CA Environmental Advocates Push to Protect Poor from Pollution

Precinct Reporter Group by: Dianne Anderson When, not if, $125 million comes down from future Cap and Trade dollars, a group of advocates and concerned doctors want to make sure that it gets to those who need it most. The Greenlining Institute and the Physicians for Social Responsibility have teamed up, along with many other advocates to push for SB 605, a piece of legislation calling for clean energy investments to help low income disadvantaged communities. The bill jumps off AB 1532 (Perez) and SB 535 (de Leon) signed late last year by the Governor, that was supposed to start tapping 10% revenues from the state pollution auction for environmental relief for hard hit low income communities. Instead, the Governor recently grabbed back $500 million of those auction dollars to provide relief toward the ailing state General Fund. Bruce Mirken, spokesperson for the Greenlining Institute, said while Cap and Trade auction dollars are mostly shot this budget cycle, if passed, SB 605 will put low income communities first in line for any money beyond $500 million, whenever that money comes down. The bill requires any money coming through the Cap and Trade fund over what the State borrowed to be used for underserved communities. “Hopefuly with the economy inching back to health, there won’t be any reason to pull anything like this again,” he said. “And, if there’s an attempt to, lots of us will scream bloody murder.” Advocates view the new bill as a short term way to get things happening as soon as possible, he said. The alternative — doing nothing about dirty air — is extremely costly to the state in terms of money, missed work, needless medical expensives, and illness. “The carbon auctions are still going on, so you don’t know exactly how much is [coming down], but if it exceeds that $500 million, the first $125 million needs to go to projects in disadvantaged communities.” Martha Arguello with Physicians for Social Responsibility said the bill is important toward getting clean energy investments into disadvantaged areas. With over 4,000 members and about 1,500 are physicians, the organization was involved in the fight for air quality and health legislation starting with AB 32, a bill that got the ball rolling for subsequent pollution legislation. She sees SB 605 as a beginning toward lowering the asthma epidemic in Southern California, and saving the state more money on health care dollars. Usually, Black and Brown children suffer the highest rates of asthma in urban areas, and doctors are seeing the correlation between environment and the health of low income people that live close to heavy traffic areas, freeways, or oil refineries. On a bad air day, she said research shows that more kids are getting sick. The connection, she said, is that big polluters continue to buy up cheap land, and site their facilities in low income communities where residents cannot afford to move away. “There’s a growing awareness among doctors that the environment matters. We’ve certainly seen that in the support we get from our doctors and members, there is more willingness to address these issues from a policy perspective,” she said. Long Beach port is also the starting point for the heavy goods movement into the Inland Empire, as trucks and trains once again move nonstop to warehouses, and contribute to the thick toxic zone along the freeways. The next step is getting community to call their legislators, she said, and even ten or 15 phone calls can make a difference. Many legislators say their offices are not receiving community calls of concern, but they are receiving a lot of visits from heads of industry and big business. “Even if it’s just a phone call that says we want you to do something about air quality — that matters,” she said. “I was at a legislative meeting and I said what do you hear from the district? She said, ‘You know what — we don’t hear anything.’” The post CA Environmental Advocates Push to Protect Poor from Pollution appeared first on The Greenlining Institute.