Year in Review | December 2022
We Hope You’re Enjoying the Holiday Season.
As 2022 comes to a close, Comite Civico del Valle is so excited about the year ahead. We have big plans and big announcements coming for 2023, as we see the environmental justice work and advocacy that we do move to the next level.
More details are to come, but rest assured as this region and the state as a whole focuses on the Salton Sea and Lithium Valley, we, too, will move forward with our environmental justice initiatives that both refine what we are already doing and augment what we’ve already done.
Watch for increased outreach and advocacy efforts from us on Lithium Valley. To that end, we’ll have big news coming shortly. In the sphere of renewable energy, we will continue to trailblaze on local Electric Vehicle initiatives as we look to expand the Valley’s access to EV chargers.
With the Salton Sea, there are opportunities ahead to bring more attention to the travails of the troubled sea and the state’s efforts to restore it. We have exciting plans to give our wellestablished Salton Sea Community Outreach Education & Engagement (COEE) a little update, bringing its focus back to the health interventionist model right at a time when even less water will be flowing into the ever-shrinking lake over the next four years. The fear is, that with fewer inflows to the sea from 1 million acre-feet in water conservation, the potential for asthma-aggravating dust will be on the rise. We will also see our COEE-affiliated School Flag Program, which helps empower schools and their students to understand air-quality conditions in real time, expand into the Coachella Valley. We predict an expansion of that program will also be a critical element to health intervention over the next four years. More to come on all of that. Now is a time for reflection on some of our major accomplishments of 2022, those moments for which we reached out into the community, came together with our partners, and affected change in the hard-won world of environmental justice.
Leading Workplace COVID Efforts
In January 2022, Comite Civico del Valle took on its role as the regional lead of the California COVID-19 Workplace Outreach Project, administered through the Labor and Workforce Development Agency and the Department of Industrial Relations.
Comite Civico and its partners, which ranged from other community-based organizations to governmental entities like the Imperial County Public Health Department, conducted outreach and educated workers and employers in higher-risk industries on how to prevent the spread of COVID in the workplace. The outreach centered around farmworkers and packing facilities, but also extended to food service, manufacturing and logistics, warehousing, and janitorial.
Kickoff events included vaccination and booster clinics for farmworkers, and in midNovember, partner agencies arrived in the Imperial Valley as part of Workers’ Rights Weeks for a caravan and a weeks’ worth of CWOP-related events.
With the so-called “tripledemic” of flu, COVID-19 and RSV hitting California hard this winter, Comite Civico’s CWOP-led efforts will be in place well into 2023.
Neighborhood Contamination Study Gets Underway
In February 2022, the Brawley Health ACTION Environmental Study was set in motion to evaluate whether the toxic PureGro chemical site and other potentially toxic sources on the east side of Brawley had caused any possible adverse health effects on residents living in the immediate vicinity or whether any of the chemical has leached away from the sites to their properties.
The first of multiple-stage soil samples began in September, with a second set taken in December. Already, chemical exposure levels higher than acceptable have been found in soil samples on a few homes near the PureGro site.
The four-phase study is expected to last until at least fall 2023, with the written and oral histories of residents to be collected, a health assessment and environmental monitoring plan, and results being reported back to the broader community and other stakeholders.
Electric Vehicle Charger Program Goes Live
With a goal of installing some 40 electric vehicle chargers throughout the Imperial and Coachella valleys, Comite Civico del Valle launched its Lithium Valley Charger Equity Initiative in March 2022 with a ribbon-cutting event and “powering up” of its first EV charger at its Brawley headquarters.
The charging station was the first of its kind in Imperial County. Comite Civico dedicated funds from the California Energy Commission’s California Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Project (CALeVIP), which offered a rebate of $4,000 per charging port, and General Motors came through with $40,000 from its Climate Equity Fund.
A number of high-profile guests were in attendance at the ribbon-cutting to speak, including Wade Crowfoot, secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency, California Energy Commissioner Patty Monahan, Natalie Palugyai, secretary of the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency, and Juanita Martinez, the Western Regional director of General Motors, among others.
Additionally, through 2022 the Lithium Valley Charger Equity Initiative has allowed Comite Civico to help residents navigate rebates to make the cost of transitioning to an EV more affordable.
CCV Helps Bring Energy Secretary to Valley
In April 2022, Comite Civico played a prominent role in helping to organize a visit to the Imperial Valley from U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who arrived in the area at the urging of President Biden to hear concerns and discuss the future of Lithium Valley.
A major component of Secretary Granholm’s visit was a listening session in Calipatria, where she heard from local and regional policymakers, environmental justice groups, including our concerns, and stakeholders who wanted to air their concerns about the future of the region if the Salton Sea does indeed become the viable source of lithium critical it is believed to be.
Granholm’s visit comes a few months before Biden’s name checks the Imperial Valley as a critical region key to the domestic supply chain of the minerals vital to the components needed for a green future. In the subsequent months, even more progress will be made in regard to Lithium Valley from local and regional partners.
CARB Open House Includes IVAN, Flag Program
When the California Air Resources Board held a public open house at its state-of-the-art research facility on the campus of University of California, Riverside, in May 2022, Comite Civico del Valle proudly had a seat at the table … literally.
A zero-net energy laboratory set up for advanced vehicle-emissions testing, the CARB facility was opened up on a Saturday for tours and included table displays by various environmental organizations, CCV among them.
We presented our IVAN air-monitoring system and the School Flag Program to the public. We had two IVAN monitors on the roof of the CARB headquarters, with a computer capturing real-time air-quality data that the public could see as they visited our table. We also explained how schools used the data to implement the flag program on their campuses, changing out colored flags based on air-quality status.
CCV staff also conducted training during the visit. Eight additional IVAN monitors will be installed on various state buildings in 2023.
YEHI Students Travel to State Capitol
Nearly a dozen Imperial Valley students taking part in Comite Civico del Valle’s Youth Environmental Health Internship, in partnership with Tracking California and funded by the National Institute of Health, had the unique opportunity to visit the State Capitol in Sacramento.
The internship prepares Imperial County’s best and brightest to be the next leaders in environmental health, with program advisors imparting vital information on advocacy, environmental justice, knowledge of air quality and the policymaking process.
The trip to Sacramento saw the 10 or so interns put some of those skills to the test as they presented online projects on the New River, met with officials from the California Natural Resources Agency, and sat down with an Assembly member.
The YEHI students will travel to Washington, D.C. in early 2023.
Environmental Justice Summit Returns After COVID
After a three-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Comite Civico del Valle returned with its 11th annual Environmental Health Leadership Summit in October 2022.
Around 300 local, state, and tribal leaders, academia, environmental justice advocates, organizers, labor unions, and more gathered for the daylong event to discuss a variety of environmental issues. Topics related to Lithium Valley and the potential for lithium extraction at the Salton Sea dominated discourse throughout the day.
“This is a historic time … Lithium Valley, if it comes to pass, will mean our long underrepresented home will have a real role in the fight against climate change by being the source of a safe and sustainable supply of a mineral critical to this nation’s future,” CCV Executive Director Luis Olmedo said during his opening remarks. “It will also be the catalyst to bettering the lives of those who have struggled with generational poverty in many cases. You’ll hear from some of the individuals who have played a part in helping bring us to this point today. There is still much to accomplish.”
Year Ends with Focus on Lithium Valley Issues
Toward the end of the year, Comite Civico del Valle saw some of its focus shift toward ensuring that equity and the best possible outcomes be included in the final report delivered to the Legislature by the Blue Ribbon Commission on Lithium Extraction, better known as the Lithium Valley Commission.
Our executive director, Luis Olmedo, was one of two members from the environmental justice world on a commission made up of policymakers, industry representatives, tribal leaders, and environmentalists. They came together to hammer out a multi-layered report that, from Comite Civico’s end, did end up serving equity and justice for the fence-line communities who would be most affected by any lithium extraction projects.
What’s more, the tenets of Assembly Bill 125 that includes a per-ton taxing structure on lithium that would go to the restoration of the Salton Sea and direct payments to the fenceline communities remained intact. CCV earlier in the year had advocated strongly for the passage of the bill, which was fought by many of the geothermal/lithium companies that would be affected.
In a related matter, the latter part of the year also saw the county of Imperial begin to seek proposals for the Salton Sea Renewable Resource Health Impact Assessment tied to lithium extraction projects around the Salton Sea. This was a positive development. In the absence of an exhaustive California Environmental Quality Act process for every proposed project planned for the Salton Sea, the agreement was that a detailed health impact assessment was to be the trade-off. It’s not a perfect arrangement, but it’s the devil you know.
Both of these issues are written about in more detail here.
Comite Civico Reaching Out in the Community
Rest assured, although Comite Civico del Valle dealt with a lot of big-picture issues in 2022, this organization won’t soon forget its mission and its roots. Our outreach teams are regularly on the streets, at all hours, working with the farm labor community, we’re in homes imparting valuable and possibly life-saving information to asthma sufferers, we’re out at various community health events and showcases with displays, handing out PPE, and conducting research, to name just a few. Our policy and research teams are working closely with policymakers to inform them about community needs, as well as keeping abreast of any new legislation that may affect the community we serve, organize, plan, and host community workshops, make connections with new environmental justice partners, and more