California officials and environmental justice advocates are cheering the first 10 years of an innovative environmental data tracking tool. CalEnviroScreen has helped focus cleanup efforts in many of the state’s disadvantaged communities.
The data tool is a collection of environmental, health and community indicators that measure an area’s environmental burden.
San Diego’s port-side communities have benefited greatly over the last decade; Barrio Logan is just one example.
The community is a mish-mash of industry and homes that consistently ranks as one of the state’s most polluted, meaning residents there carry some of California’s heaviest health burdens.
Residents know that in large part because of CalEnviroScreen. The statewide map of every census district measures risk and assigns the region a color. Green represents a light environmental burden. Red signifies a heavy burden.
“It gives us a real sense of how people are experiencing the environment in their real day to day lives,” said Yana Garcia, the secretary for California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA).
Garcia said the tool puts relevant information into the hands of community advocates and public officials who were pushing for change.
The database organizes seemingly disparate bits of information like housing costs, emergency room visits, and air pollution to name a few. All together, that information can gauge the environmental risk in a specific region.
The CalEPA can use the visual data to see the parts of the state that need help and direct limited state resources there.
“That allows not only the state but local governments and community-based organizations to understand various layers of impact that are affecting neighborhoods,” Garcia said.
Barrio Logan, which has long struggled with high levels of air pollution linked to diesel trucks, is a dark red. Parts of San Diego’s portside region are among areas in California that suffer the most.
“It really shows the neighborhoods that are suffering the most impacts from different factors,” said José Franco García, the executive director of the National City-based Environmental Health Coalition.
That is an important piece of knowledge for policy makers.
“As we are able to make investments or different things come up, what neighborhoods should be first on the priority list,” Franco García said.
Barrio Logan residents have fought for decades to direct traffic away from the community’s residential streets. But diesel pollution only represents one challenge and the California tool acknowledges that.
“It really shows the cumulative (effect), the neighborhoods that are suffering the most impacts from different factors,” Franco García said. “And really as we are able to make investments or different things come up, what neighborhoods should be first on the priority list.”
Barrio Logan has been near the top of the list in the past decade. There are high asthma rates, high housing prices and a high number of toxic spills. Several census tracts in the city have some of the highest pollution burdens in California. But state lawmakers are using CalEnviroScreen to funnel resources into communities that suffer the most.
The tool has also had an impact in the Imperial Valley.
That region has some of the state’s highest asthma rates. High unemployment, pesticide pollution, and particulate pollution complicate efforts to protect the region’s residents.
“CalEnviroScreen has become a vital instrument in providing real data-driven science behind the human toll of pollution and has been equally important in finding real solutions and investments for our communities,” said Luis Olmedo, the executive director of Comite Civico del Valle.
California is already funneling money from the state’s greenhouse gas reduction fund to census tracts the screening tool identifies as disadvantaged. That gives Barrio Logan — and communities like it — resources to make life there, better.
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Nic McVicker/KPBSFrom atmospheric rivers to gray, cloudy skies, San Diego has seen its fair share of abnormal weather in the past few months. -
California is celebrating the tenth anniversary of a ground-breaking data tool that has helped focus clean-up efforts in many of the state’s disadvantaged communities.
