal is slowly moving through a permitting process that includes local, state and federal regulators.
It faces a Tuesday vote by the Kings County Board of Supervisors. Community members have been urging the board to reject the proposal after discovering an alarming increase in birth defects and infant deaths.
Of 20 children known born in Kettleman City between September 2007 and November 2008, five had a cleft in their palate or lips, according to a health survey by activists. Three of those children have since died. Statewide, clefts of the lip or palate routinely occur in fewer than one in 800 births, according to California health statistics.
Besides these health problems, activists point to the high asthma and cancer rates in this largely Spanish-speaking farming community.
Why in a town of 1,500 were five babies born with clefts? It's totally unacceptable," said Maricela Mares-Alatorre, 37, who heads People for Clean Air and Water. "Who's responsible? What's happening?"
The dump's owners support a health study and have even offered to pay for one, but say there's no evidence linking the facility to the birth defects. Other potential culprits are pesticides sprayed on nearby fields, discolored drinking water and exhaust from Interstate 5, the West Coast's major north-south highway, which borders the town.
After years of fighting Chemical Waste, activists have become distrustful. They have accused the company and public agencies of holding meetings at inconvenient times and places and refusing to translate documents into Spanish.
They have also threatened to sue if the supervisors approve the project.
Chemical Waste is Kings County's biggest business, contributing as much as $3 million a year to the county's general fund. Kettleman City community leaders complain that little of the money comes back to the town, which has no sidewalks or stop signs.
About 400 truckloads of waste are hauled to the dump each day. In 2007, the last year for which complete statistics are available, that meant more than 3 million pounds of lead compounds, nearly 2 million pounds of asbestos and more than 118,000 pounds of arsenic, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. It's the state's only facility that accepts cancer-causing PCBs.
Most of the waste comes from California, with smaller amounts from other states and even Mexico.