Fighting pollution in Sacramento neighborhoods may get easier under new California plan

In a state already engulfed by polluted air, wildfires bring even more dangerous breathing conditions. Experts have linked exposure to harmful air pollution to worsened health outcomes for COVID-19 patients, for example. Every day, Californians see how devastating poor air quality can be for our health.

Improving air quality is an issue of equity. Thanks to the vision of Southern California Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia and others, Assembly Bill 617 has provided those living in overburdened neighborhoods with a seat at the table to help identify local solutions to air pollution while holding policymakers and polluters accountable.

Under AB 617, the state launched the new Community Air Protection Program. In the South Sacramento-Florin community, AB 617 has empowered us to tackle emissions from Highway 99 and mobile sources, the primary generators of our air pollution. It also enabled us to develop a plan to monitor and mitigate mobile emissions and analyze the effects of emissions on sensitive populations like senior citizens, schools and hospitals.

As a South Sacramento-Florin community steering committee member, I have experienced firsthand how real change comes from empowering communities affected by toxic air. Through our monitoring plan, we can prioritize pollution sources that critically affect our residents.

Education and outreach are integral parts of this process, helping to address increasing rates of respiratory problems like asthma and educate residents on using air quality data to make decisions.

We must expand the Community Air Protection Program to more low-income, under-invested and pollution-burdened neighborhoods across the state. Funding will help communities better identify the sources of pollution and empower those with a vested interest to ensure that equitable solutions are found, funded, implemented and enforced.

The pattern of poor air quality in under-invested areas is a long-standing result of discriminatory 20th-century “redlining” practices that forced nonwhite Americans to reside in undesirable areas, using highways to separate African Americans from white neighborhoods. Research shows ongoing harm within previously redlined communities, where residents are “more than twice as likely as their peers to visit emergency rooms for asthma,” according to researchers at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco.

We should use community-based approaches across the board to address poor air quality, starting at transportation pollution sources. We can make a difference by enhancing access to renewable and bio-based alternatives to replace the petroleum fuels that primarily fill our gas tanks. Expanding the air protection program will help our state achieve more equitable, local approaches to cleaning our dirtiest air.

Earlier this year, three neighborhoods were added to the program. That’s a good start, but dozens of communities are in dire need of program funding and attention to address unhealthy air.

I urge Gov. Gavin Newsom and state legislators to increase funding and expand resources for program implementation and incentive funding so that more communities can effectively identify, monitor and mitigate air pollution sources in their neighborhoods. Local elected and community leaders across the state must also lobby their representatives in Sacramento for air protection funding and programming.

Especially now, as millions of Californians suffer the impacts of dangerous air pollution levels, we must raise awareness about this issue and call on our leaders to make changes that empower our communities.