What's at stake:
Fresno residents have had only 10 days of clean air since the start of May.
Valley air regulators have failed multiple times to clean the air at the rate they promised.
On Thursday, state and local regulators agreed that they still need more time - until the end of the decade.
Dozens of Valley residents protested on Thursday the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) unanimous approval for a slate of delays to clean the air in America’s dirtiest air basin.
CARB board members approved multiple deadline extension requests for annual PM2.5 standards in the San Joaquin Valley, backtracking their initial timeline made in 2018. After decades of missed deadlines, Valley residents and some board members said the request to meet a 2012 air standard by 2030 was unacceptable.
The elephant in the room was that every clean air plan ever submitted by the Valley regulators to meet the EPA’s annual soot standards has failed. The San Joaquin Valley remains the only air basin in America to have never met an annual PM2.5 standard.
“The story of Clean Air Act attainment in the San Joaquin Valley is one of delay, neglect and repeated failures to nearly every single Clean Air Act standard,” said Mark Rose, a manager at the National Parks Conservation Association. “Once again, they stand before you with an insufficient plan, asking for an additional five years.”
The meeting was remarkable for its two radically divergent moods. In the first half of the meeting, Air District and CARB staff applauded their efforts, marking their latest clean air plan as a triumph of public health. But facing air that has barely improved in 15 years, residents in some of the country’s most polluted neighborhoods reacted to the plan with a fever pitch of frustration.
“We need clean air. There have been lots of live lost. Lots of pregnancies that have been complicated. We cannot wait until the 2030 deadline,” said Olga Sanchez, a farmworker in Tulare County.
“No more death. We have the right to clean air.”
San Joaquin Valley regulators’ long history of failure
Looming over CARB’s vote was its pile of failed votes and clean air plans over the last 20 years.
CARB and the Air District were supposed to meet the country’s first annual soot standard, from 1997, by 2010. The EPA granted the Valley regulators a first deadline request for spring 2015. The Air District and CARB failed to meet that deadline.
The EPA gave another deadline, to December 2015. The valley regulators failed that one too.
CARB and the Air District asked for another deadline extension, into 2020. They failed that one as well.
The EPA gave another deadline, to 2023. Figures shown at the meeting Thursday showed that CARB and air district had failed that one too.
After so many failures, CARB Board Member Diane Takvorian said that her vote Thursday unsettled her conscience, knowing how sick Valley residents had become by the Air District’s and CARB’s failures.
“I don’t feel comfortable,” she said about approving the deadline extension. “At some level, I don’t think it’s ethical.”
State approves unprecedented fifth extension to clean air plan
Some CARB board members called the deadline extension inappropriate and the Valley air plan too weak – before eventually giving their “yes” vote on everything.
CARB approved on Thursday to ask the EPA for an unprecedented fifth deadline extension, until the end of this year, for the 1997 air quality standard. They said on Thursday they are close to achieving the nation’s oldest PM2.5 standard – a decade after they initially said they would, and 19 years after they first started planning to achieve it.
Similarly, a multi-decade delay is in play for the other major PM2.5 annual standard. Valley regulators planned on meeting the 2012 PM2.5 standard by the end of 2025, according to federal documents. On Thursday, CARB and the Air District waved the white flag again, submitting a deadline extension request for what amounted to an 18-year delay, hoping to achieve the standard by 2030.
Residents argued that CARB and the Air District didn’t meet the EPA’s requirements for that deadline extension.
They said the air district didn’t use the best pollution control measures – ones that are used in wealthier parts of the state. For example, the Bay Area has stringent bans on wood burning; in Southern California, the local air district there has much better warehouse pollution rules, advocates said.
The new plan also doesn’t regulate ammonia emissions from mega-dairies, which the EPA has asked the air district to regulate since 2016.
“This [plan] still doesn’t go far enough to curtail emissions from residential wood burning,” said Fresno resident Thomas Menz. “It ignores simple measures to reduce residential woodsmoke. These are entirely feasible measures that other districts have already adopted.”
Even if the EPA agrees with the residents, however, it is unclear if the federal agency will be able to successfully hold CARB and the Valley Air District accountable.
The EPA hasn’t approved a Valley clean air plan for an annual PM2.5 standard since 2014. But since then, not much punishment or federal takeover has been doled out. Instead, CARB and the Air District have moved slowly on creating new clean air plans after their old ones fail.
In October 2022, the EPA issued potentially $2.5 billion in sanctions after the Valley missed its third deadline extension.
The state of California didn’t have a “plausible strategy” nor “demonstrated it is capable of” attaining the 2012 standard by 2025, the EPA wrote at the time. CARB and the air district’s policies were “weak” – filled with incomplete analysis and “lacking detailed support,” according to the EPA.
But CARB and the Air Distrct withdrew their plan before the penalties and public hearings could be legally finalized. CARB Executive Director Steven Cliff wrote in a letter at the time that the EPA should have approved the plan, saying that air quality was improving.
However, even by CARB’s standards, that plan was a failure. The plan Cliff said the EPA should have approved was supposed to meet the 2012 standard by December 2025. But on Thursday, Cliff and other staffers said that the current regulations – made under that clean air plan – only allowed for the 2012 standard to be reached by 2030 at the earliest.
After decades of unmet promises, some of CARB’s board members asked why they should believe what the staff have to say about when air quality deadlines can and should be met in the Valley.
“While I appreciate the hard work of our staff and the air district staff in dealing with the complicated [clean air plan process], I think the five year time frame is too long,” said CARB board member John Balmes. “That’s five years with kids being exposed to higher levels of PM2.5.”
Despite their planning failures, CARB and the air district staff said they had the best clean air plan in the country, achieving air quality standards as soon as possible.
To meet the 2012 standard, Valley regulators said on Thursday that they need to reduce PM2.5 emissions by 16% and Nitrous Oxides, a key building block of PM2.5 particles, by 66%.
“Reductions are coming, and some are here now,” said CARB board member and Valley representative Tania Pacheco-Werner.
“This is not a ‘mission accomplished’ moment though, but it is important to recognize that progress is being made.”
For Valley residents, breathing unhealthy air remains a way of life
Residents from Arvin, Dinuba, Fresno, Coalinga, and Bakersfield, however, called in to CARB to say why they opposed the deadline extension. They said their lives were being made miserable due to air pollution, and another five year delay was unbearable.
“I haven’t been able to go outside because of this air pollution.” said Alexandra Perez, an incoming high school senior from Fresno. “I want to see change. I have asthma, the majority of the people I’m surrounded by have asthma.”
For example, since the beginning of May, Fresno residents have had 10 days of healthy air, out of 85 days, according to EPA data.
There were two days of healthy air in all of June. None in July, so far.
In the San Joaquin Valley, this crisis rarely allows residents to catch their breath. In the winter, the air is bad due to mega-dairy pollution and residential wood-burning. It’s even worse in the fall due to wildfire smoke. And during the summer, truck traffic, heat waves and stagnant air produce hazardous levels of ozone for months on end.
The burden of all this pollution causing allergies, headaches, asthma, cancer, complicated pregnancies often ending in tragedy and premature death, residents said, pointing to scientific studies.
“You are the people in charge of protecting us. And you’re not getting that done,” said Arvin resident Francisco Gonzalez.
At the Fresno meeting, residents talked about the EPA’s official data showing stagnant air quality for the last 20 years in the southern portion of the Valley. In southcentral Fresno, a recent UC report showed that infant mortality is three times higher than in the wealthiest corners of California, like San Francisco, due to high pollution.
The overwhelming majority of comments at the meeting shined a light on the mental and physical toll of valley regulator’s slow progress for cleaning the air.
The air is healthy to breathe for only two to three months a year, by EPA standards. This sad fact of life has barely budged in the last two decades.
“We have a saying in Spanish that the weakest dog gets the fleas. And unfortunately, I think you see us as that. Why? Because we’re farmworkers? Because of our skin color? Because we don’t speak English? Because we’re unaware of our rights?” said Fresno County resident Maria Delores Diaz.
“We want to live without needing having to have so many medications. And with every deadline extension, you grant our illness to get worse.”
Public comments for Valley regulators’ extension request can be submitted here to the EPA by Aug. 7.
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