This October I was invited to speak at the UC Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative Fall Symposium to discuss environmental justice and water access in California’s San Joaquin Valley. As a lifelong resident of the Valley and graduate of UC Berkeley, it presented an opportunity to connect my professional expertise with my valuable lived experience.
Now more than ever, places like California’s San Joaquin Valley provide insight into understanding the US Southwest and the challenges posed by intense water insecurity - resulting in many cascading impacts for people, the environment, and the economy.
To this effect, the San Joaquin Valley is a land of extremes.
The San Joaquin Valley exists in the very center of California where it serves as the state's most fertile and agriculturally productive regions. Most of the nation’s agricultural produce is grown here but this same food system is the heart of severe environmental injustices which disproportionately affect the region’s significant Latino population, which makes up nearly 50% of the total population in the region’s eight counties.
Despite record agricultural productivity, many San Joaquin Valley residents suffer from severe economic hardship, limited access to healthcare, and inadequate housing which only further exacerbate the impacts from air pollution, water contamination, extreme heat, and pesticide exposure.
As somewhere with extreme conservative political leanings in a state that is widely known as a liberal paradise. While the Valley faces unprecedented water and agricultural stressors, it remains an unparalleled pillar of California’s ethnic diversity and biodiversity. And in the face of injustice and environmental collapse the San Joaquin Valley is home to some of the most innovative nature-based solutions and social justice champions including but certainly not limited to Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.
Yet, this region of extremes is largely invisible to the general population.
WATER: SOURCE OF LIFE, CAUSE OF CONFLICT
The extremes in question can be understood through the history of water.
San Joaquin Valley hydrology is governed by its headwaters located eastward toward the Sierra Nevadas, home of the world-renowned public lands such as Yosemite National Park, and stretches west to the coastal mountains. From north to south, concrete lined canals deliver surface water to the water-scare southern California.
Historically, annual floods produced a vast network of wetlands and created the Tule Lake - the largest body of freshwater east of the Mississippi. Centuries of flooding and uninterrupted water flows seeped through the soil to replenish the subsurface with deep groundwater reserves. It was once the case that floods would inundate the region so profoundly that many could boat as far as the San Francisco Bay area. Even the state capital of Sacramento was flooded in 1862.
Yet through the onset of white settlement in the mid-to late 1800s, the hydrological foundation began a seismic shift towards ecological collapse. Fertile soils were the draw of government-sponsored westward settlement. Genocide of indigenous tribes and new technology changed the San Jaoquin Valley’s hydrology forever.
Rivers were rerouted, land was privatized, and large-scale, extractive corporate agriculture converted wildlife habitat on such a magnitude that many claim it is this region represents the “largest human alteration of the Earth’s surface”. Some studies further estimate that the San Joaquin Valley has lost over 90 percent of its grasslands, wetlands, floodplain, and riparian woodlands.
The resulting disconnected habitats drove several species into extinction, and continues to imperil existing wildlife including, but not limited to,the Fresno Kangaroo Rat, Kit Fox, and Delta Smelt. The region also serves as a critical segment of the Pacific Flyway, hosting 60 percent of the wintering waterfowl and 20 percent of the waterfowl population in the entire United States.
Growing Crops and Growing Inequities
The confluence of issues have resulted in the environment and communities of color, Latinos in particular, being impacted most severely today.
All of this came to a head following two decades of consecutive droughts in the twenty first century where dozens of disadvantaged unincorporated communities and the remaining slivers of habitat went without water. The shortage of surface water supplies fostered an intense over-dependence on groundwater leading to never-before-seen rates of depletion and the literal sinking of the valley floor at a rate of an inch per year.
The economic inequality of the region exacerbated the inability to locally develop drinking water infrastructure such as new, deeper wells and water filtration systems. In addition to the general unavailability of water, it was later shown that drought also contributed to disproportionate impacts of water pollution. In the context of modern water scarcity challenges Latinos were affected first, affected the hardest, and affected the longest. Predominantly rural Latino communities like Cantua Creek are stressed by water infrastructure debt, polluted drinking water, and inhumane unaffordable water prices for years.
Moreover, the drought worsened the Latino community’s disproportionate lack of access to healthy, resilient green spaces and to the many benefits of nature. The Hispanic Access Foundation has found that Latinos and other communities of color in the US are three times as likely to live somewhere that is “nature deprived” than white communities. The extreme lack of water, municipal water restrictions, and increased cost of water exacerbated the “nature gap” across the region.
The aforementioned habitat conversion resulted in “park poor” communities that were surrounded by agriculture and other facilities that have caused a net loss in biodiversity such as Fresno’s Amazon Distribution Center. Latinos and people of color disproportionately reside in these communities due to the historic redlining that occurred in the region. Many communities were explicitly identified as areas to withhold investment in basic community infrastructure such as drinking water systems, housing, and community parks as was the case in the 1971 Tulare County General Plan and the 1972 Kern County Housing Element.
Because there are a lack of parks and protected public lands on the San Joaquin Valley Floor, peoples’ homes and yards were the only green areas available but many yards went fallow and dry throughout the drought.
Furthermore, even the region’s public lands, which have the highest forms of federal environmental protections were adversely impacted by the drought. The headwaters of the Sierra Mountains were drought-stricken, resulting in water being absorbed into the mountainside that would otherwise reach the valley floor under normal conditions.
Down on the valley floor where pockets of the National Wildlife Refuge System offer a last stand for imperiled species, the wells that refuges rely on to maintain their wetland ecosystems could not reach the declining groundwater levels. National refuge water demand was out competed by farmers and under-prioritized by California’s water rights system which meant that they also were not receiving their federal water allocations.
REIMAGINING SOLUTIONS
As desperate as the challenges may seem, there remain many examples of innovative solutions that have set precedent across the country.
It was San Joaquin Valley residents that led statewide efforts to address the disproportionate impact of water insecurity on Latinos by creating the Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund - the nation’s first drinking water funding program which will implement California’s “Human Right to Water”. Many of the same advocates were instrumental in the passage of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in the California legislature which was also the nation’s first effort to prevent adverse impacts from the overuse of groundwater supplies.
San Joaquin Valley residents were integral in setting national precedent for nature protection through advocating to ensure California was the first state in the nation to advance the 30x30 movement to address the climate and biodiversity loss crisis by conserving at least 30% of lands and watts by the year 2030. This has contributed to various national monuments being expanded and the creation of the first state park in over a decade within the San Joaquin Valley.
Additionally, there are many organizations such as Latino Outdoors and Justice Outside who act to promote local outdoor enjoyment and environmental policy influence among underrepresented communities and connect workers to environmental sector employment opportunities, most notably through the Outdoor Educators Institute which has a Fresno area cohort.
In the land of extremes, a dark history turns toward an increasingly bright future.
While many of the injustices faced nationally by Latinos are found in the San Joaquin Valley, many of the solutions to these issues are found in the GreenLatinos’ updated Latino Climate Justice Framework (LCJF). For the next four years, the LCJF will guide GreenLatinos’ strategic national and state-level advocacy to advance our mission of environmental liberation for all marginalized communities.