What findings, updates, or questions do you have to contribute to this meeting?

Imperial County Visit

• I visited Imperial County in mid-January to interview staff of Comité Cívico del Valle, which developed the IVAN reporting network and the largest-scale low-cost community air monitoring network in the US a few years after that. (This article tells the story fo both, and more media and journal articles related to these projects are in our Zotero bib.) In my interviews, I cofirmed that these projects served as models and inspiration for AB 617. The El Centro/Heber/Calexico corridor, which extends from the US/Mexico border to the county seat of El Centro, was also one of the Year 1 communities chosen for AB 617's Community Air Protection Plan (along with communities like Wilmington, East LA, and San Bernardino in our airshed.
• These are not only technical models for AB 617, but the organizing in Imperial paved the way for AB 617 legislation. AB 617 (sponsored by Bell Gardens' Cristina García) sets up CAPP and a pathway for "hotspot"-focused air policy, but it would not be possible without AB 398 (sponsored by Imperial County's Eddie García), which passed in the same 2017 legislative session and extends the Schwarzenegger-era cap-and-trade program to 2030 and opens up carbon offset funds for air monitoring. I am working on a PECE timeline of the relevant CA legislative history, and I hope to learn more about this in interviews too.
• My visit coincided with a meeting of the CARB Advisory Board in El Centro, which is the first time they have met outside of Sacramento. Their meeting had one agenda item: to approve the Community Emissions Reduction Plan developed through CAPP. It was unanimously approved and public comment overwhelmingly supported it, with some dissent focused on concerns about the fact that emissions reduction plans, unlike the air monitoring phase of CAPP, are as yet unfunded by the CA legislature. This is a huge issue with AB 617 that is likely the biggest barrier to effectively translating the wins and insights from all this community monitoring into policy and emissions reductions: no money! (We can discuss what role teams like TAF have to play in advocacy around this.)
• I also got to do a toxic bus tour of the corridor with CARB, CCV, and AB 617 committee members, including tours of pollution  from freight and commuter traffic at the border, trans-border commerce, the extremely toxic Río Nuevo which runs both into and out of the Salton Sea via Mexicali, and industrial agricultural pollution. I was struck by both the diversity and uniqueness of air pollution/governance challenges in southern California communities, but moreso by the similarities. The emissions inventories that the AB 617 CAPP communities have conducted this year have almost all identified vehicular emissions (from regular cars as well as freight trucks) as the biggest challenge across the board, even where they are compounded by lots of other issues. I am learning this is likely true in Santa Ana (not a CAPP community) as well.

EJ and Homelessness/Housing in Santa Ana

• I've also been doing interviews with residents involved with the air monitoring initiative in Santa Ana -- mostly mothers of children at the schools there -- and learning that overwhelmingly their greatest "environmental justice" concern is with homelessness in their neighborhoods.
• A bit over one year ago, police cleared hundreds of informal shelters in one of the region's largest homeless camps in the Santa Ana riverbed, empowered to do so by the allocation of new funding for shelters and housing in OC. Much have that housing hasn't yet been built though, and the population of people experiencing homelessness in the county has continued to explode. I learned that there are county buses that pick up people from places where routine "sweeps" are conducted to bus them to southeast Santa Ana, where the air monitoring is happening. My interviewees say that there were not many homeless people in the neighborhood prior to this, while now there are many.
• This group of women became active in the neighborhood politics prior to the air pollution concerns by successfully fighting the siting of a proposed homeless shelter in the lot next to the Brasstech facility that alerted them to the air pollution issues. They are now actively protesting the approval of a huge shelter next to a high school in the area. This will be the 8th shelter in Santa Ana.
• The striking thing I have learned through these interviews and the protest at a county supervisors' meeting is that not only is the discourse about homelessness and homeless people one of threat, pollution, and contagion, but multiple stakeholders in Santa Ana are explicitly talking about the crisis  as an "environmental justice" and "environmental racism" issue that discriminatorily burdens low-income, Latinx neighborhoods in Santa Ana rather than affluent, whiter cities in South County. 

Upcoming interviews

• Next week, I will be interviewing the head of South Coast AQMD and a couple other staff who have been leading CAPP implementation for the agency.
• In late February, I have a visit to San Diego to interview the folks from Casa Familiar who did the community air monitoring assessment of the border facility using wearable monitors, who are also leading trainings for organizings across the region on monitoring.
• My interview with CARB's head of EJ programs was rescheduled for March 3.