By Tom Frantz The almond harvest finished this year a few days earlier than normal in mid-October. As usual, this activity produced a horrible 10 weeks of choking dust for many San Joaquin Valley [...] Continue Reading
Environment
Fireplace Burning: Clearing the Air, October 2014
By Tom Frantz The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (Air District) is contemplating a change this summer to its fireplace rule, which is also known as District Rule 4901. The change [...] Continue Reading
Poetry Corner – October 2014
Edited by Richard Stone This month’s selections are by Wayne Warkentin, longtime peace activist, a board member of Peace Fresno for five years, an environmentalist (Sierra Club, Earth First! [...] Continue Reading
Water is Everybody’s Business
By Stan Santos (Author’s note: This article is based on research done in July 2014 and presented in the Spanish language section of the August Community Alliance.) In September 2013, a nonprofit [...] Continue Reading
Clearing the Air: Air District Guidance Undercuts Public Health – September 2014
By Tom Frantz The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (Air District) is making a document available to the public called Guidance for Assessing and Mitigating Air Quality Impacts [...] Continue Reading
How Fresno Became a World Class City
By Mike Rhodes In the not too distant future (or maybe a parallel universe)... Ashley Swearengin, Lee Brand and Steve Brandau were defeated but not surprised as they fell from political power. The [...] Continue Reading
“Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream”
By Robert Pethoud The earth’s forests are being cut down, fisheries are collapsing, water tables are falling, grasslands are becoming desert, glaciers are melting and all of this is taking place at [...] Continue Reading
Moving Backward on Two Related Fronts — Clearing the Air – August 2014
By Tom Frantz Two disturbing items for air quality advocates slipped under the media radar recently. First, California is moving in the wrong direction with greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions. Carbon [...] Continue Reading
And so Greens Must Carry On and On…
By Richard Gomez “Apathy isn’t it. We can do something. So flower power didn’t work. So what. We start again.” —John Lennon The California Greens continue to run and win local elections—10 out of 19 [...] Continue Reading
Clearing the Air: Myths and Facts about Truck Pollution
By Tom Frantz Without a doubt, a significant portion of our pollution comes from large diesel trucks. They emit about a third of all the nitrous oxide (NOx) emissions in the Valley. The oil industry, [...] Continue Reading
The Logic of the Absence of Cars
By Leonard Adame [...] Continue Reading
Health Problems That May Be Caused by…
By Laura Rosenberger Large amounts of the following crops and foods are genetically modified (GM): soy, corn, corn syrup, canola oil, cottonseed oil, sugar beets (and sugar from beets), [...] Continue Reading