By Tom Frantz This winter will mark the end of one of the worst air quality episodes in the San Joaquin Valley for more than a dozen years. The past summer, fall and now the beginning of winter [...] Continue Reading
Clearing the Air
Pollution Trading and Environmental Justice
By Tom Frantz We are in a state of emergency regarding our warming climate. Our air quality is directly related as well. The combustion of fuel for energy has to end soon. If that happens, there is [...] Continue Reading
Smoke!
By Tom Frantz We have suffered the effect of smoke on public health due to the wildfires this summer. It couldn’t be more obvious that serious health impairment comes as a result of breathing the [...] Continue Reading
Protecting Indoor Air Quality
By Tom Frantz How many residents of the San Joaquin Valley live in homes with swamp coolers that suck in outside air through a water-soaked mat of loose fibers and that require at least one window [...] Continue Reading
California Defers to the Oil Industry
By Tom Frantz For several years, environmental justice advocates in California have lobbied the legislature for a buffer zone between oil production activity and schools, hospitals and residents. [...] Continue Reading
Dereliction of Duty
By Tom Frantz This column has detailed the lack of integrity at the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (air district) for a long time. Kevin Hall wrote about illegal and insufficient [...] Continue Reading
Air District Fails Audit
By Tom Frantz For years, San Joaquin Valley clean air activists have railed against the local air district program of emission reduction credits (ERCs). This program allows new polluting projects [...] Continue Reading
Meat Packing and the Coronavirus
Meat packing plants (sometimes described as “disease-ridden flesh factories”) seem to be especially vulnerable to the coronavirus spreading among their workers. It likely has something to do with the [...] Continue Reading
Has the Air District Changed Its Stripes?
By Tom Frantz The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, behind the façade of a public health agency, has forever been in the back pocket of local polluting industries such as [...] Continue Reading
Electric Car Sharing
By Tom Frantz I walk up to four compact SUVs parked in front of the Community Center building at the Sunset Villa Apartments in Wasco. I need a car to drive around the north side of town for about [...] Continue Reading
Carbon Capture and Sequestration Coming to Town
By Tom Frantz Oil and gas companies are facing an existential threat in California. The governor and legislators have agreed that the use of fossil fuel must be phased out over the next 20 years if [...] Continue Reading
Two Dirty Secrets
By Tom Frantz Governor Gavin Newsom has made it clear that his administration intends “to manage the decline in fossil fuel production and consumption in California in a way that is economically [...] Continue Reading