As reported earlier here on Calitics and elsewhere, California Assemblyman Dan Logue, after his recent failed attempt to kill the major provisions of Assembly Bill 32, California Landmark Clean Air legislation by a vote in the legislature, has begun an attempt to go the initiative route to repeal most of AB32. Logue and California Congressman Tom McClintock have been identified as two of several conservative who came up with the idea to repeal AB 32. Right off the bat they wanted the initiative to be referred to as a jobs bill. That did not fly and I recall reading Logue and company were considering legal action against Jerry Brown, Attorney General, because the office made very clear it was a air pollution bill. Now it gets more interesting.

To recap, in part, when Logue was asked by the NEW YORK TIMES who was funding the initiative, Logue refused to identify where the funding for the initiative was coming from. Shortly after the report was published, records were discovered by the press that indicated the financial sponsors of Logue’s initiative, all two of them, were Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp, neither of them headquartered in California.

Suddenly, almost before you could “catch your breath” the CBS affiliate in Sacramento, Channel 13, aired a news story of protesters of Logue’s initiative gathered at a local VELARO gas station to protest the funding.

The news story can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/NoOnValero

About the same time, NOONVALERO.COM, by Californians for Clean Energy and Jobs, sponsored by environmental organizations and business, was launched. It states on the home page in great big letters, in part:

Valero – a Texas-based oil company – is funding a deceptive, job-killing initiative for the November 2010 ballot that would kill California’s clean energy and air pollution law, AB 32. If passed, this initiative would destroy the fastest-growing segment of our economy and put at risk billions of dollars of investment in clean energy companies and small businesses that are creating thousands of jobs throughout California.

A fact sheet, available on the web site, in addition to a place to sign up to volunteer to defeat Logue and Valero indicates:

Valero Oil Company’s Initiative Would Kill Clean Energy & Air Pollution Standards in California

Californians for Clean Energy and Jobs: FACT SHEET Last updated 3/5/10

Passed in 2006, AB 32 is a California law that establishes clean energy and air pollution control standards.

These standards stimulate job creation and investments in clean technology, and reduce our dependence on

foreign oil. Despite the law’s benefits and popularity, it is under attack by Valero’s Initiative.

Valero’s Initiative Would Create More Air Pollution in California

• The Texas-based oil company Valero Energy Corp. is funding a deceptive initiative for the November

2010 ballot designed to kill California’s leading clean energy and air pollution control standards.

• The company claims its measure simply “suspends AB 32,” but in fact their initiative would halt the

implementation of clean energy and pollution standards until California’s unemployment level drops

below 5.5 percent for an entire year – a market condition that has occurred just three times in the last

30 years!

• Valero wants us to return to the dirty energy economy that pollutes our environment, jeopardizes our

health and puts us at a global competitive disadvantage in the trillion dollar field of clean energy.

• Valero is joined in its efforts on the initiative by another Texas oil company, Tesoro. Both companies are

among the biggest polluters in California.

o Valero was named one of the worst polluters in the U.S. (Source: The Political Economy

Research Institute, University of Massachusetts, http://www.peri.umass.edu/Toxi…

Table.265.0.html). The company was hit with $711 million in fines by the U.S. Environmental

Protection Agency in 2005.

Valero’s Initiative Would Kill Thousands of Jobs and Billions of Dollars of Investments in California’s Economy

• According to the non-partisan, independent Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO), the suspension of AB 32

could: “delay investments in energy technologies reaping longer-run savings, or dampen additional

investments in clean energy technologies or in so-called ‘green jobs’ by private firms, thereby resulting

in less economic activity than would otherwise be the case.”

o If Valero’s initiative passes, California could lose more than $80 billion in gross state product

(GSP) and face the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs by 2020.

o California green jobs are growing 10 times faster than the statewide average.

o Between 1990 and 2006, green technology businesses in California grew by 84 percent.

• In 2009, while other sectors saw little or no investment, California’s clean technology sector received

$2.1 billion, 60 percent of the total in North America, and more than five times the investment in our

nearest competitor – Massachusetts.

Valero’s Initiative Would Increase Dependence on Foreign Oil

• By eliminating clean energy and air pollution standards, Valero’s initiative would result in greater use of

foreign oil in California.

• In 2009, Americans spent $265 billion – $500,000 a minute – on foreign oil.

• According to the U.S. Department of Defense, “climate change and energy are two key issues that will

play a significant role in shaping the future security environment. Although they produce distinct types

of challenges, climate change, energy security, and economic stability are inextricably linked.”

• According to the CNA’s Military Advisory Board, “America’s heavy dependency on oil-in virtually

all sectors of society-stresses the economy, international relationships, and military operations-the

most potent instruments of national power.”

Further information available at noonvalero.com.

Both Dan Logue and Tom McClintock are both running for reelection this year.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in both the Primary and, if need be, the General elections in 2010.

(Slightly edited for space. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Cross-posted from Open Left

Yesterday, January 4, 2008, the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) released a landmark study of air pollution and cancer risk, four years in the making, showing significant improvements over an earlier study in the late 1990s, but an overall level of risk that is hundreds to thousands of times higher than what’s normally considered acceptable. The AQMD is the regional air quality enforcement agency for the Los Angeles/Orange County/Inland Empire area, home to the worst air pollution in the country.  The study, known as  MATES III (Multiple Air Toxics Exposure Study), tracked 33 substances, with over 18,000 samples taken at 15 sites over a two-year period.

The vast majority of cancer risk–85%–came from diesel particulate matter, which is primarily regulated by the federal government.  The role of the executive branch in promoting, preventing or delaying effective action is but one more life-or-death decision affecting millions of people in the upcoing November election.

AQMD found the average cancer risk to be 1,200 per million–two to three orders of magnitude above the the level of just 1 to 10 per million that most health experts would consider acceptable, according to AQMD Executive Officer Barry Wallerstein.  But the cancer risk at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are more than double that–up to 2,900 per million, and the next highest levels of risk are found along the goods movement corridors moving inland from the ports:

In 2006, California’s state-level agency, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) released a study (“Emission Reduction Plan for Ports and Goods Movement”) estimating that total premature deaths due to trade (aka “goods movement”) in California from all causes (not just cancer) is about 2,400 annually.  This is roughly equal to the number of murder victims in California in recent years:

Murders are reported on the news every day.  “If it bleeds, it leads.”  But those killed by trade?  Even the doctors and nurses who attend their deaths don’t know who they are.  How can you tell that this particular victim of cancer or heart atack died because of goods movement air pollution?  You can’t.  But they’re out there.  Invisible victims.  Dying, every day.  

It’s not all bad news.  MATES III shows that AQMD’s air pollution programs have reduced residents’ cancer risk from toxic air pollution by at least 15 percent in the past seven years.  But the federal government, not the AQMD, has direct authority over the major contributors to goods movement pollution–ships, planes, trains, and trucks.  And the federal government, of course, is not just doing nothing, it’s actively preventing others from doing anything.

In a press release, AQMD said:

“This reduction in cancer risk shows that we are on the right track in tackling toxic air pollution,” said William Burke, Ed.D., Governing Board Chairman of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

“However, the remaining cancer risk is completely unacceptable.  Thousands of residents are getting sick and dying from toxic air pollution.  Some of them live in low-income, minority neighborhoods that may be heavily impacted by cancer-causing air pollution.  We must continue to fight for cleaner ships, locomotives, trucks and other sources of toxic air pollution to improve the  health of all Southern California residents.”

According to AQMD, the chief findings of MATES III are that:

* On average, Southland residents are exposed to a lifetime cancer risk from toxic air pollution of 1,200 in 1 million.  That is a 15 percent reduction from the average risk estimated in AQMD’s last air toxics study conducted in 1998-1999, but still one of the highest risks in the country;

* The highest computer-modeled risk level is in the port area with a maximum lifetime cancer risk of up to 2,900 in a million;

* Diesel exhaust accounts for approximately 84 percent of region-wide cancer risk and mobile sources — including cars and trucks as well as ships, trains, aircraft and construction equipment — account for 94 percent of the total risk; and

* Sites with higher levels of cancer risk due to air toxics include Burbank, downtown Los Angeles, Fontana, Huntington Park and Wilmington.  The site with the lowest risk is Anaheim.

The following chart shows the dominant role played by diesel particulate matter (bottom red-orange portion of each bar):

The last MATES study lead to a series of regulatory measures, and we should expect more of the same in the wake of MATES III, although the most significant actions will require federal action–or, at the very least, non-interefence.  Of these, AQMD highlighted the following:

* AQMD’s clean fleet rules, which have resulted in the purchase of hundreds of clean-fueled transit buses, school buses, refuse trucks, street sweepers and other vehicles;

* Regulations that have significantly reduced emissions of perchloroethylene (“perc”) at dry cleaners and other industries; hexavalent chromium from metal plating shops and protected schools from toxic air pollutants from new sources;

* Collaboration with the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to establish the ports’ Clean Air Action Plan, a landmark program to cut diesel emissions from ships, trucks, trains and other sources;

* Use of well over $100 million in incentive funds to reduce diesel emissions from school buses, tug boats and trucks in the ports and other sources of diesel exhaust; and

* Adoption in January 2007 of AQMD’s Mobile Source Fair Share Initiative, which led to introduction of the Marine Vessel Emissions Reduction Act in Congress last year.  If approved, the measure would compel the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reduce toxic and smog-forming pollution from ships.

In addition to direct federal action, there are solid legal grounds to allow greater flexibility for others to act–if the Bush Administration were sympathetic to public health.  There are solid legal arguments supporting jurisdictional rights for some state and regional programs–as well as actions by the ports themselves, which have the right to set terms for those doing business with them, under what’s known as the “market participation theory”.

But industry threats of lawsuits have already delayed implementation of a clean trucks program. The federal government can further delay such efforts through its opposition, as demonstrated by the EPA’s recent refusal of a Clean Air Act waiver for California’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions for cars.  Thus, MATES III also serves to highlight another way in which the elections this November could well save thousands of innocent lives.

(great report from Paul. – promoted by David Dayen)

“Goods Movement” Is Destroying Communities, From The Lungs Of Children Outward

A Growing Movement To Roll Back The Damage Took A Big Step Forward This Weekend

Cross-posted from Open Left

“Birth of a movement” is probably overstating it.  Movements don’t really work like that. They come into being gradually, almost imperceptibly at first, and then go through succession of defining moments, not just one.  But sometimes there comes a moment when those who have been acting separately in far-flung corners of the country come together, and know that from that point onward, they will never be that separate again.  And that is not the birth a movement, it is, at least, the birth of a movement’s national identity.  And that is what is happening in Carson, California, this Friday and Saturday: the joining together of activists from across the country fighting to defend their communities against the destructive side of global trade in perhaps its most concrete form-the destruction due to the physical movement of goods.

There were also some world-class health and environmental scientists on hand.  You know.  Reality-based community types.  The usual suspects.

Modestly billed as “a conference on healthy solutions for communities impacted by trade, ports and goods movement,” the “Moving Forward” conference brought people from communities as far away as Maine-and even Barcelona-to the shadow of the Los Angeles/Long Beach port complex, which claims more than a thousand lives a year due to premature deaths from the pollution generated by the flow of goods pouring through it.  Although the vast majority of participants came from different parts of California, others came not only from Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico ports, but also from “inland ports” in places as unlikely as rural Kansas, where Eric Kirkendall found himself threatened with being surrounded by a massive, multi-acre, diesel-pollution-belching warehouse complex. And they came not so much for raw information-readily available in today’s online age-but for the chance to simply gather together, share their stories, gain inspiration, make connections, and forge the framework for a movement that still does not even have a simple name.

We’ve Come A Long Way

Five years ago, when local activists opposed to the wanton destruction of unregulated port expansion held a press conference in nearby San Pedro, they were met with an angry contingent of workers from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), and they did not really get any respect until they beat the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) in the California Court of Appeals.

But on Friday, the opening keynote speech was given by Joe Radisich, who not only is the ILWU’s International Vice President, but who also sits on the 5-person Board of Harbor Commissioners overseeing POLA.  And Radisich laid it on the line.  Longshore workers were amongst the most exposed to port pollution, and therefore had a strong commitment to cleaning up the industry they worked in.  They knew from seventy years of fighting the industry that there would be pushback.  There would be lawsuits, and there would be threats to move business elsewhere-which is why the battle had to become a national, even an international one.

“We have to start thinking on a national and a global scale,” Radisich said, warning of certain defeat, “if we don’t have a stragegy to help others.”

In response, audience members from both Texas and South Carolina personally asked Radisich to come visit their communities, and talk with labor leaders there.  (The Atlantic and Gulf coasts are represented by another union, the International Longshore Assocation, but both are part of a larger worldwide association of maritime-related unions.)  The dramatic shift on the part of the ILWU is indicative of a potential that is present everywhere.  No one wants to sacrifice their health-or even more dramatically, the health of their children-simply for the sake of making a decent living, which should come simply at the cost of honest hard work.

Mothers and Children

In part because children’s developing lungs put them especially at risk, there is a deep visceral element to this struggle that easily transcends differences of race, ethnicity or language.  One of the partner organizations involved in putting on the conference, the Long Beach Alliance for Children With Asthma, draws enormous strength from educating and empowering the mothers of children with asthma, first to help them learn how to care for their children, and then, if they wish, helping them to become powerful public advocates. 

In a panel session devoted to success stories, LBACA program director Elina Green explained how LBACA began as a more-or-less standard service agency, but then developed a strong public advocacy program, realizing that such advocacy was absolutely necessary to protect the health of the children in their community. LBACA itself underwent a natural evolution from service to advocacy that direcly parallels the evolution of the mothers that it works with.

Here are two such stories, taken from “PAYING WITH OUR HEALTH: The Real Cost of Freight Transport in California, A Ditching Dirty Diesel Collaborative Report by the Pacific Institute, published in November 2006, which was part of the resource package for this conference:

Two Long Beach Mothers

by Oti Nungaray and Adriana Hernandez

Oti Nungaray

RUMBLE, RUMBLE. That’s the hum of my community, so close to the nation’s largest port complex. The air tickles your throat, but my daughter and I are not laughing. We’ve been living in Long Beach for ten years. The doctor first diagnosed her with asthma when she was six. It’s been traumatizing to watch my child suffer. Through my involvement with the Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma, I’ve learned about managing my child’s asthma, including controlling triggers inside the home. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to control the environment outside, when you live next to the largest fixed source of air pollution in greater Los Angeles. I believe there are solutions to these problems. I don’t believe industry’s claim that reducing pollution will hurt our economy. These companies make a lot of money while I spend money on medicine and miss work and my daughter misses school.

Adriana Hernandez

I LIVE NEAR I-710: a parking lot of nearly 50,000 cargo trucks daily. Next door is Wilmington, an area pockmarked with refineries. We get hit with pollution from all sides. My youngest son was born with a closed trachea and his left vocal cord paralyzed; he still takes speech classes. He also suffered from severe asthma attacks. I had to medicate him and connect him to a breathing machine, feeling desperate that my child couldn’t breathe.

Lots of companies are making lots of money, while we pay for medicines, insurance pays for doctor’s visits, and the government pays when children miss school. These companies are selfish to not pay the pennies needed to help reduce this pollution. In doctor visits, medication costs, and a mother’s anguish, increased freight transport in Long Beach costs us too much.

Ports Move Inland

As the ports and port communities have become increasingly overwhelmed, some of the functions that used to be carried out on what’s known as “backlands” have been moved inland, five, twenty, a hundred miles or more, as told in another story from “PAYING WITH OUR HEALTH” by a legendary activist:

My story: Once-Rural Riverside County

by Penny Newman

I’VE BEEN A RESIDENT of the rural community of Glen Avon/Mira Loma for more than 41 years. Located next to Highway 60 and Interstate 15, our unincorporated area is the target of industrial development of massive warehouses and distribution centers. The expansion of goods imported into the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach has created a demand for rail hauling of goods that has led to the expansion of the Union Pacific railyard-now the largest auto distribution center in the world. In five years, our sleepy, agriculturally based community turned into a major industrial park. More than 120 warehouses have replaced cow pastures and vineyards. Our mountain views have been replaced by looming cement monoliths. The Union Pacific is now directly next to our high school. Hundreds of trucks park and idle 20 feet from the athletic fields where our children play.

The Inland Valleys of Riverside and San Bernardino have long had high levels of smog pollution, but recently the main focus has turned to particulate matter (PM). The World Health Organization (WHO) ranked us fourth in the world in PM pollution, after Jakarta, Indonesia; Calcutta, India; and Bangkok, Thailand. According to researchers at USC, the children in our communities have the slowest lung growth and weakest lung capacity of all children studied in Southern California. Asthma and other respiratory ailments are prevalent. Cancer risk from freight transport is 1,500 times the Environmental Protection Agency’s “acceptable” risk levels. With this development, our streets and rural roads have become danger zones. Residents must compete with semi trucks for space on the same roads. Horse riders navigate trails that now wind through industrial areas. Children who once enjoyed the open fields now are confined to their own backyards for recreation. We greatly fear the prediction that freight transport will increase exponentially. Our families simply can’t take any more.

Only now, some of those functions are moving more than a thousand miles inland, which brings us to Kansas, and the story Eric Kirkendall told the conference attendees, which is summarized on his own website :

My name is Eric Kirkendall. My wife and I have lived just outside of Gardner for almost 18 years. I have Master’s degrees in Urban Planning and Public Administration from the University of Kansas, but work as a manager of Information Technology.

I am a firm believer in a person’s right to do what he wants on his land – as long as he does not negatively affect other people. They can play music as loud as they want, they can pollute, they can have bright lights on 24 hours a day. That is land and their business. When those impacts cross my property line – that is another story. Then it is my business.

Until recently, that was hypothetical.

No longer. The first Intermodal-related development has been proposed on the land that surrounds our four-acre homestead on three sides. My wife and I are the first people so directly and closely affected by the Intermodal and the warehouses that will come with it – but not the last.

This might happen to you too, so I will tell you how this developer has worked. First, Paul Licausi of LS Commercial Real Estate offered to buy our property, and showed us a “site plan” (a drawing) that shows a road for diesel trucks just 10 feet from our eastern property line, and a 12 acre warehouse just ten feet beyond that. On the other side of our property was another huge 12 acre warehous.

I told him that we want to retire here in 7-8 years, and are not interested in selling now. I told him that I want him to follow good development standards so that can enjoy our property until then. In return for assurances of good standards, I offered to would work with him to assure our property could be integrated into his development at that time. I offered to guarantee him the right to buy the property.

I have told him that in person at our only meeting, and in several email messages. I invited him to my home to discuss it. I suggested we find a “win-win” solution that meets his needs and ours. He has refused. One of his employees said he will meet with me only to discuss my wife and I selling him the property. His development plans, if he is successful, will destroy the livability of our home.

So, my only option has been to approach the City of Gardner and to ask that they not annex the land that surrounds me until there are standards in place appropriate for a Mega-warehouse development. Everyone in the city agrees that such standards do not yet exist, and are looking into hiring a consultant to help them develop appropriate standards.

One thing I can’t convey so easily is how nonchalantly multi-racial and gender balanced the conference was.  Which is only natural, given who’s in the way of limitless corporate greed.  This is what America looks like.  And it’s had enough of being shunted aside in the name of “progress” that doesn’t seem to be headed anywhere at all.

Welcome to the birth of a movement.

It wasn’t born, really. Like Topsy, it jus’ growed.