Facing toxic lead contamination, a California barrio continues its long struggle for justice

Table Of Content

• How to investigate toxic lead lurking in your community’s soil
• Harley-Davidson is officially a clear air outlaw
• This California couple uses more water than all of the homes in Los Angeles
• Company
• Bitcoin mining uses a lot of energy. The US government is about to find out how much.
• Lawn equipment spews ‘shocking’ amount of air pollution, new data shows

For years, Jordan Down residents have seen their drinking water come out of the faucet black, brown, and sometimes yellow — they fear lead contamination, though no contamination source has yet been confirmed. Documents released to Grist through California’s Public Records Act show that thousands of square feet of walls, roofs, and railings in the housing complex were found to have levels of lead paint and asbestos requiring toxic remediation last year. The community’s air pollution is worse than 98 percent of the country, according to Environmental Protection Agency data, and its proximity to harmful industrial polluters has been the center of multiple lawsuits from community members, state agencies, and the local school district. Among other things, the suits call for a total remediation project and increased regulation of nearby polluters, especially Atlas Iron and Metal. Soil lead mapping conducted by researchers across the country and around the globe shows that soil contamination is pervasive and widespread.

How to investigate toxic lead lurking in your community’s soil

It was a “gorgeous, modern design,” and he imagined toting it around the continent to park in beautiful scenic places and show at conventions. The size of a house strongly correlates with the resources required to keep it powered, cooled, and heated. If your home is very, very small, your personal use of those resources will be quite minimal. (Granted, this is equally true for a Manhattan studio as it is for a tiny house, and a Manhattan studio will never need to be hauled using a 500-horsepower truck.) And extremely limited storage eliminates the opportunity for wasteful consumption of stuff, a significant American climate culprit. Hernandez herself grew up only 600 feet from a drilling site run by a subsidiary of Warren Resources.

Harley-Davidson is officially a clear air outlaw

Over two years in 2018 and 2019, Grist tested more than 600 soil samples across three Santa Ana zip codes to measure for the presence of lead. Ninety-five percent of the tests were conducted in the field with an X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analyzer, and 5 percent of the soil samples were sent to the Tulane University School of Medicine for laboratory and XRF analysis. The next year, Romero was again in front of the city council advocating for a residential-only designation for the neighborhood.

This California couple uses more water than all of the homes in Los Angeles

In 1979, after two years of debate, organizing, protests, pamphlet-waving, marches, and meetings, the Santa Ana City Council approved a plan to rezone portions of Logan from industrial to residential. At the time, Romero praised the decision, noting in a Los Angeles Times article that the plan would ease the way for families to seek low-interest loans to upgrade their homes. The existing industrial businesses would be allowed to remain, but the new ordinance also established a residential zone — a striking victory that the Los Angeles Times noted was an about-face that had occurred only once before in modern Orange County history.

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Company

She was ridiculed for spending $211,000 to buy Jacqueline Kennedy’s fake pearl necklace at auction, but she then sold more than 130,000 replicas for a gross of $26 million. There is a public parking lot across the street from Grist House that visitors are welcome to park in, but pay attention to signs! Metered street parking is available on Grant, and unmetered street parking is available on side streets. Using the latest available data from the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2020 National Emissions Inventory, the report found that the equipment released more than 68,000 tons of smog-forming nitrous oxides, which is roughly on par with the pollution from 30 million cars. Lawn equipment also spewed 30 millions tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide, which is more than the total emissions of the city of Los Angeles.

Lost and Found

So firmly rooted in the life that the barrio offered its residents, families like the Andrades lived and died on this land — in some cases literally on Logan’s streets, where Chepa’s father suffered a fatal heart attack while walking home from work. Logan offered not just familial ties, friendship, and support, but also a respite from the racism and discrimination that Mexican Americans faced in other parts of Santa Ana, which was once segregated across social spaces like movie theaters, where Mexicans were forced to sit in the balconies. Uptown neighborhoods used racially restrictive covenants in residential deeds to prevent Mexicans and other people of color from living in the city’s most exclusive neighborhoods. Instead, we rely on our readers to pitch in what they can so that we can continue bringing you our solution-based climate news. Oil and gas extraction spews a soup of toxic substances into the air, including nitrogen oxide, formaldehyde, volatile organic compounds, hydrochloric acid, and other chemicals known to be dangerous to human health. Unsurprisingly, living in proximity to oil wells has been linked to a range of health issues — including nosebleeds like Hernandez experienced, as well as migraines, rashes, respiratory problems, and longer-term impacts on health.

As Greater Los Angeles’ first urban flour mill in almost 100 years, we are reviving one of history’s most important crafts but with a fresh modern approach. The brewery often has a disproportionate amount of IPAs on draft, but within this they have a subset of many styles including American, New England, red, black, double, etc. But they also have fruited sours (both regular and lemonade-esque), a brown ale, Kolsch, and pale wheat ales that often grace the menu as well. Brewing high-quality beer with an emphasis on new styles and innovation, Grist House is an approachable, open-concept brewery, where guests get an inside look at where everything happens. Grist House is home to one of the largest outdoor seating areas amongst Pittsburgh breweries.

Bitcoin mining uses a lot of energy. The US government is about to find out how much.

The amenities of such structures can range enormously, from a barely glorified camp bedroom to a fully functioning home complete with hot water, a composting toilet, and a solar array. A community that has experienced social, economic, and environmental neglect for decades is now the center of the city’s ambitious plans to make housing and transportation more accessible across the increasingly expensive metropolis. At grist house, we put a lot of thought into what we are brewing.We like to push boundaries and try new things, but we also believe that craft beer is for everyone. Whether you’re a hop head, a sour super fan, or lover of lighter brews, there is something on tap for you.

Lawn equipment spews ‘shocking’ amount of air pollution, new data shows

Subsequent scientific research has shown that the use of lead in gasoline, lead-based paint, smelters, industrial emissions, and other factors have led to a buildup of soil lead contamination in the interior of America’s cities over the past century. The phasedown in the use of leaded gasoline that began in the 1970s led to drastic reductions in Americans’ blood lead levels over the past five decades, but scientists warn that blood lead levels still remain unnaturally high. Though tiny-house media coverage today is dominated by listicles of petite properties one can rent in any vacation destination under the sun, the idea that tiny houses could be harnessed for the greater good of society hasn’t gone away entirely. Cities like Seattle and Oakland have floated them as a stopgap measure for homelessness, to mixed degrees of success. The Accessory Dwelling Unit, or ADU, movement has fought for years and years to make tiny houses a viable solution to the affordable housing crisis.

As new soil tests reveal the pervasiveness of lead contamination, one California barrio continues its long struggle for justice. Pistachio sales more than doubled in just three months and steadily increased over the following year to reach $114 million — proving that, sometimes, money really does grow on trees. But what he quickly learned was that hauling the house was prodigiously expensive. One such journey from Toronto to Philadelphia cost around $4,000, and finding a place to park the damn thing for long periods of time was nearly impossible. If you don’t own land, it’s very challenging — especially in cities — to find a place to legally park a tiny house and connect it to utilities.

Even in recent decades, as science has provided more evidence to justify transitioning polluting industries out of the neighborhood to protect human health, the residents have yet to convince the city to help right a wrong that scarred the barrio so long ago. “We tell the city, ‘What you guys did, the bad things you did to the neighborhood — all we’re asking is that you go back and put the neighborhood the way it was when we were kids,’” said Romero. Logan residents would defeat the Civic Center Drive plan, forcing the city to reroute the thoroughfare around the barrio. That kicked off a period of organizing against zoning and land use planning decisions to further defend the barrio from industrial encroachment. In 1953, as the expansion of the industrial pockets took root, the city announced an amendment to the zoning ordinance prohibiting the construction of new dwelling units or major additions to dwellings in industrial zones like Logan. Even after a 1969 zoning amendment permitting improvements and expansions on existing homes, few residents applied for such permits, conducting little rehabilitation on their homes and not building new homes for more than a quarter of a century.

A 2018 study published in the medical journal The Lancet estimates that lead exposure is responsible for more than 400,000 deaths annually in the United States, a number that’s 10 times what scientists previously estimated and comparable to deaths attributed to tobacco smoke exposure. The higher mortality estimate was due to the study’s finding that low-level environmental lead exposure has been a largely overlooked risk factor for death from cardiovascular disease, which could be responsible for nearly two-thirds of the deaths attributed to lead exposure. More than half of those tests returned lead levels that the state of California considers unsafe for children. Historically, farmers pumped just enough groundwater to survive, but in the middle of California’s now five-year drought, nut growers have also used it to expand. Over the last decade, California’s almond acreage has increased by 47 percent and its pistachio acreage has doubled, fueled in the latter case by the Resnicks’ advertising genius.

“We had everything here that we needed,” said Garcia, whose mother, a seamstress, worked seasonally packing oranges and walnuts from the area’s agricultural groves. The scent of oranges trailed her in the summer, followed by the fragrance of walnuts in winter. The natural alchemy of the neighborhood was hard to duplicate, and it’s why children who grew up in Logan often returned. It was the first of many battles — fought first by Chepa and then by her son Joe, Andrade Rodriguez’s younger brother and the current neighborhood association president — where residents faced off with the city to preserve the soul of their community. As part of its focus on its workers, the company has built in-house health clinics at its plants in Lost Hills and Delano.