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E-mail StoryClean air deadline seen as too long
Arvin protesters want board to get tough
| Wednesday, Aug 29 2007 11:05 PM
Last Updated: Wednesday, Aug 29 2007 11:09 PM
ARVIN -- The nation's smoggiest city isn't giving up on clean air.
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Dozens of Arvin residents protested a community meeting held here by the California Air Resources Board on Wednesday. In June, the air board approved a smog plan that postponed the deadline to meet clean air standards from 2013 to 2024. In four of the past five years, Arvin has exceeded the smog standard more days than anywhere else in the country.
Under the plan, Arvin would be one of the last places in the valley to meet the clean air standards.
"The message we want to send is we don't want to wait that long to get clean air," said Hugo Tamayo, a member of the Committee for a Better Arvin, the recently formed group that staged the protest.
Air board member Dee Dee D'Adamo said the purpose of Wednesday's meeting was to reach out to residents after the strong show of opposition when the board adopted the smog plan. D'Adamo is part of a task force the board formed to look for ways to move up the plan's 2024 deadline.
"At that meeting we heard from a large number of concerned citizens that (2024) wasn't good enough," said D'Adamo, who along with air board member and Fresno County Supervisor Judith Case hosted the meeting. "We took it to heart and felt we needed to invest more time in talking to the community."
Arvin residents made sure their voices were heard.
Wearing shirts that said "Got asthma?" and carrying signs saying "Too many have suffered," about 50 protesters marched up and down the street outside Veterans Hall where the meeting was held.
Inside, the meeting got under way with an air board presentation on the science of air quality. But it was interrupted 15 minutes in as the protesters made their way into the hall, chanting and singing "Shame on you" and "Clean air now."
Meeting organizers stopped the presentation and allowed the group to make comments.
One after another, the protesters took the microphone and spoke about children with asthma and family members who were forced to move away because their doctors said Arvin's air was too unhealthy.
"When you voted to approve this plan, you used words like, 'Let's be realistic.' Well, this is reality," said Daniela Simunovic, a community organizer for the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, a clean air and environmental justice advocacy group in the valley.
"The hundreds of people here tonight breathe this air every day. It's killing them and its making them sick. For you to ask them to wait until 2024, that's not realistic."
Sharon Borradori, with the Kern County chapter of the American Lung Association, joined the chorus of those demanding a quicker pace for clean air.
"If we don't clean up Arvin's air by 2024 we will be condemning a generation of children to lung disease," she said, adding that almost 25 percent of Kern County's children have asthma.
Community pressure on the Air Resources Board was needed, said Seyed Sadredin, executive director of the regional air board, which initially drafted the controversial smog plan. That's because the state air board regulates trucks and cars -- which account for 80 percent of the valley's smog problem.
"There is not silver bullet but if you had one it would be for the trucks going through this valley," he said. "We need tough regulations from them."
Air board member Case said the board is being aggressive with regulations. She pointed to a recently passed rule to clean up diesel-powered construction equipment. The rule is one of the toughest and most costly to industry the board has passed.