Good morning! It’s Danielle Bergstrom, policy editor here.
Valley clean air advocates lose a big fight. On Thursday, Gov. Newsom vetoed AB 2550, a bill authored by Fresno assemblymember Joaquin Arambula, designed to give more oversight to the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (a mouthful! We just call it ‘the air district’). The legislation was designed to provide an additional layer of community oversight to the approval process in place for the air district’s plans to meet federal clean air standards, as Gregory Weaver reports.
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More affordable housing coming to Mayfair neighborhood: State leaders announced Thursday that the former waterboards offices at First and Shields avenues have been designated a future affordable housing site, among four others across California. It’s part of a statewide effort to convert sites owned by the government to affordable housing, as Cassandra Garibay reported.
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Meanwhile, in Clovis: at their meeting this week, the Clovis City Council unanimously approved a plan to build nearly 1,200 single-family homes in the Loma Vista area near Ashlan and Leonard avenues. The master-planned community will also include 132 multi-family homes. There are no requirements for affordable housing. One planning commissioner raised some concerns about water for the development, which is being supplied by contracts the City of Clovis has with the Fresno Irrigation District for Kings River water, stored behind Pine Flat Dam.
The development is notable for its size – the Fresno/Madera area has historically built about 2,500 new homes per year. It’s unusual for a development of this scale to be approved in one sitting.
Speaking of water: our friends at SJV Water reported on some big news out of Madera County this week, as state officials at the Department of Water Resources rejected the groundwater plan for the Madera subbasin, saying that it still endangers hundreds of domestic wells and doesn’t address subsidence (the term used to describe land literally sinking).
We’ve been reporting, along with SJV Water, on the situation in Madera for over a year. More context on how dire things have gotten here.
Newsom sides with Valley Air District, vetoes oversight bill by Arambula
Former government building in Fresno to become affordable housing, Gov. Newsom says
Madera groundwater plans kicked back by state for not protecting domestic wells, ignoring subsidence
Fresno’s new digital business hub will target ‘hard-to-reach’ business owners
