Reprinted with Permission

From The Blackboard

      Kern County is the 10^th most impoverished county in the nation with a population over 250,000.  Our unemployment rate averages double the rate for California. Local legislators continuously cater to big business, including industrial agribusiness, at the expense of our local environment and quality of life. Kern’s mass transit systems are woefully inadequate for the expansive area encompassed by the county, and city and county planners can’t agree on solutions for improvement.  Our elected officials routinely ignore pleas by community members not to continue bringing mega-dairies, Wal-Marts, and other retail monopolies into town to destroy more local businesses. 

Kern County has the worst air in the nation.  Worse than Los Angeles, and worse than the Bay area that is always getting blamed for sending it’s smog our way.  It’s hard to find a family here that doesn’t have at least one member suffering significantly from asthma or other pollution related lung problems.  Based on the latest EPA data, our county ranked among the worst 10% of all counties in the US, in terms of cancer risk from hazardous air pollutants.  According to those figures, 587,117 people in Kern County face a cancer risk more than 100 times the goal set by the Clean Air Act. Asthma related hospitalizations and deaths are at a level in the San Joaquin Valley that amazes even the American Lung Association. 

Results of an environmental justice burden study done by the EPA shows that people of color in Kern County are exposed to three times the amount of toxic chemical releases as whites.  We rate in the dirtiest 10% of all U.S. counties in the amount of toxic chemical releases to land, which then percolate down into our aquifiers.  At least one-third of our aquifiers are classified as having “serious problems” with chemical contamination.  The leading cause of this contamination is agriculture. Kern County also ranks in the worst 10% of all counties in the country for pollution from animal wastes.  You mean you don’t remember hearing the Board of Supervisors bring that issue up when considering the Borba Dairies proposal?

In 2000, the Calaveras Cement Company in Tehachapi alone released 120,000,000,000 lbs of toluene equivalents.  Yes, there really are ten zeros after that 12.  Toluene equivalents indicate the number of pounds of toluene that would have to be released into the air to pose the same approximate level of health risk as the reported chemicals released, regardless of what those chemicals were.  The actual chemicals being released at the plant measured by this scale are mercury compounds, a known developmental toxicant.  While developmental toxicity usually results from prenatal exposures to toxicants experienced by the mother, it can also result from paternal exposures, or from postnatal exposures experienced by a developing child. Maternal exposure to toxic chemicals during pregnancy can disrupt the development of or even cause the death of the fetus.  Mercury compounds are ranked as one of the most dangerous chemicals to human health. 

The Tehachapi plant is only one of twenty-five in the county known to have chemical releases of what are termed “non-cancerous” TRI chemicals that year.  Besides the developmental toxins released at the Tehachapi plant, other “non-cancerous” toxins released in the county included cardiovascular and blood toxicants, endocrine toxicants, immunotoxicants, kidney toxicants, gastrointestinal or liver toxicants, musculoskeletal toxicants, neurotoxicants, reproductive toxicants, respiratory toxicants, and skin or sense organ toxicants.  But not to worry, they don’t cause cancer. 

So, do we need to worry about those cancer-causing toxins?  Fourteen facilities in Kern County showed releases of chemicals that are considered carcinogens in 2000, with number one in that category being Safety-Kleen in Buttonwillow.  The others were located throughout the county.  Calaveras’ Tehachapi plant made number four on that list.  Also included were one facility in Shafter, two in Mojave, and seven in Bakersfield.  The chemicals listed, in order of pounds released, included arsenic, lead, chromium, benzene, nickel, formaldehyde, and methyl tert-butyl ether.  I have to admit, I had never heard of the last one before reading the report.   

So if you, like me, are pondering all this and thinking, “Holy crap!”  Um, that is, “What’s a voter to do about this problem?”  I would like to offer a potential solution.  Start thinking now about the way our current county and city officials pander to agribusiness and developers.  Think about this a lot before our next election cycle.  Think about it every day when you walk outside and can’t see the mountains, the foothills, or even across town sometimes.  Think about it when you get your water bill and it has an insert telling you about all the chemicals that are in Bakersfield’s water that aren’t supposed to be there.  Think about it when the stench of the nearest dairy invades your car as you drive down the freeway, or your home in the evening hours, when the breeze blows in your direction.  Think about it when you are in the schools, the markets, the mall, the movie theater, or at home and you or someone near you is sucking on an Albuterol inhaler or hacking, coughing, and struggling for breath. 

Then, after you’ve thought about it a lot, don’t vote for anyone who can’t make a commitment to prioritize cleaning up our environment, improving our mass transit systems, and focusing on community based economics.  Don’t vote for anyone who has a history of prostituting themselves to industrial agribusiness, greedy developers, or mega-chain retailers.

Less than 700 Kern County residents voted for a Green Party candidate in the 2000 elections.  In the November 2002 elections, more than 4,000 Kern County residents voted for at least one Green Party candidate.  That's an almost 600% increase.  Clearly, Kern County is ready for Green Politics.   We need some honest and non-purchasable citizens to consider running for local office on the basis of the Green Party’s 10 key values.  Those values include things like social justice, ecological wisdom, community based economics, and grass-roots democracy.  

Kern County residents are beginning to see the full picture about the trouble we are in economically and environmentally.  It is time for a change, and no one can make that change happen except the voters themselves.  Wake up and smell the toxins people, before it’s too late.