By Javier Sierra

All too often, irony knows no shame, especially when it comes to the most vulnerable members of our society. Take Richmond, California, a mostly Latino and African-American low-income community that is subject to one of the country’s most intense fossil fuel pollution bombardments.

The toxic siege is relentless. Richmond —40 percent Latino and 5 percent white— is not only surrounded by petrochemical facilities, but also millions of tons of coal and petcoke —a refinery waste product— are exported from its port.

“They park the coal trains right next to the Richmond Amtrak station,” says Andrés Soto, an activist with Communities for a Better Environment. “Then they off-load the cars at the Levin-Richmond terminal, where huge piles of coal and petcoke accumulate to be exported to China and other countries.”

The Port of Richmond with the coal and petcoke stockpiles in the background (Photo: Sierra Club)

Studies show that each car, from origin to destination, loses up to one ton of coal dust, a toxic agent containing poisons such as arsenic, lead, chromium and other heavy metals. This noxious cocktail can cause bronchitis, emphysema, cancer and even premature death.

On their way to the port terminal, coal trains pass by four overwhelmingly Latino and African-American elementary schools. And the name of one of them reminds us that irony, indeed, has no shame.

“It’s called Verde [green] Elementary School, which is 80 percent Latino. The dust from those trains lands on the playgrounds of these schools,” says Soto.

The coal and the petcoke are just an insult that keeps pouring on Richmond’s injury.

“Here, low-income communities, because of the high concentration of refineries, already suffer high rates of asthma, cancers and other auto-immune diseases,” says Soto. “And this has been going on for decades. With the coal trains and the petcoke stockpiles we can only expect for this situation to worsen.”

Petcoke is an extremely toxic refinery residue with a great content of carbon dioxide (CO2) that is exported mainly to Asia. One ton of petcoke generates 50 percent more CO2 than coal, and its great heavy metal and sulfur content makes it a dangerous threat to public health.

And one wonders what else the fossil fuel industry has in store to continue mortifying the residents of Richmond. Incredibly, it turns out this city is also the recipient of so-called rolling bombs, mile-long crude oil trains that have caused death and devastation in several parts of North America.

Big Coal’s focus on Richmond, however, betrays a desperate attempt by an industry in nose-diving decline to export a product that is being rejected here in the US. The coal recession is such that several of its main companies have either declared bankruptcy or are on the verge of failing.

And this decline is a worldwide phenomenon. In 2013, for the first time ever, more renewable energy than fossil fuel capacity was installed on the planet, and according to Bloomberg News, this pattern is irreversible, sending dirty energy on the same path as the dinosaurs it came from.

In the meantime, however, Richmond continues paying the consequences of a cruel industry that is oblivious to both economic and climate realities, and obsessed with the next quarter’s earnings.

“It’s unfortunate that these executives don’t love their children and their grandchildren the same way our community love their children and grandchildren,” says Soto. “Because if they did, they would not engage in this type of behavior that is destroying the planet that we all have to live on.”

And that includes the immediate wellbeing and health of Latino communities across the country, such as Richmond.

Javier Sierra is a Sierra Club columnist. Follow him on Twitter @javier_SC

By Javier Sierra  

Does your kid have learning problems? Does he have problems concentrating and he is easily distracted? Is he doing poorly in school?

There can be a host of reasons for these problems. But a recent study is confirming the notion that pollution coming from fossil fuels, such as gasoline and coal, can inflict lasting damage on the human brain development, especially in fetuses, babies and toddlers, and that we Latinos are disproportionally affected by it.

Coal-burning plant (Photo: Sierra Club)

The report —published by JAMA Psychiatry and originated by Columbia University— concludes that exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), a residue of fossil fuel combustion, is correlated to the reduction of white matter in the brain.

“Those disturbances in brain growth are in turn proportionately associated with cognitive slowing and a host of behavioral disturbances,” says Dr. Bradley Peterson, the study’s lead scientist and director of the Institute for the Developing Mind at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles.

These include attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity, typical symptoms of impulsive children and children with learning problems.

Latino and African-American families, two social groups disproportionally impacted by air pollution, participated in the study from 1997 to 2006. Researchers observed a key finding in children: the greater the exposure to PAHs in the womb was, the greater the reduction in white matter and the worse their behavioral and developmental problems later in life.

“It is logical to hypothesize that these disturbances contribute to poor academic and high school dropouts, but that hypothesis would need to be addressed specifically in a larger study that explicitly assessed academic performance and school dropout, which we did not do in our study,” says Dr. Peterson. “But I do agree that something serious must be done to tackle the problem of the effects that air pollution has on the developing brain.”

The study also revealed that the brain disturbances not only take place during the fetal period, but also that exposure to PAHs can aggravate the reduction of white matter in the early childhood.

Dr. Peterson is not optimistic about reversing the damage caused by fossil fuel pollution on the brain.

“At the present time we know of no interventions that can prevent or reverse the brain and behavioral effects of exposure to air pollution during fetal development and early childhood,” he says. “The only recommendation that can be made at this time is either to find ways of reducing exposure in pregnant women and young children to levels of air pollution that already exist or to reducing extant levels of air pollution.”

But that reduction, for us Latinos, is not materializing. In its recent 2015 State of the Air report, the American Lung Association again underscored that the vast majority of the country’s cities with the worst air quality are found in Southern and Central California, where tens of millions of Latinos live. In places like Los Angeles, Long Beach, Bakersfield and the San Joaquin Valley all too often breathing is dangerous to your health.

The EPA is currently considering improving the federal smog pollution standard from its current 75 parts per billion (ppb) to perhaps 65 ppb. But health experts insist that in order to truly protect public health, the standard should be no higher than 60 ppb.

Asked whether his study reinforces the notion that clean air standards must be stronger, Dr. Peterson is categorical: “Yes, our findings do reinforce that notion. And they reinforce it for the most vulnerable members of our society, young children.”

Clearly, this is a no brainer: the EPA has the moral obligation to truly strengthen the nation’s air quality standards.

Javier Sierra is a Sierra Club columnist. Follow him on Twitter @javier_SC

By Javier Sierra

Lupita Pérez had just had it breathing dirty air during her young life. At 14, she has decided to join the fight for a clean air future for her baby sister, who will be born in the next few weeks.

“Babies are not born with asthma. They get it because of the bad air and they can die from that,” says Lupita, a freshman at Desert Mirage High School, in the Coachella Valley, one of the country’s regions with the worst air quality.

The Valley —especially its eastern part, where thousands of Latino families live— saw 40 days of air quality violations in 2014. Few places in California, or the US for that matter, suffer a more intense toxic bombardment than here. In fact, 10 percent of the Valley’s children suffer from asthma.

One of them is the younger brother of Elijah Martínez, a 17-year-old senior at Desert Mirage HS.

“He plays soccer very well. And he dreams of becoming a pro, but it saddens me that he can’t play as much as he wants because he has asthma,” he laments.

Thousands of young Latinos in the Valley have their own story about the suffering caused by air pollution, including Selene Hernández, whose grandmother recently died of lung cancer.

“During her last days she got very sick and could barely breathe because of the dirty air. I don’t want anyone else to go through something like that,” says Selene, who’s also a senior at Desert Mirage HS.

Selene Hernández, Elijah Martínez and Lupita Pérez (l-r) (Photo Sierra Club)

Just like Lupita, Selene, Elijah and 100 other students at Desert Mirage HS said enough is enough, and in February, they all traveled for 9 hours to Sacramento to testify at the EPA hearings about the improvement of the federal smog standards. Smog, a toxic gas generated by the burning of fossil fuels, can have the same effects on lung tissue as sunburn on the skin.

The Desert Mirage HS kids outside the hearings in Sacramento (Photo: Chris Jordan-Bloch/EarthJustice)

The current standard is 75 parts per billion (ppb), but health experts, such as the American Lung Association, insist to really protect public health the standard must be reduced to 60 ppb. The EPA has proposed a standard as low as 65 ppb but is also accepting comments on a 60-ppb one.

“I demanded for them to bring the ppb down to 60 because it is a human right to have fresh air to breathe,” says Lupita.

“It got very emotional when we all shared our stories about how the air pollution is affecting us. And some representatives of the EPA were getting teary-eyed just by listening to us,” remembers Selene.

Selene Hernández during her testimony (Photo: Chris Jordan-Bloch/EarthJustice)

The benefits of fighting air pollution can be enormous. A recent University of Southern California study found that a substantial improvement of the air quality allows children to develop bigger, stronger lungs. From 1999 to 2011, a period during which air quality in California improved exponentially thanks to the Clean Air Act, researchers observed that among the 2,000 participants in the study, there was a 10-percent increase in lung capacity on average. Also, premature deaths were greatly reduced.

Polluters, on the other hand, insist improving the current smog standard would undermine the growth and profits of their industries. This is what the students have to say to the polluters:

“Come down to the Valley and see for yourselves any children who have asthma and see how hard it is for them to breathe and play,” says Elijah.

“There are people’s lives on the line. And also there are clean alternatives, such as solar and wind,” responds Selene.

“If they think they could be losing money, we out here could be losing our lives. By refusing to lower the ppb, they are putting our lives in danger. Asthma can come just like that, especially for little babies. Our lives are more important that their profits,” concludes Lupita, who dreams of attending Harvard or Stanford to become an environmental lawyer and “fight polluters in the courts.”

Javier Sierra is a Sierra Club columnist. Follow him on Twitter @javier_SC

By Javier Sierra

If there were a Climate’s Hall of Infamy, the 62 senators who voted to force the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline (KXL) would have a place of honor there.

On January 29, 53 Republicans and nine Democrats voted in favor of forcing the construction of this monument to Big Oil’s greed by overstepping the constitutional separation of powers and denying President Obama’s legitimate jurisdiction over this project.

The president had already warned that he would veto any attempts to change the rules arbitrarily. Even so, the new Republican majority, with their heads firmly stuck in the sand, turned KXL —which would run along 1,200 miles from Alberta, Canada, to Texas ports— into their number one priority.

Why spend so much political credit over a single public works boondoggle? Since 1999, these senators have received some $43 million in campaign contributions from the dirty energy industry, according to Oil Change International. The Koch Brothers alone donated $125 million to candidates in the past election cycle and stand to make $100 billion in profits if KXL is finally built, a 1,600-percent return on investment. It’s no wonder they are now planning to spend close to $1 billion in the upcoming 2016 campaign.

This tar-sand oil pipeline burst and spilled 1 million gallons of crude in the Kalamazoo River in 2010 (Photo: NTSB)

The Kochs and the rest of the dirty energy industry believe they can buy our democracy. But what they can’t buy is the facts. So here’s what KXL would mean for the American people:

• Each year, this project of tar-sand oil —the most toxic, carbon-intensive crude on the planet— would be responsible for the emissions of 181 million tons of climate-change gases, the equivalent to 50 coal-burning plants.
• The crude would be transported to Texas refineries with one fundamental purpose: to be exported overseas. Its impact on gas prices in the US would be insignificant.
• The KXL would transport the planet’s densest crude, requiring heating up the pipeline and pumping the oil at enormous pressure so it can flow along hundreds of miles. In its first year of operation, the KXL sections already built burst 33 times.
• In 2010, the rupturing of a similar tar-sands pipeline leaked a million gallons of crude into the Kalamazoo River, at a cost of $1 billion in cleaning efforts, which still continue.
• The pipeline would run on top of North America’s largest aquifer, which provides irrigation water for the country’s breadbasket, the source of 30 percent of our food.

Senators, if creating jobs is what you are after, then take a hard look at the astonishing growth of the clean energy industry, a sector that employs thousands of Latinos.

In 2014, the solar industry created 50 percent more jobs than oil and gas extraction combined. These 31,000 jobs brought up the industry’s total to 173,000, at a rate 20 times faster than the national average. In the last five years, the solar industry has increased its labor force by almost 90 percent. By next year, solar power will be as cheap or cheaper than coal, oil or gas in almost every single state.

And the wind industry last year quadrupled is generating capacity by installing close to 4,900 megawatts, increasing its national total to 65 gigawatts. Senators, do you really wish to create jobs? Then indefinitely extend the wind industry’s production tax credit (PTC) and end once and for all the obsolete dirty energy subsidies.

Until then, your candidacy to the Climate’s Hall of Infamy is more than deserved.

Javier Sierra is a Sierra Club columnist. Follow him on @javier_SC

By Javier Sierra

‘Tis the season to give and share and not to receive, to show our generosity with the less fortunate.

Unless, of course, it comes to the dozens of power utilities across the country that want to turn off the lights of the bright future of clean and renewable energy.

The threat for these energy monopolies powered by dirty fossil fuels lies in the explosive growth of solar energy in our country. In the last decade, this clean source of power has grown by 140,000 percent, and since 2010 by more than 400 percent. By 2016, solar energy will be as cheap or cheaper than conventional power in all but three states. And we owe more than half of this expansion to rooftop solar panels in homes and business.

Solar energy has grown by almost 140,000% in ten years (Photo: Sierra Club)

In California alone, two thirds of these installations took place in low- and middle-income homes, which has created more than 47,000 jobs, 20 percent of them among Latinos. To thousands of our families, this blessing has saved up to half of what they used to pay for conventional electricity.

On the contrary, for public utilities, this is a curse. In more than a dozen states, including California and Florida, they have launched a legal offensive against solar power to protect their dirty monopoly.

The great incentive for the installation of rooftop solar panels lies in the capacity to export excess power to the grid in exchange for credits to the electric bill. The utilities, however, are plotting to end this popular incentive alleging that solar power generators take advantage of the grid without paying for the service or maintenance.

California’s three major utilities, for example, want to charge all customers an extra $10 per month, which will discourage homeowners from going solar or making their homes more energy efficient. Additionally, the utilities want to flatten rates, which will ultimately lower the bills of those who consume the most power. According to The Utility Reform Network, these changes would increase the electric bill of 70 percent of the state’s residential consumers.

In Florida, thanks to the utilities’ undue influence, the Public Service Commission a few weeks ago passed a proposal that completely dismantles the state’s energy efficiency goals and eliminates all of the state’s rooftop solar panel programs. The new, retrograde regulations will remain in place for a decade in a state whose southern half is economically more at risk of sea level rise due to climate change than any other part of the world.

The utilities’ arguments indeed sound like a spoiled brat’s tantrum. Generating energy through rooftop solar panels actually reduces the wear and tear of the electric grid. Also, it saves billions of dollars in construction of new conventional power plants and reduces dependency on existing sources of dirty energy.

What the utilities propose would smear with soot the face of future generations, especially for us Latinos who already have the misfortune to live disproportionately in the parts of the country with the worst air quality. Southern California, for instance, includes the cities with the dirtiest air in America —a daily punishment for the health of millions of Latinos, especially our children.

During the Christmas holidays, a star called sun is leading the way toward a clean energy future that will save us from the worst consequences of the climate crisis. The alternative of the energy monopolies? A huge lump of coal.

Javier Sierra is a Sierra Club columnist. Follow him of Twitter @javier_SC

By Javier Sierra

Juan Parras knows well what it means to live surrounded by rolling bombs, and the frequent sound of the whistling engines pulling more than 100-car trains loaded with oil crude into his community is a constant reminder.

Parras lives and works in Manchester, the Houston Latino barrio with some of the heaviest oil train traffic in the country.

“Here we have the largest concentration of railroad crossings in the land,” says Parras, founder and executive director of Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, which has been active in Manchester for many years. “When we drive around here, we have to stop and wait for the trains to pass three or four times per trip.”

After 9-11, a lot of trains with dangerous cargo were diverted from communities as a matter of precaution and safety. But that is not the case in Manchester.

“This is a big issue because of national security and because of the extreme danger that this brings to communities,” says Parras. “The train yards around us containing hundreds of cars are left unguarded and anyone willing to do some serious damage can walk up to them unimpeded.”

Train cars loaded with petrochemical products in Manchester, Houston (Photo: Juan Parras)

Since 2005, the oil train traffic in North America has increased 40 fold. At any given moment, some nine million barrels of crude oil are being transported around North America. Yet we haven’t seen any real improvements in the safety of these trains. The oil and railroad companies, however, seem to be whistling past the graveyard.

In 2013, a train loaded with crude from North Dakota derailed and exploded, killing 47 people and leveling a section of the town of Lac-Mégantic, in Quebec, Canada. Since then, there have been accidents in Alabama, Colorado, Minnesota, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

Aftermath of the Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, oil train disaster (Photo: Elias Schewel)

Living close to these trains is like rolling the dice. And the ones who are most vulnerable to these rolling bombs are us, Latinos, and other communities of color. According to a study by ForestEthics, out of the 25 million people who live in the oil trains blast zone, 15 million (60 percent!) are members of minority communities, including Manchester.

“Fortunately, we haven’t had any derailments or explosions with serious consequences on the population,” says Parras. “But we’ve had close calls. In the past year there’ve been two train derailments in our community. In one instance, the train was carrying dangerous cargo, the cars leaked but did not explode.”

Recent derailment in Manchester, Houston (Photo: Juan Parras)

These dismal safety conditions in too many oil trains intensify the danger for millions of people. In a document submitted to the US Department of Transportation, several groups, including ForestEthics and the Sierra Club, underlined several flaws that make this railroad traffic “an unacceptable public risk.”

Perhaps the most clear and present danger is the widespread use of obsolete DOT-111 rail cars, which lack reinforcement in their shells, making them much more fragile in case of derailment.  

The groups demand that the Obama administration immediately improve the safety and security of oil trains by adopting the following recommendations:
•    Immediately banning the use of DOT-111 rail cars and a quicker phase-out of other unsafe types.
•    Expanding the emergency response preparedness in the communities situated in the blast zone.
•    Imposing speed limits and requiring state-of-the-art breaking systems on oil trains.
•    And requiring liability coverage to cover the true costs of crude-by-rail disasters.

And while these demands are considered, Juan Parras and the rest of the Manchester residents keep looking over their shoulders every time they hear a train whistling into town. “Here comes another rolling bomb into our barrio,” they say.

Javier Sierra is a Sierra Club columnist. Follow him on Twitter @javier_SC

By Javier Sierra

Out of the thousands of signs carried by the 400,000 participants in the People´s Climate March in New York City last Sunday, there were two that really stayed with me. One read: “Mother Earth is not a merchandise,” and the other: “End environmental racism!”

(Photo J. Sierra)


(Photo J. Sierra)

Both define well the Latino community’s thinking about climate change and environmental degradation. The planet is not ours; we have borrowed it from the next generation. And we disproportionately suffer the consequences of fossil fuel pollution and the damage it inflicts on the world’s climate.

That’s why for the overwhelming majority of Latinos it is inconceivable that this late in the game, climate denialism remains so entrenched in our country.

“The great majority of experts agree that [climate change] is a very serious problem that has been studied very carefully and with great detail,” told me in an interview Dr. Mario Molina, the only Mexican scientist to win the Nobel Prize. “Denying this problem is outrageous and hugely irrational.”

Dr. Mario Molina

Dr. Molina —who discovered the cause of the hole in the ozone layer of the atmosphere and won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1995 for it— is one of the authors of a climate change study recently published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, titled “What We Know”.

“The report establishes that there are aspects of climate change that are unquestionable, the same way it is unquestionable the existence of atoms and molecules. The same way it would be absurd to question whether the earth is round,” emphasizes Molina, a member of President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
 
In his recent address to the UN Climate Summit, the President minced no words describing the severity and urgency of the crisis.

“The alarm bells keep ringing. Our citizens keep marching. We cannot pretend we don't hear them. We have to answer the call,” the President said during a dramatic speech in which he committed himself to address the problem and urged world leaders to follow suit.

Molina, however, recognizes the obstacles the President faces, calling them “irrational,” and places the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of one of the two major parties.

“It’s just the Republican Party, and not even Republicans from years past. I also work with Republicans from previous administrations who also want to solve the problem. These are problems of the party’s current identity,” Molina says.

The Nobel laureate also identifies the urgency to tackle this crisis from the point of view of the Latino community in the US, who’s most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

“Neglecting the risks these communities confront shows enormous irresponsibility,” he says, but he also acknowledges that the rising power of the Latino vote could be key to accelerate “a shift toward a much more rational system that can duly confront the climate change challenge.”

This optimism in part stems from the recent announcement that the ozone layer is recovering in a satisfactory manner thanks to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which mandated a worldwide ban on the chemicals that were causing the depletion.

“We are seeing that both the technological and scientific aspects of climate change are so clear that in a few years I believe we will see an international agreement similar to the Montreal Protocol,” predicts Molina. “It´s no longer justifiable to continue living in an era of irrationality, as if astrology were the guide of our actions.”

In other words, enough is enough. It’s time to act.

Javier Sierra is a Sierra Club columnist. Follow him on Twitter @javier_SC

By Javier Sierra

Fear is Pati Calzada’s constant companion. Her 6-year old son, Abraham, has asthma, and his frequent attacks fill them both with terror and anguish.

“He gets scared and calls me, ‘Mommy!’ And I can hear him wheezing, and he asks me, ‘why can’t I breathe?’ And then I have to calm him down because I can’t give him his medicine while he’s panicking,” says Pati, who also has asthma.

The illness, which was diagnosed a few months ago, has completely changed Abraham´s life.

“He’s a very active child, he loves running,” Pati says. “And now he cannot run even half the time he used to be able to run because he cannot breathe, and it really scares me.”

Pati Calzada and her son, Abraham, two victims of the tyranny of asthma (Photo: Sierra Club)

The cause of her misfortune is an undesirable neighbor called smog, also known as ground level ozone, a corrosive pollutant that causes abrasions in the lungs comparable to sunburn. Smog is formed by the effect of sunlight and heat on fossil fuel pollutants from vehicles, factories and power plants. In Colton, California, where Pati and Abraham live, there is an abundance of these ingredients.

“There is a freeway right in front of us,” says Pati. “To our right are the train tracks, behind us is the train station, and a few miles from here, we have the dirtiest power plant in California [the Mountainview Generation Station in Redlands].”

According to the American Lung Association, the barrio where the Calzadas live in San Bernardino County has the highest smog level in the whole country.

“In our county, 1.5 million people have asthma, including half of our children,” says Pati. “The problem is we can’t afford to live anywhere else. We either have a roof over our heads or have to live on the streets somewhere else where the air is clean.”

But facing this cruel dilemma is unnecessary. The federal government needs to improve the national ozone standard from 75 ppb (parts per billion) to 60 ppb. Recently, a committee of experts chartered by the EPA concluded that the current smog standard is insufficient to protect public health.

The experts determined that even a 70ppb standard would continue to cause “adverse effects, such as decrease in lung function, increase in respiratory symptoms and increase in airway inflammation.”

According to the EPA itself, every year, a 60ppb standard would prevent up to 12,000 premature deaths, 21,000 hospitalizations, and the loss of 2.5 million work and school days.

The last time this standard was updated was in 2008, when the Bush administration rejected the recommendations of another committee of experts, who warned of the terrible consequences of adopting a weak 75 ppb standard. The decision has caused massive suffering to families like Pati’s.

For polluters and those who protect them, Pati has a few questions: “How many times have you actually woken in the middle of the night because your son or daughter cannot breath? What would happen if you were out of breath and could not reach your medicine? Are you aware of the consequences of your actions?”

The Clean Air Act requires that the EPA review the federal smog standards every five years, and a court order mandates that the agency issue a new proposal by December 14.

The health of millions of people, such as Pati and Abraham, is at stake. The EPA must establish a new 60ppb smog standard to help end the tyranny of asthma.

Javier Sierra is a Sierra Club columnist. Follow him on Twitter @javier_SC

By Javier Sierra  

When President Obama signed the proclamation to designate the Organ Mountains/Desert Peaks National Monument in May, it was the last stitch of a tapestry to weave together several natural sites of extraordinary beauty and cultural significance.

The monument, located in the Doña Ana County in southern New Mexico, is loaded with enchantment and historic significance, particularly for the Latino community. Just notice the Spanish names of many of these places: Sierra de las Uvas, the Robledo, Potrillo and Doña Ana mountains, and the very Sierra de los Organos (Organ Mountains), named after its resemblance to the musical instrument. Let’s call it a monumental symphony.  

The Organ Mountains, the centerpiece of the monument

For centuries, the ragged peaks of the Organs for centuries witnessed the flow of settlers traveling from Mexico to Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos on the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. In the Broad Canyon there is an abundance of petroglyphs, testament of ancestral native cultures. And in the Robledo Mountains dinosaur footprints were petrified millions of years ago.

These natural treasures have been protected in large part due to the activism of Latino leaders.

“Latinos have been working to protect these lands for well over a decade,” says Michael Casaus, New Mexico State Director of the Wilderness Society. “From the very beginning Latino leaders took an active role in shaping the campaign and determining which lands should be protected. Without the contribution of Latino leaders and conservationists the designation would not have happened.”

This Latino activism also ensured that the traditional uses of the land would be permitted in the monument, such as grazing, water rights, hunting, fishing and recreational activities.

“This garnered the support of the local residents, who are mostly Latinos, and ensured that these lands will not be sold to private owners to reduce the national deficit or be turned into mining operations,” says Casaus.

The monument is also getting Latino youth interested in their history and culture and encouraging them to stay in school.

“I lead these kids into the monument to help me compile its cultural inventory,” says Angel Peña, cultural resources specialist of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance. “We hike around the lands looking for remnants of Hispanics coming through in the 1580’s, we have found evidence of the Camino Real, as well as numerous petroglyphs and other archeological resources.”

The monument has literally changed the lives of these kids.

“Each expedition is a trek of discovery of their culture and past,” says Peña. “They now have a purpose in life. Many of them are interpretative rangers of the Bureau of Land Management. Here there are good jobs that will fill them with pride and satisfaction.”

Unfortunately, there are representatives in Washington, DC, who are adding a sour note to the music. Reps. Rob Bishop (R-UT), Steven Pearce (R-NM) and Jeff Duncan (R-SC) insist that the monument, located by the Mexican border, poses a threat to national security because it creates a gateway for illegal activity, and impedes open access to the Border Patrol and other law enforcement bodies.

Several civic groups, on the other hand, called the representatives’ claims “false” alleging data and statements by the US Customs and Border Security that prove the opposite. The faith-based group NM CAFé, for instance, labeled the statements as “a waste of time and taxpayers’ money” and urged these congressmen to dedicate their time to find “real solutions to the border problems,” including supporting immigration reform.

The establishment of the monument is a brilliant idea. Too bad there are those willing to play out of tune in this monumental symphony.

Javier Sierra is a Sierra Club columnist. Follow him on Twitter @javier_SC

By Javier Sierra

Very close to the city of Delano, CA, where Cesar Chavez conducted a great deal of his work for justice, it reeks of injustice.

In Wasco —in the San Joaquin Valley where tens of thousands of farm workers toil— a local ordinance has approved the expansion of a railroad coal depot right next to an overwhelmingly Latino barrio.

Every year, the terminal would receive 1.5 million tons of coal to run a proposed coal-powered plant known as Hydrogen Energy California (HECA) in the neighboring Kern County. The terminal would further poison what already is the country’s worst air quality. The proposed terminal lies right next to a barrio housing some 220 Latino farm-working families who were never notified of the project.

“Industries take advantage of the most vulnerable, of those who can’t fight back,” says Ana Martinez, an organizer of Green Action for Health and Environmental Justice, who works to mobilize the community against the expansion. “We already have the worst air in the country. And the air in the barrios is worse than the air in the white neighborhoods.”

During the Wasco project hearings, there were no Spanish-language announcements, and therefore no Latino residents attended the proceedings.

“This was done in typical fashion to keep the victims unaware of what was going on. This exclusion is racism,” she denounces.

The project would exponentially increase the diesel pollution from trains and the relentless truck traffic hauling the coal from the Wasco terminal to the plant. Even without the expansion in place, the already existing smog and potentially deadly particulate matter pollution is costing over $2 billion in health costs to the residents of Kern County.

Also, the coal would arrive from New Mexico in open railroad cars. This would translate in the loss of some 500 pounds of coal dust per trip and car, a dust loaded with mercury, arsenic, chromium and other heavy metals that would end up in lungs and crops.

“Not even the farm owners support this project because they fear the coal dust would ruin their crops,” says Martinez. “This agreement between farm owners and workers is very unusual.”

A comparative study of the air quality in the southern part of the San Joaquin Valley, where Wasco lies, and China, the country with the worst air quality on the planet, illustrates the severity of the pollution problem.

In a three-week period during December and January, the air in the valley was worse than that in China 2/3 of the days, and never, in those three weeks, did the Valley’s air quality reach the safe levels recommended by the World Health Organization.

The Wasco City Council, however, approved the expansion in March without having conducted any health or environmental impact assessments. A month later, the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit against the City Council to stop the expansion.

“Enough is enough!” says Martinez. “Injustice happens in communities of low income and communities of color. These industries need to put people’s health first and then profits.”

Cesar Chavez dedicated his life to fight injustice, to protect the most vulnerable. Ana Martinez is following his steps and has committed herself to clean this air of injustice.

Javier Sierra is a Sierra Club columnist. Follow him on Twitter @javier_SC