El próximo sábado 15 de febrero en punto de las 9:00 de la mañana Environmental Health Coalition junto con otras 14 organizaciones de la sociedad civil de Tijuana y la campaña Alamar Sustentable celebraremos el evento Yo Soy el Alamar.

El objetivo es demostrar que el bosque del Arroyo Alamar (arroyo binacional que nace en Estados Unidos y desemboca en el Estuario del Río Tijuana en Imperial Beach) ubicado al Este de Tijuana, todavía existe y que a pesar de que el proyecto de canalización que está en proceso todavía estamos a tiempo de rescatar lo más importante, no solo por las plantas y animales endémicos y migratorios que podemos encontrar en esta zona, sino por el derecho que tenemos todos los ciudadanos a contar con áreas verdes naturales.

Después de dos años de campaña la coalición Alamar y la campaña Alamar Sustentable, hemos logrado integrar la Mesa Técnica del Arroyo Alamar, donde hemos encontrado propuestas interesantes para modificar el proyecto de concreto y buscar alternativas más sustentables. Sin embargo, aunque CONAGUA (Comisión Nacional de Agua, organismo encargado de la canalización) ha estado presente en algunas reuniones, todavía no se compromete formalmente a conservar el bosque ripario.

Programa artístico:

• Poesia con Brianda Ivonne Sánchez, Elias Ramirez Robles y Jorge Calderón
• Danza Africana con Frontera Negra
• Malabares y fuego con El Dragón
• Sones Jarochos con el Colectivo de Jaraneras
• Danza Folklórica
• Plática sobre plantas nativas con Nativ@s
  

Las organizaciones que convocan son: 

• Environmental Health Coalition
• Colectivo Chilpancingo Pro Justicia Ambiental
• Nativ@s
• RECIMEC
• Tijuana Calidad de Vida
• Alamar Sustentable
• Proyecto Fronterizo de Educación Ambiental
• Cicea Papalotzin
• CESDI
• GAPETI
• Grupo Ecologista de Tijuana
• REMEXMAR BC
• Fundación Esperanza de México A.C.
• Ollin Calli

Más detalles en Facebok y en alamarsustentable.org
#YoSoyelAlamar

Todavía estamos a tiempo
¡El Alamar Somos Todos!
¡Únete!

Last week, I received an email alert from SDG&E announcing the Reduce Your Use Day and customers were asked to conserve energy. I was surprised  because these days typically occur on San Diego's hottest summer days, when energy-hogging air conditioners are running to maximum capacity. Reducing our energy consumption at those times helps SDG&E avoid the need to turn on additional polluting "peaker" power plants to meet demand and also avoid blackouts.

But it's "winter" now in San Diego and that means we have comparatively low energy consumption; so why did SDG&E call a Reduce Your Use Day?

Because there's a nationwide shortage of natural gas—the fuel that powers most of San Diego's electricity— due to cold weather in other parts of the U.S., leaving SDG&E and other Southern California utilities scrambling for gas reserves.

The particular irony of this gas shortage is that it comes just several days after the California Public Utilities Commission approved SDG&E's 25-year contract for a new gas plant, "Pio Pico", in Otay Mesa. To make matters worse, when they applied for Pio Pico's approval, SDG&E told customers that gas-burning Pio Pico would make our electricity system more reliable, but now they're telling us they don't have a reliable supply of gas.

Which is it?

Last week's gas shortage should make the California Public Utilities Commission and our elected officials give serious consideration as to whether expanding our reliance on gas-fired power plants makes our electricity system more reliable, as the utilities claim, or if these all too common gas market fluctuations actually makes us more vulnerable to price shocks and potential outages.

Instead of rushing to approve more risky gas plants, our state and our utilities should prioritize reliable sources of clean, local energy like energy storage, solar and efficiency.

We still don't think Pio Pico should have been approved. But at the very least, the buck (the $1.6B buck) should stop there. Moving forward, let's use the retirement of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station as an opportunity to reduce dependence on risky gas-fired power and instead shift to reliable, local and modern clean energy technology.

As a kid growing up in the LA air basin during the smoggy 50s and 60s, I thought of irritated eyes and a sore chest as normal parts of life. The sky on hot summer afternoons was a brownish yellow shade, and the air sometimes made your eyes water. In my later childhood years, I came to view air pollution as a symbol of how radically alienated from nature Southern California life was; as I thought of it in apocalyptic, if poetic, terms, we had poisoned heaven. Later, in college, I learned to think in more analytical, and hopeful, ways -- smog could be analyzed, understood and to a large extent, controlled. The ochre-brown color came from nitrogen oxides; the lung-damaging substance was ozone. Particulates added a hazy quality. It wasn't an amorphous cloud of human failure hanging over our cities, it was a specific set of pollutants with knowable causes and controls. If you increased the fuel efficiency of cars and added on catalytic converters, the air quality got better. And the photochemical smog picture of SoCal actually has improved since the 60s.

While ozone levels have improved, California has seen a massive increase in diesel pollution from trucks, trains and ships. As the economy globalized and manufacturing jobs went to lower wage countries (another catastrophe that is not inevitable), goods are shipped here from all over the world, unloaded at California's ports and trucked or shipped by rail all over the US.

Unlike smog, diesel pollution is more concentrated near emission sources, such as ports, freeways and rail yards. These diesel hot spots, as we all know, tend to be located in poorer, people of color communities. The result? More frequent and severe asthma, earlier deaths from heart and lung diseases, more premature and low-birth-weight babies, and maybe more of a wide range of other disorders, including diabetes and autism. Not to mention the safety hazards of heavy duty trucks on narrow surface streets, and the lights, noise and vibrations of massive shipping and warehousing operations.

A new report released this month by the California Cleaner Freight Coalition (of which EHC is a member) concludes that there are cleaner freight alternatives that go well beyond today's cleanest diesel and natural gas powered trucks to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. For local and short haul trips, using electric transportation powered by a clean electricity grid provides the greatest overall reduction in pollutants, and can eliminate tailpipe emissions in communities where freight movement occurs. For regional trips, moving goods by train and ship can reduce emissions compared to today's cleanest diesel trucks, if the cleanest engine technologies are used. Read the executive summary here, or the full report here. 

So, it's time to move past the idea that diesel is inevitable and the best we can do is to put filters on the trucks. We can start moving now toward zero- or near-zero emission technologies. This is life saving technology, and there's no excuse for delay.

What else isn't inevitable? Readers who are waiting breathlessly for further information about my intellectual development will be relieved to learn that I don't think technology is the whole solution. Belatedly I stumbled onto the idea that things happen because people in power make decisions about them. Bad land use, outsourced jobs, freeways cut through historic communities, distribution centers sited next to schools, all of them in disadvantaged areas – none of these are unplanned, smog-like emanations from our culture. Specific people made specific decisions that led directly to these results. Sure, there is institutional inertia, timid regulators, lack of imagination, laziness and stupidity. But beyond all that, there are decision-makers. In truth, the most important pollution control device is a functioning democracy.

Joy Williams has been the research director for Environmental Health Coalition for nearly thirty years. Find out more about Joy and her work here.

Chula Vista City Councilmember Pamela Bensoussan recently urged the California Public Utilities Commission to deny a fossil fuel power plant proposed for Otay Mesa, an area of existing high pollution levels,  known as Pio Pico. 

Councilmember Bensoussan's letter expresses concern that Pio Pico would further burden the community with additional pollution and "repeats a familiar pattern of concentrating the region's polluting activities in South County." She also cites concern about the project's impact on climate change and on the community's choice to secure clean energy.

Thank you Councilmember Bensoussan for standing up for health and clean energy in our communities!

Here's how you can take a stand and join her:

• Sign this petition to tell our state's energy regulators you don't want the polluting Pio Pico power plant in San Diego.
• Sign this letter to elected officials who represent the South Bay area to ask them to take a stand against Pio Pico.

Learn more about Pio Pico here. 

La semana pasada, escuché una noticia muy mala: una nueva planta de energía, que va a causar mucha contaminación, será muy costosa y es totalmente innecesaria se ha propuesto para ser construída cerca de mi comunidad. La Comisión de Utilidades Públicas de California – la agencia estatal responsable de asegurar que las compañías de energía como San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) den prioridad a la energía limpia – hizo una propuesta para aprobar la planta de combustible contaminante de SDG&E nombrada Pio Pico en Otay Mesa – a unas cuantas millas de mi casa.

Yo ya estaba muy preocupada por los altos niveles de contaminación del aire – que ya están reconocidos como unos de los peores del estado – y los problemas de salud que la contaminación trae. Pio Pico causaría aún más contaminación – el equivalente de la emisiones de 170, 000 automóviles cada año para los próximos 25 años. Esa contaminación podría tener un impacto negativo a la salud de nuestros niños y acelerar el cambio climático. ¡Mis nietos ya tienen asma y yo no quiero que estén expuestos a aún más contaminación proveniente de una nueva planta de energía sucia!

Para colmo de males, ¡SDG&E quiere subir nuestras facturas de energía para pagar el costo de $1.6 Billones de esta energía sucia! Mis vecinos han dicho muy claramente que quieren energía limpia, y hasta están dispuestos a pagar un poco más para tener energía limpia en sus comunidades. Sobre todo no quieren más energía sucia y más contaminación. Los votantes latinos de todo el sur de California han declarado lo mismo – queremos energía limpia, y la queremos ahora.

Lo que más me enoja es que esta planta eléctrica es totalmente innecesaria. Tenemos suficiente energía que viene de recursos renovables, eficiencia energética, almacenamiento de energía, y otras fuentes limpias por ahora y en el futuro para cubrir nuestras necesidades de modo seguro y rentable.

No entiendo por qué la agencia regulatoria del estado permite que SDG&E ubique esta planta de energía en el South Bay. Ya tenemos varias plantas de energía y líneas de transmisión y pésima calidad de aire.

¡Acompáñame en decir NO a otra planta de energía contaminante y exigir que las agencias y los funcionarios de gobierno protejan la salud de nuestras comunidades! Acompáñame en tomar acción:

• Firma esta petición para decirles a los reguladores del estado ¡que no quieres la planta de energía contaminante Pio Pico en San Diego!
• Firma esta carta a los funcionarios públicos que representan el área de South Bay para pedirles ¡que apoyen a la comunidad!