The Latest Breaking News from San Joaquin Valley

EPA Approves New Vehicle Pollution Limits for Transportation Planning in California’s San Joaquin Valley

Federal regulators have approved new vehicle-emissions limits that transportation planners across California’s San Joaquin Valley will have to consider when evaluating future transportation plans and projects.

Clever Dude · Sep 14

California Starts Phasing Out a Heavily Sprayed Farm Weedkiller Long Studied for a Possible Parkinson's Link

Every paraquat maker canceled its California registration, starting a phase-out of the herbicide most heavily used in San Joaquin Valley farm counties.

Medical Daily · Aug 18

Environmentalists sue after feds allow new drilling permits in one of the country’s most polluted areas

The San Joaquin Valley’s Kern County is home to some of the country’s most polluted cities

The Independent UK · Feb 6, 2025

In Rural California, Farmworkers Fend for Themselves for Health Care

Where government and health care institutions are absent, some communities turn to grassroots action.

Capital & Main · Dec 8, 2022

Editorial: The feds can curb a foolish California water giveaway

About 15 miles north of Fresno sits Millerton Lake, a reservoir created in the 1930s when the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation built Friant Dam on the San Joaquin River. The dam provides irrigation water for fields and groves in much of the San Joaquin Valley, but it wiped out the…

Los Angeles Times · Oct 19, 2022

A preview of farmworkers’ hot future

By the end of the century, the San Joaquin Valley could endure two months of extreme heat every summer

Salon · Sep 12, 2022

California is at risk of a mega-flood. Are Central Valley communities prepared for it?

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — It starts to rain, and it doesn’t stop. Day after day after day. The rivers keep rising. Mud, ash and burned logs from recent wildfires clog the rapidly rising channels. Levees overtop or burst. Dams strain or buckle. Neighborhoods are submerged. Flood waters wash over freeways.

Tribune News Service · Aug 21, 2022

High-speed rail route from San Francisco to San Jose wins approval. What happens next?

FRESNO, Calif. — Over concerns of a pair of Bay Area cities, the California High-Speed Rail Authority board finalized its choice of a route alternative for about 49 miles of tracks between San Francisco and San Jose.

Tribune News Service · Aug 19, 2022

Commentary: The drought is decimating my farm and many others. What California should do to help us

As I drive across my family’s farm in the San Joaquin Valley, it feels as if I’m traveling on a chessboard. I cross one square with crops and then another without crops — our fields that must lay fallow. Our farm’s crops have been decimated by the drought.

Los Angeles Times · Jul 28, 2022

Land is sinking as groundwater levels drop. New research shows how California could fix it

LOS ANGELES — As pumps hum on wells and send vast quantities of water flowing to farms in the San Joaquin Valley, the dropping water levels are leaving underground spaces in layers of gravel, sand and clay, causing the ground to collapse and sink.

Los Angeles Times · Jun 13, 2022