Communities of color in Stockton want cleaner air where they live. Is California listening?
In late 2019, air quality advocates from Fresno encouraged the Catholic Charities Diocese of Stockton and Little Manila Rising, a civil rights non-profit, to campaign for Stockton to receive funding under Assembly Bill 617. The law directs air districts to create and implement Community Emissions Reduction Plans (CERPs) to monitor, report, and reduce emissions in identified disadvantaged communities. The goal is to clean up our toxic air, cut our emissions and reduce our exposure to chronic respiratory irritants caused by things like factories, warehouses, freeways, and refineries.
The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, local residents, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and industry representatives together formed a community steering committee to decide how to address our air pollution. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) will vote this Thursday, July 29, on the CERP that came out of this process.
As it stands, the plan includes a number of wins for our AB 617 Study Area: There are incentives for zero-emission vehicles; electric vehicle mechanic training for local students; vegetative barriers and urban greening to protect our neighborhoods; air filtration for homes and schools and other harm-reduction measures. Stockton is also expected to receive new air monitoring stations to gauge the efficacy of emissions reduction measures.
However, Stockton’s CERP would do more to protect our community if it fully reflected the wishes of our community.
Despite our efforts, and the requirements of AB 617, Stockton’s CERP process consistently discouraged community leadership, lacked adequate technical analysis, and still lacks strategic alignment with our worst pollution sources. Crucial community votes on everything from procedural matters to CERP priorities were mismanaged, culminating with the matter of $5 million that the air district appeared to have earmarked for incentives at the Port of Stockton. As initially proposed, incentives could have expanded the port’s capacity to receive more dirty truck and ocean going vessel traffic.
When the steering committee made multiple data requests of the air district and the port to inform this decision, no substantive information was shared until just days before committee comments were due — and that cursory information came from CARB, not the air district or the port.
Ultimately, an overwhelming majority of the steering committee voted multiple times against sending $5 million to the Port of Stockton. But instead of listening to our decision to put that money to work in more productive ways, Stockton’s incentive budget was mysteriously reduced by $5 million.
As CARB prepares to vote on Stockton’s CERP this week, we ask the Board to conditionally approve Stockton’s CERP and require that the full and original funding allocation presented to this community be returned.
We also ask for the Board’s to support the community-led, independent technical advisory group that directly serves Stockton steering committee members so that we can make informed decisions throughout the five-year oversight and implementation phase of Stockton’s CERP. Additionally, we ask that CARB work with engaged community representatives to develop best practices and guidelines for true community leadership in this process, and ensure that diverse communities across the state are treated equally.
Our lives depend on implementation of the measures in our CERP, and the experiences of future AB 617 communities will depend on the precedent CARB’s conditional approval will set. CARB must send a clear signal that California is acting in the best interests of all by empowering impacted communities like South Stockton to lead on the issues that impact us.