Assembly Select Committee on Select Committee on Social Determinants of Health

Good morning, everyone. We are going to begin the Select Committee hearing for the Social Determinants of Health. Good morning to our panelists, our community members, and my colleagues that are here and those that may come later today. I am Assembly Member Dr. Akilah Weber, representing the 79th Assembly District of which you are all in currently right now.

I want to thank you so much for joining us as we convene the Select Committee on the Social Determinants of Health to specifically focus on environmental health in urban communities. A few housekeeping items before we proceed. This hearing is being live streamed on the Assembly main website. We will be allowing for public comment in person. There will be no remote public comment for this hearing.

In order to facilitate the goal of hearing as much as possible from the public within the limits of our time, we will not permit conduct that disrupts, disturbs, or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of the legislative proceedings. We will not accept disruptive behavior or behavior that incites or threatens violence, or even invels threats.

Now, during today's hearings, we will discuss a critical and very timely issue, how environmental hazards have negatively affected the health of our communities throughout this state, specifically affecting low income communities of color and urban regions at disproportionate rates from air and water pollution to hazardous waste sites. These hazards not only jeopardize the physical health of our residents, but also exacerbate existing social and economic disparities.

Decades of racist and discriminatory policies at all levels of government have placed certain communities in spaces where they would be exposed to most toxins or risk for environmental hazards. For example, Americans aging highway system has served as an ongoing monument of environmental racism. In 1956, the federal Aid Highway act paved the way for the nation's interstate system.

These projects were built through areas where concentrations of black families lived, which we now know over time, has led to an increased risk of asthma and respiratory illnesses in these very same communities. In the 1980s, national attention was focused on a small community here in California called Kettleman City, which at the time hosted the largest toxic waste dump west of Alabama.

In 1988, this small community in Kettleman City, almost entirely Latino farm workers, faced the prospect of the creation of another major toxic waste incinerator in their area. The public hearings were not designed to allow the residents to understand nor truly participate, as the material was only in English and no translation services were provided during the hearings.

The plans to build that second incinerator was eventually dropped, but only after a ruling by a judge in a subsequent lawsuit that found that Kettleman residents were effectively precluded from meaningful involvement in the California Environmental Quality Act review process. We have seen time over time again how exclusion of certain voices in planning and decision making processes. However, we know that when all voices are heard and uplifted, change is possible and everyone benefits.

This hearing today serves as a platform to uplift community voices, review the history of some of these environmental injustices, and begin planning on how we can do better for all Californians in the future. In 1999, Governor Davis signed SB 115, making California the first state in the nation to codify the definition of environmental justice. SB 115 defined environmental justice as the fair treatment of people of all races, cultures and income with respect to the development, adoption and implementation of environmental laws, regulation and policies.

It also established the Office of Planning and Research as the coordinating agency for the state environmental justice programs. Since that time, we have made strides to reduce the exposure that all Californians interact on a daily and consistent basis, but there is still so much progress that needs to be made. We still have children that are drinking and using water with traces of lead and pfas. We are still seeing toxic runoff coming from manufacturing sites and other sources that pollute our oceans, rivers and lakes.

The water contaminating our public water access points have been linked to cancer and reproductive harm. Further, we still see in certain communities that they are not included in the city's redesigning plans to include trees and other open spaces, despite the fact that we know that green open spaces are linked to positive mental and physical wellness, decreasing stress and anxiety.

Conversely, the lack of trees in these communities, among other things, creates these heat deserts or heat islands, which has led to higher rates of health issues such as heat strokes and heat related adverse pregnancy consequences for black women, including premature births and stillbirths. These things were discussed in the recent report released by the California Reparations Task Force.

And equally as important, as we work to repair the environmental injustices of our past, we must ensure that all communities are resilient to the climate crisis of the present and the future. The rain that we have seen over this last week was one of the wettest days this region has experienced in nearly 100 years, which we can attribute to global warming, climate change and sea level rise. But we cannot ignore that the flooding devastated certain parts of San Diego County and not others.

In my own district, in areas predominantly occupied by black and brown residents, they had homes and vehicles underwater. People had to be rescued by canoes. Homes and properties were destroyed. Residents were exposed to mold and other hazards from the floodwaters. The city and the County of San Diego both had to declare a state of emergency.

The storm last Monday was unlike any that we have ever had in our lifetime, but it was exacerbated in places like southeast San Diego and Spring Valley as a result of a lack of planning, a lack of focus on these communities and overdue investment structures. Last year, the City of San Diego's stormwater Department shared that there were more than a thousand known pipe failures that had yet to be addressed.

So we must do better, because I can assure you that even though we were the first in the nation to codify the definition of environmental justice in 1999. 25 years later, my district and others throughout this state do not feel that we have implemented policies that are fair and equitable. So I'm looking forward to this hearing, and I want to thank in advance all of our panelists, those who are here physically and those who will be joining us online.

And I want to thank those who have come to watch and who will be watching this streaming. I want to acknowledge the presence of a few electeds we have in the audience. We have councilmember Jack Shu from the City of La Mesa, who has been an environmental champion for many, many years. We also have representative from the office of Supervisor, County Supervisor Joel Anderson.

We also have representatives from the office of Senator Padilla's office, the office of Mayor Todd Gloria, and the office of Assemblymember Marie Waldron. I would also like to acknowledge and thank my colleague in the Assembly, Assembly Member Tasha Boerner, for joining us today. And I would like to give her a few minutes for opening remarks as well.

Thank you so much. And thank you, everybody, for braving the rain and coming out here. My name is Tasha Boerner. I represent most of the coast in San Diego, from Carlsbad down to Coronado, including downtown San Diego. But I also have the water off of Imperial beach. And I want to thank, you know, it's wonderful having a physician and such a talented physician in the Assembly. Whenever we work on comes.

I used to sit on Health Committee, and she would always, with every bill, go through with such a nuanced and in depth understanding of what it is to be healthy in California and what it is that we can improve. And I want to echo all your statements you made about social injustices. My district flooded, but we're not seeing the impacts that we see in southeast San Diego, and we have to acknowledge what that is.

And when we look at the agenda, I want to thank you and your entire staff. It's really difficult to put on a Select Committee hearing, especially in the district, so I want to thank everybody for not only being here, but for all the staff who made this happen. And while I'm proud to represent such a beautiful coastal district, I've seen firsthand in my district how environmental issues have negatively impacted the health and well being of San Diegans.

Wastewater from Tijuana's faulty sewer facility is pouring out through the Tijuana river into the Pacific Ocean, including the water throughout the district, especially in Silver Strand State beach and Coronado beach, as well as in Assembly Member Alvarez's district, mostly directly impacting Imperial beach. The wastewater coming from Tijuana has been a problem for decades and is growing to be both an environmental problem and a public safety concern.

Research from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego has shown that the breakers from the waves off of Imperial beach can create a spray from the polluted water that people can breathe miles inland. Local economies, especially on the coast, are driven largely by tourism, and they're suffering because people do not want to visit a coastal city whose beaches are closed due to high levels of bacteria and pollutants.

On top of the impact of residents and tourists not being able to enjoy our coast's beautiful beaches, our military's large presence in South Bay, and we have navy seals conducting training exercises daily in this contaminated water. Something must be done to protect our communities. We have urged Governor Newsom and President Biden. I spoke with Vice President Harris last week specifically on this issue to assist our cities on this issue, and will continue to advocate for additional funding and pollution control effort.

Every Californian deserves clean air and water. I'm grateful for the work being done by Assembly Member Weber and the Select Committee on the social determinants of health, particularly their work on environmental impacts of health. I look forward to seeing how this committee, the Assembly, and groups within our community continue to address these serious matters. So thank you for all for being here. I look forward to the discussions.

Thank you. Thank you, Assemblymember Boerner. Today we will focus on three core topics, clean water, clean air and green open spaces, and we will finish off with a panel that will speak to how research and data driven tools can inform policies that we pass in the future. Once again, I look forward to the discussion, and I think Assembly Member Boerner gave a great opening and a reason why our first panel today is on the clean water.

And so we will be joined by Cori Bell, who's a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council Waylon Madsen, co founder of Four Walls International and Sam Brown, treasurer for the Viejas Council, tribal Council. After each panel, we will have the ability to ask questions before the next panel comes on. And so now I will turn it over to Cori Bell, who is joining us remotely.

Hi there. Are you able to hear me all right?

We can hear you.

Great. Good morning, Chair Weber and committee members. My name is Cori Bell. I'm an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Counsel. Today I'm going to talk to you about clean water in homes, schools and daycares with a particular focus on lead. First, I'll give some background on how lead gets into our drinking water, and then I'll give you all an overview of its health effects.

Then I'll turn to lead in California's drinking water, what we know about it, and then I'll wrap up with a discussion of some barriers and solutions. Next slide, please. In General, lead isn't naturally found in drinking water. It's not present when the water leaves the drinking water treatment plant. It's picked up from the pipes and the plumbing that the water passes through from the plant up to your tap. Lead is used for plumbing because it's very flexible and so it can be bent and shaped easily.

This is very handy for pipes and things like faucets. On this slide, I just want to point out that you can see across the United States, there's pretty consistently lead found in drinking water systems, and it's concentrated in urban areas. Next slide, please. So here's a diagram of how the water system works. How water gets into our homes or to our apartment. That big blue circle, that's the water main running down the middle of your street.

And then there's a smaller pipe that's called a service line that connects your home to the water main. In most places, lead plumbing comes in the form of a lead service line. So that entire pipe might be lead or there might be a lead connector. This is sometimes called a very cute name, like a gooseneck or a pigtail. It's not very cute, though. And California, that's mostly what it's mostly these lead connectors. Those can range anywhere from 18 inches up to 10ft or more.

Bigger buildings, like schools, they're not likely to have a lead service line. But the plumbing that's actually in the school can have lead in it. Smaller daycare centers could have a lead service line or a lead connector. The other thing that's problematic with schools and daycares is that those places go long periods of time without activity. Think about the weekends, evenings, holiday breaks.

The longer that water sits in a pipe or a faucet that has lead, as most of them do, the more lead that it will collect. Next slide, please. So, turning now to the health effects, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the WHO, the CDC, they all agree that there is no safe level of lead exposure. And when I give you this background, I want you to keep in mind that EPA's current limit for lead and drinking water is 15 parts per billion.

For children, lead exposure, even at very low levels, can result in lifelong impacts like memory and attention problems, lower iq, reduced reading and math skills. And these are all reasons why the AAP also recommends that water in schools does not exceed one part per billion, very different from the EPA's current 15. For adults, a recent study found that the effects of lead are six times greater than originally thought, in large part because of its linked to cardiovascular diseases like heart disease and stroke.

As for the social factors that overlay all of this, low income children and children of color are the most susceptible to the effects of increased lead exposure. That's because these children are more likely to live in a home with a lead service line or lead paint. And being a person of color and low income are both identified time and time again as risk factors for elevated blood blood levels. The same susceptibilities are true with adults, too.

The risk of heart disease is especially high in populations of color, in large part due to this greater lead exposure. Next slide, please. So turning now to California, I'm going to focus specifically on lead in schools and childcare centers, just because of time here. So California has a law requiring what I think of as infrequent testing in daycares, it's just once every five years. And for schools, there was a one time testing requirement, and that has wrapped up by now.

The results of the daycare testing are completely alarming. One quarter of the facilities that tested found an exceedance of five parts per billion. That was the limit set in that law. The highest result was actually in San Diego, and it was 11,300 parts per billion. It just completely breaks my heart to know that infants were having formula made for them at this center. The school testing data is also very alarming. More than half of schools had lead in their water at one or more taps.

And over 2000 water fountains tested positive for lead. Next slide, please. So to talk briefly now about the barriers and solutions. I think that the biggest hurdle to clean drinking water for kids in these facilities is that no one wants to take responsibility. Water systems and state agencies have been fighting legislation across the United States, including in California, saying for years that EPA will require testing. The states don't need to do anything.

And this would be done through a federal rulemaking, the federal lead and copper rule. Well, that draft rule is out. I am working on comments right now. They're due Monday. And I can assure you that there is no requirement to test water in schools or daycares, let alone clean up the water in those places. And meanwhile, in that rule, EPA says the states need to do the work. So there's a lot of finger pointing going on. With the good news, though.

The only good news, I think, with lead and drinking water is that it's pretty easy to fix. You just remove the lead plumbing or you install filters. For schools and childcares, the cheapest and most health protective thing to do is install filters. We call it a filter first program. We know that schools and daycares have lead in their water. California's data shows that.

So simply install the filters that are certified to remove lead, maintain them, and periodically test them to make sure they work, and then you'll protect kids. And we do know that the filters work. They consistently remove lead to one part per billion or less. There are some places, in fact, several places, that are already doing this. San Diego USD is one of them. They passed a requirement for filters in 2020.

We want this to happen throughout California and the nation and to make sure that it includes childcare centers and childcare homes, because these little kids, these infants are the most vulnerable. This filter, first program, it can be enacted either through a school district like San Diego did. It can be done at the local level, like Washington, DC and Philadelphia did, or it can be done at the state level, like several states are currently working on, and local water systems can step in and help to run the program and install the filters. The other good news is there is some federal money available for this and state money, too. There's about $100 million available every year federally.

Another relatively easy step that I would recommend is that California weighs in on the lead and copper rule that's out for comment with EPA right now and urge the agency to require filters in schools and childcare centers. And with that, I will turn it over to the next panelist. And thank you very much for your time and the opportunity to participate.

Thank you so much. Cori. I'm sure we're going to have a couple of questions at the end of this panel for you, but now we will turn it over to Waylon Matson, co founder of Four Walls International.

Hello. Good morning, esteemed members of the California State Assembly Select Committee. Thank you for having me here to talk a little bit about something that's very near and dear to my heart, the Tijuana River Watershed. Today, I present a critical perspective on the social determinants of health, emphasizing the interrelationship of both public and environmental health in our region's south based San Diego communities, especially centered around water quality.

I will also focus on the imperative for bi national cooperation and regional resilience, which is never as visceral or evident as of right now in response to this recent deluge of seasonal storms and floods witnessed yesterday, right now, and last week. These challenges brought by climate change are expected to become the new normal. Where possible, 10, 50 or 100 year storm events become regular occurrences impacting already inadequate stormwater infrastructure.

Four Walls International is an organization dedicated to cross border collaboration and the development of innovative solutions for environmental challenges. Over 15 years, we've tirelessly worked to address the complex issues surrounding the Tijuana River Watershed, promoting sustainability and climate adaptation through community driven initiatives. We have prioritized working across multiple sectors to match the scale of the solution to the scale of the problem and advocate for environmental justice on both sides of the border.

The Tijuana River Watershed is a unique landscape characterized by multi-jurisdictional overlap, shared waters, and a history shaped by rapid growth and environmental changes. Climate change has exacerbated challenges leading to an increased environmental injustice affecting public health. The watershed's topography and geography further complicate effective management within approximately 70% of the watershed residing in Mexico, encompassing the entirety of the urbanized portion of the municipality of Tijuana and its 2 million inhabitants. Yhe impact on public health cannot be overstated.

Sewage contamination exacerbated by inadequate stormwater infrastructure has led to beach closures, respiratory issues as mentioned earlier in the aerosolization of pathogens and contaminants, and other health concerns. Examples include antibiotic resistance forms of bacteria, skin rashes, and gastrointestinal infections. Communities within the watershed face disproportionate challenges, emphasizing the urgent need for comprehensive solutions.

The 450,000 residents of the South Bay have witnessed over 700 days of consecutive beach closures, and the additional 300,000 of northern coastal communities that see the contamination flow with seasonal currents feel it as well, impacting regional economies, navy seal training facilities, as well as the public access to open space and nature. 91 years ago, San Diego communities faced contamination and water quality issues, and in 2024, we still grapple with the same water quality issues.

In 2015, the International Boundary and Water Commission enacted minute 320, which laid the foundation for binational cooperation in addressing the water quality, sediment, and solid waste along the border, but the lack of institutional capacity and funding to support these efforts has delayed progress. More recently, the US EPA USMCA funding and minute 328 investments have made great progress over the last few years, but the San Ysidro Wastewater Treatment Facility urgently needs repairs estimated at between 600 and $900 million after tropical storm Hillary.

Just this week, Governor Newsom advocated for Congress to pass an additional $310,000,000 bill directed towards these upgrades. Regional attempts to address these challenges have seen multiple lawsuits filed, declaration of a state of emergency, and millions of dollars spent by local governments on reactionary measures. Adaptation is essential, requiring a multidimensional approach that incorporates the latest scientific advancements, community driven initiatives, and a holistic strategic approach to stem the billions of gallons of wastewater flowing into our oceans.

Moving forward, a collaborative effort that prioritizes binational cooperation, leveraging the shared responsibility for the Tijuana Watershed is needed. This includes enhanced monitoring, joint research, including hydrofinancial studies, and coordinated adaptation strategies.

California's leadership and advocacy from multiple levels, including the Governor's Office of the Commission of California's, California EPA Border Relations Council and the Regional Water Quality Control Board's Tijuana River Valley recovery team, can serve as a robust foundation for strengthening bi national ties and fostering the development of an authority equipped to address multi jurisdictional challenges.

Drawing inspiration from successful models like the Santa Ana River Watershed, Joint Powers Authority, the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority, and the Los Angeles County Safe Clean Waters programs, California can innovate ways for local municipalities to tackle significant stormwater funding shortages. Legislations such as AB 243 and SB 231 can be furthered to advance regional measures, enabling joint power agreements with the authority to levy special taxes consistent with Proposition 218. This approach opens avenues for securing funding through federal and state grants, creating public private partnerships or philanthropic agreements, and exploring innovative finance schemes like environmental impact bonds or similar pay for success initiatives. This authority could leverage interagency transfer agreements under the oversight of the state treasury to facilitate collaboration and resource allocation among entities like the Pollution Control Finance Authority, state natural resources, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

By strategically deploying these mechanisms, California can establish a robust framework for addressing environmental challenges and promoting sustainable development across borders. We must acknowledge the interconnectedness of our urban communities, transcending political boundaries for the sake of regional resilience. The social determinants of health in our urban communities are inextricably linked to the health of our environment.

Binational cooperation is not just a suggestion but a necessity, we stand committed to work alongside our partners at the local, state and federal level and remain ready to take decisive action for the sake of San Diego County residents. Thank you for your time, and I welcome any questions and further discussions on this vital issue.

Thank you so much. We will now turn over to Sam Brown, who is the treasurer of Viejas Tribal Council.

Thank you again. My name is Sam Brown. I've had the honor of serving on tribal council for 13 years. Thank you, Dr. Weber, for holding this forum. Water is the gold, the true gold of California. And like the gold rush back in about 150 plus years ago, water has, and the pursuit of water has had a negative effect, particularly to my tribe. I don't know if you know the history of Viejas and Barona, but if we take a look at the map here next.

Forward is not going, next slide. Okay, so Viejas, many of you know, is located about 30 miles east of the coast of California. So originally Viejas was established in 1934. And the reason why we're established 1934 is because we were forced off our lands when the City of San Diego used eminent domain to buy our villages that were located where the El Capitan Reservoir currently sits. There were two villages. One village is named Los Canejos and another village called El Capitan.

El Capitan is actually submerged under the current reservoir. It was a particularly hard move for us, especially in Viejas. In 1934, we had an extremely cold winter. It actually snowed quite a bit, which is pretty rare. I believe about 30 of our residents died of tuberculosis. So our introduction to water and our availability to water has always been a little bit touchy for us. Recently, however, due to the economics of our businesses, we've been able to build a fairly well infrastructure.

We have a Public Works Department, and we also have a closed loop sewer system and water system as well, where we were before in a septic tank. Just like the rest of East County, many homes out there are under septic tanks. We built this infrastructure, cost us about $20 million back in the late 90 s and early 2000s. So now we treat our water. So if you take a look at the next slide. So Viejas Valley sits in a natural bowl. We're surrounded by three peaks.

We have Viejas Mountain, poser peak and Chiquito Peak, all about 4000ft. It creates a natural watershed. So our issue isn't so much availability to water. Our issue is however, treating that water. We're fairly complex in our public works. In our water district, we have our own water system. Like I said mentioned earlier, it services about the 200 residences, individual houses on the reservations. It services the casino, it services our outlet center, and it services our campground.

Now we are fortunate because we get to test the water on a regular basis. We have about five wells, we have about five holding tanks. We also use reclaimed water. In fact, half of the water that we extract from the ground we reclaim back as for landscaping. And also we have holding ponds that help it go back into the Earth.

And what we've noticed recently is since about 2000, as many of you have known, the water has not been as dependable as it was in the past. While we're lucky in that bowl, we've never had issues with water and retaining water from wells we know our neighbors have. In the East County, we've seen other reservations, having issues drawing water from the ground, and we've seen our neighbors off the reservation have that issue too as well.

However, the other issue besides the availability of water is testing that water. We have the ability on our reservation. We test monthly samples. We test twice a month for coliform. We do quarterly uranium sampling. We've just started to test for microplastics too as well. We pretty much follow the federal guidelines. However, our neighbors that sit around the reservation, even, they don't have that ability, currently. We've bought some properties off the reservation and tested the groundwater and it's not up to standards.

And that's an issue with a lot of the East County right now. For those of you who are familiar with alpine, Padre Water Dam district runs to about where Albertsons is. That's about 3 miles from the reservation. So everywhere east of that, the residents are serviced by well water. And just from the few wells that we've sampled on properties we bought off reservation in the area, they have certain contaminants that wouldn't pass federal guidelines.

And I imagine the rest of the East County east of that is similar. So there was a General plan 2020 that changed the zoning for the East County originally it was set up in the early 2000s to expand affordable housing in the county. And so basically what that did is it rezoned Alpine Boulevard which is a higher density residential and light commercial usage all the way to the East Willows Road which is east of the reservation.

So Willows road borders on Viejas reservation and parts of the town of Alpine. So some of it is in fee simple land. The reason why that can expand right now is because the availability of water is not there. We have a pretty good relationship with the Padre Dam water district. We are in talks with them about every six months. They give us an update. And one of the items that we bring up quite a bit is the expansion of Padre Water district east.

I know sometimes it's not economical to expand it further east than that, but we can't have growth in the East County without the expansion of water. And I know that our residents on the reservation, we have very safe drinking water. However, people in the East County east of there probably should have their wells tested. I know there are some suggestions of individual households to have some type of filtering. I myself have a reverse osmosis system in my house.

It's mainly for soft water, but it does take the contaminants out of the water. So it is an issue for people in the East County. Yes, the water is there for a lot of us. We do get a lot of rain, we get more in the East County than we do along the coast. However, the issue is, of course, that we've seen just by sampling the waters that we've bought, property that we bought off the reservation, that many of our residents in these counties suffer from water that wouldn't pass federal standards, much less state standards.

Thank you so much, Sam. And before we start with questions, I did want to acknowledge that we do have a representative from Assemblymember Chris Swartz's office and also the presence of Council Member Alysson Snow from the City of Lemon Grove.

Yes, thank mean. I think when I look at all the presentations, I found out new information. I did not know that about East County well water, and that is a problem. We see this up and down the state. We have bills every year trying to address the issue of clean water. And it seems in the, I'm not sure are we fourth or fifth largest economy. I think we keep switching back and forth. That should not be our problem.

And so I think that is a really imperative for us to think about. How do we address the issue of clean water? But going back to the Tijuana River sewage, I want to ask you named a number of things that we can be doing. One of the challenges that I found is, as a state, so many of the solutions need to be federal.

And so I've been working with, obviously, our congressional delegation, especially Scott Peters and Juan Vargas and Mike Levin, Sarah Jacobs, on what do we need to do with the 300 million and how do we do this. What would you say are the top three things that we as state legislators can do to immediately impact and support all the initiatives going on, on the Tijuana river sewage issue.

I would say top three would be advocate for the declaration of a federal state of emergency, because that would open up the door for more federal funding to be able to be directed towards it, especially with the upcoming Water Boards TMDL public comments period in February 26 and 28th.

Just bring that state delegation to the table and advocate for the TMDLs to be approved so that more state revolving fund money might be allocated as well, and to really strengthen the regional authority to be able to direct state resources. So whether that is through the Border Relations Council or the Commission of the Californias, figure out mechanisms and ways to work binationally so that a comprehensive solution can evolve over the course of the next few years as more and more resources are going to be allocated and just really direct those towards the non point source pollution originating in Mexico.

Well, I want to thank all of the panelists. Wayland we'll just continue with you since we started with you. Help me get a better understanding of this. He said 70% of the TJ Weber is actually over in Mexico. Is there any possibility, physical possibility, where we could on the United States side? Because I know it gets tricky, and sometimes the more hands in the pot, it prolongs things. And we've been dealing with this for over 90 years. People keep pointing fingers.

Is there any way that we could establish some kind of filtering, something on our side so that whatever kind of pollutants may be coming from the other 70%, we're able to filter out before they get to the United States side? Or is that just not possible?

What we're really focusing on right now is how we can strengthen the stormwater in Mexico as well. But when we're dealing with inadequate funding for our own local governments, and like you said, more hands in the cookie jar, the more complicated things get and the deflection of responsibility continues. So what we really propose is really finding out ways to bring in the private sector, create investable opportunities that are based off success.

So if we could find mechanisms or allow mechanisms to be able to invest into Mexico, to really address it at the source, I believe California land managers down the road, over the course of the next 10 to 30 years, will see a considerable drop in their remediation costs annually. And plus, we'll see more open beaches, we'll see less contaminants flowing in.

And these all just focus around green infrastructure, nature based solutions, reforestation projects, and really working with the local governments in Mexico to address some of the urban sprawl and migration patterns.

But would it be possible for us to build some kind of filter system?

Well, that's a complicated question, because with larger events, putting more capture systems or more reactionary measures in California, as filtration systems are just counterproductive. It seems that it would be more expensive, long term, to invest in something like that in California rather than investing in Mexico.

I only ask that because that is clearly the best option. But it hasn't been done, and it's hard to dictate what someone else can do. It's hard to dictate what other states will do, right? That's why it's hard to dictate what cities will do within California, even though we may have a California law. But I do know that this is a significant problem for our residents in South Bay. I know it is a significant health problem for them as well.

I remember going out to areas in Imperial beach and seeing those signs like you cannot get in the water, which is just very, I'll just say very unfortunate. So I was just wondering if, as we are continuing to work with our international partners and federal funding, understanding know in Sacramento, it's hard to get people to understand the importance of things that are happening in our districts in San Diego.

Then when you look at a federal level, trying to convince all of those other people in other states to focus in on what's happening in California is also just as challenging. What is it that we could do for our residents as we continue these discussions and these efforts federally and also internationally? Is Cori Bell still on?

Yeah. So, there is testing in daycares right now. It's a five year testing program, and there was a one off testing program for schools. So that was done, I think it was in 2018, and that's all wrapped up. That was just a one time situation.

So despite the fact that the testing showed that there was significant lead in our schools, we no longer test.

That's right.

Okay. So what sources of state funding have we used in the past to establish or implement these filters that you were discussing? And in the current budget that the Governor has proposed in January, is there any funding for these filters or to address this problem at all, specifically this problem?

Yeah. So at the state level, the funding can come from what's called a drinking water SRF program. Every state has one. And it's money that comes from the federal government, is given to the states, and then states then decide how to divvy up how that money is spent. And that's one way that a filter first program could be tested. In part, it's similar to the other federal funds that I mentioned.

There's money from the Biden Infrastructure Fund, and there's also something called Water Infrastructure Investments for the Nation Act. That's an EPA program, and that is given directly to states to do testing and remediation in schools for lead. There was, last year, a Bill, AB 249, that was passed. However, it was vetoed for monetary reasons.

So there are federal funds that we could go after in addition to providing funding within our own state budget. But we have not done that.

That's right.

Assembly Member Boerner.

I just wanted to follow up on that. I was actually elected in 2018, and in my old district, there were several schools that were identified as having lead it in their water, which was, as a mother, just so concerning. Well, as a human, so concerning. But especially as a mother. I know it was a one time testing. Was there any requirement for remediation and reporting out that the issues had been remediated based on that testing?

So for the daycare testing, there is a requirement for remediation that's ongoing. It's a little bit slow. And for the school Bill that was vetoed, AB 249, there was a remediation, a notification and remediation requirement for that as well. And for both of those, the limit was set at five parts per billion as opposed to EPA's fifteen.

Because I know I followed up directly with all my school districts who had lead in their water, and immediately all the school districts had action plans and filters in place. So I know that in my old district, they're fine. I'm not sure every Assembly Member or Senator went through and did the same type of thing. So it would be interesting to just require that any of those schools report out on how they remediated it.

Right. Because I think there's an assumption that they're fine with the filters. But since there was no follow up testing, we're not completely sure. At the time that these tests were done, was there any notification sent out to the families informing them of the results of the testing and the schools that their children were attending?

I believe there was notifications sent out to parents and guardians as to the test results, yes.

Okay. Well, thank you so very much for everyone's presentation today. I just wanted to acknowledge a few things that Sam Brown said in his presentation. The first is, you know, water is gold. We must have clean water. You cannot have communities. You cannot have good health if you do not have clean water. And the other that I thought was so very interesting was that we cannot expand further into East County without addressing the water infrastructure there.

And as we're dealing with things in terms of the need to build more housing, the ability to build out into other areas within San Diego County, we're not going to be able to do that if we don't go into these areas and really start to look at their infrastructure and test their water to make sure that it is safe for residents to move out that way. So I really want to thank you, Sam, for bringing up those two points.

And with that, we will move on to our second panel. I want to thank so much the members of our first panel.

We'll be monitoring from the car, but because it's raining, I have to pick up my kids from school, so I'll be monitoring from the car. I just want to, again, thank Assembly Member Dr. Weber for putting this together. It's fascinating, and there's so much work that we have to do. And I love these Select Committee hearings because we really get real input that's really hard for us otherwise to get.

So thank you, everybody, for all your hard work, and I look forward to hearing, in the car, everything else the panelists are saying.

All right. Thank you, Assemblymember Borner. So with our next panel, we will be focusing on clean air. We have Paula Forbes from the San Diego County Air Pollution Control District. Brady Van Engeln, policy advocate from the California Chamber of Commerce, and Maritza Garcia, advocate for Environmental Health Coalition. And before they start, I just want to really acknowledge the fact that we have business at the table. Oftentimes they're not here or they're not invited.

And so the fact that they are here and wanting to participate in this discussion is really commendable. And I want to thank you all. And so we will start with Paula.

Thank you very much. There we go. We're all set. Thanks so much. Thank you, Dr. Weber, for holding this panel. I really appreciate the opportunity to come speak with you. Domingo Bihil, our Deputy Director over our Office of Environmental Justice, was going to present today, but he was not able to come. But it's my pleasure to be here to be able to present to this panel. If we could go on to the next slide, please.

I really appreciated the comments of the formal panel about the importance of clean water. I also want to highlight the importance of clean air. While folks may have the ability to occasionally stay out of the water if they know that there's an impact at a beach or something like that, we can't get away from our air. And so the health impacts of air pollution are something that drives us to do the work that we do.

And you can see here, this is just a list of a few of them. Recent studies came out today linking diesel particulate matter and fine particle pollution to breast cancer. So as we learn more and more about the health impacts of air pollution, it makes the work that we do that much more important. If we could go on to the next slide. So we are part of a three tier system that regulates air pollution in San Diego County.

And so no single agency has the resources necessary to ensure clean air for all. It requires partnerships. And so our district is part of a coordinated, three tiered approach to regulating air pollution in accordance with the federal and state Clean Air Acts. The US EPA primarily regulates emissions from interstate traveling sources such as planes, trains, and ships.

The California Air Resources Board regulates emissions from in state mobile sources like on road and off road sources, and also regulates certain area wide sources, such as consumer products and other individually small sources that are prevalent throughout the state. CARB also implements a greenhouse gas reduction program statewide and regulates mobile and other sources of air pollution in California.

At the local level, the Air Pollution Control District regulates emissions from stationary sources throughout the region, such as factories, power plants, landfills, gas stations, and some area wide sources such as paints and coatings. Go on to the next slide please. So this slide just demonstrates some of our key program areas. We have Engineering and Compliance divisions to regulate the stationary sources that I mentioned. We ensure that commercial, industrial, transportation and agricultural businesses are permitted and comply with air pollution control laws.

And in addition to that, we offer incentives to incentivize cleaner technology by offering grant funds that come from state and federal sources. We also monitor and record air quality using a network of equipment stationed around the county, and we alert the public to any unhealthy conditions. Air samples are also tested in the field and in our labs. Field staff inspect both permitted and non permitted sources of air contaminants and investigate citizen complaints on air quality matters.

And we're proud to hold the only in the state mobile source inspection program through a memorandum of understanding with CARB. We work to help future generations have clean air also through long term regional plans to reduce unhealthful pollution levels and develop air quality rules to ensure stationary sources implement those plans. Next slide, please. And so I'd just like to share with you some quick points that are relevant for the entire region of San Diego. county. First, is how's the air quality?

That's the first question people ask, right? Regional air quality in General has been progressing on a positive trend. San Diego County meets all national ambient air quality standards except for ozone, also known as smog. And although ozone levels are lower in the populated coastal plain, the entire region is considered ozone non attainment because sources throughout the region contribute to ozone pollution in downwind alpine, which is where most of the violations of that standard occur.

Now, we're expecting US EPA to announce a new standard for fine particle matter next week. It's entirely possible the region will be eventually designated non attainment for that standard, in which case we'll be taking additional action to progress towards attainment of that standard. Next, I wanted to highlight Assembly Bill 423, which split our district out from the County of San Diego structure. It included requirements to increase transparency and public engagement.

And so, since March of 2021, a new 11 member governing board was formed in representation from various regions throughout the county. It includes three public member seats, and we are the only district in California to have a seat specifically for an environmental justice representative, and we're very proud of that. Our new board has prioritized equity and environmental justice, and as part of that, we've also revamped our complaint program to bring an in house, 24/7 ability to investigate complaints and respond to public complaints about air quality.

And then, as I mentioned before, we also are the only district in the state to enforce mobile source regulations on behalf of CARB through an MOU. Next slide, please. And so one of the key issues and key take home messages is that air pollution doesn't affect everyone equally. And you can see here information from the state's Cal EnviroScreen program. It's one of the tools that we use to identify communities that are more impacted by air pollution and more burdened by other environmental factors.

This is a science based mapping tool that considers a number of health, environmental and social variables that you can see on this screen. The darker orange areas are more impacted than the lighter ones. And so, for example, the community of Barrio Logan is in the upper 90th percentile, which means it's more burdened by air pollution than over 90% of other communities in the state of California.

Up until the last few years, the major focus for air district regulation and the Clean Air Act regulation of air pollution focused on regional air quality. It's only in the last few years that we've started to really drill down on these communities that are disproportionately impacted by air pollution.

And so if we go on to the next slide, please. The Community Air Protection program, which was established by AB 617 in California in 2017, started this process of local air districts looking at local communities, and it requires air districts in the state to partner with the most impacted communities to do community level air monitoring, develop emission reduction plans, and implement incentive programs to deploy the cleanest technologies to reduce air pollution.

Communities are selected at the state level and here in San Diego, we have two communities currently participating in the program. If we can go on to the next slide, please. So we have partnered with the communities of the Portside Environmental Justice Community and the International Border Community through community steering committees, which include community residents, community based organizations, health experts, academia, industry, local jurisdictions, and transportation and planning agencies to develop community air monitoring plans and community emission reduction plans.

These groups meet monthly to coordinate implementation of the plans, share information on progress, and address challenges. Unfortunately, the governor's proposed budget contains significant cuts to these programs statewide, despite the demonstrated success that they've had in communities throughout California. Next slide, please. Over the past year, the Air District has been cultivating relationships with community based organizations and agencies throughout the region that are working with communities facing environmental injustices.

We started these conversations by co-developing a vision regarding what a partnership could look like between the SDAPCD and these community based organizations. Also, we included collaboration with the California Air Resources Board and the county's Office of Sustainability and Environmental justice. This year, we plan to start implementing the vision that we have co-developed. Next slide please.

San Diego Air Pollution Control has already started the process of seeking and securing resources to fund the collective vision developed with the CBOs on the prior slide. We were recently awarded a $1 million grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency. It's a unique grant where at least 30% of it will be passed through to fund the work that these CBOs are doing in conjunction with us.

We'll be working with these eight CBOs and agency partners to pilot a new approach to the state's community air protection program. We'll be using popular education and participatory planning to have community members identify air quality issues, engage additional agencies and jurisdictions, and co-develop solutions to address these issues. Additionally, this effort will allow us to expand our monitoring network through the installation of sensor based monitors throughout EJ communities region wide.

The program will also include the establishment of a new regional air quality focused environmental justice working group convened in partnership with the County of San Diego Office of Sustainability and Environmental Justice. Next slide, please. Before I conclude my presentation, I'd like to invite all of you to collaborate with us today in helping us reach our vision of clean air for all by helping us develop our long term strategic plan.

We're currently working with our partner agencies, stakeholders, and members of the public on identifying air quality priorities and strategies that will be the focus of our work in the upcoming years. We welcome your input through our website or by attending our upcoming public forum on Thursday, February 8th at 5:00 p.m. Next slide, please. Thank you again for your time today. I'm happy to answer any questions you have or you can always reach out to us if you have any questions in the future.

The contact information for our Government and Public Relations Coordinator is on the screen, and I'm happy to share my card if anyone wants to reach out to me later. Thank you.

Thank you so much. We will now turn to Brady Van Engelen.

That's correct, Dr. Weber, thank you very much. And good morning Dr. Weber, and thank you for inviting me to be a part of this important discussion. My name is Brady Van Engelen and I'm the policy advocate at the California Chamber of Commerce. Cal Chamber is a business advocacy organization for the State of California; in fact, the largest one with over 14,000 members, ranging from the small mom and pop businesses to large multinational organizations covering every corner of the state.

So clearly not a monolithic perspective here that I'm offering, but I do thought I would just kind of highlight some of the things that have been done by Cal Chamber members in the past couple of years, moving towards decarbonization and mitigation efforts at the local community level as well, too, and then perhaps talk more about some things that need to be done.

So some of the investments that our members have made have been moving towards, transitioning towards zero carbon fuels such as biodiesel, investing hundreds of millions of dollars in solar and storage to service part of the state's clean energy solution, sustainable aviation fuel- investing hundreds of millions of dollars in sustainable aviation fuel to hit a 30% target of emissions reductions for aircraft emissions.

We have members that have invested- we talked earlier about natural and working lands as well, and we have a lot of members that are keenly focused on that issue area and have sought to conserve over 250,000 acres of land which would sequester approximately 3.3 million tons of carbon on an annual basis. We have Cal Chamber members that are committing billions of dollars towards EV infrastructure, hundreds of millions of dollars that is directed here in California, investing in local air pollution as well, too.

We have members that are investing in technologies, generation technologies that are on site that virtually reduce all NOx, SOx, and particulate matter, effectively removing criteria air pollutants from onsite generation. So from a broader perspective, given Cal Chamber's membership, as I said, we're not a monolithic organization, Cal Chamber typically has taken an all-of-the-above approach on our policy positions focused towards our climate objectives.

We don't think you can leave really any options off the table, given that there are such ambitious targets that we're going to need to hit in the near future. We rely on technology agnostic approaches to inform our policy decisions, which often are based on the best available science at that time. So that does require a little bit of a balance, though. We're the business community, so we have to safeguard the economy, and it has to have a demonstrable impact on emissions reductions as well, too.

It was for this very reason that Cal Chamber came out in support of AB 398, which, as you recall, was the cap and trade extension offered a couple of years ago. One of the more appealing things of that Bill was that the market based strategy and the market based approach that was taken, it's proven to be effective time and time again in both terms of cost and desired outcome. So it hit both targets for us in relation to what we were looking for.

And this has been reinforced by CARB. CARB recently came out with some findings that said that the overall GHG emissions have reduced by 14%, and it's had a positive impact on criteria pollutants as well, too. The University of California, Santa Barbara issued a study not too long ago that said the cap and trade program has reduced air pollution by anywhere from three to 9%, and air pollution disparities from industrial facilities narrowed within those communities as well.

And further auction proceeds from cap and trade are often directed towards local emissions reduction strategies. So it's proven to actually serve as a multifaceted approach to addressing both our GHG emissions and criteria air pollutants. That said, I don't think Cal Chamber, we're not looking for accolades. We're not trying to look for any kind of positive notes for our members or on behalf of our Members.

There's a lot more that needs to be done, and we understand that. It's part of the reason we were strong advocates on behalf of the Governor's infrastructure package last year. And we also came out with strong support of a couple transmission streamlining bills last year. Personally, I, and I think Cal Chamber more broadly, sees the solution upstream.

In order to de-carbonize, you need to actually ensure that we have a transmission system that can accommodate all of that electrification, and quite frankly, we aren't there yet. We have a 20th century grid that has ambitions to operate in the 21st century, so we're going to continue to push on that. That's an area where I think more work needs to be done, and hopefully we'll find some opportunities to collaborate on that. And just to highlight some of the concerns that are raised from there.

There are land use decisions also that serve as impediment here in California. And to underscore that, Texas is now the state with the most utility scarce solar generation in the country, not California. And this isn't because Texas has suddenly embraced solar generation by any means. I think it's probably the opposite, but because of some of the land use decisions that are there, they found it more accommodating to build in Texas than they have in California.

So we do have competing priorities, and if wherever it lands is fine, but just understanding what those competing priorities are so we can move in the direction to align with those priorities would be helpful. But there is a little bit of push and pull right now and trying to figure out how to manage that can be challenging. So as I said, there's a lot of work to be done in this space.

I look forward to working with the legislature on addressing some of these key issues, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you. We will now turn to Maritza Garcia.

Awesome. Thank you so much. There it is. Hello, everyone. My name is Maritza Garcia. I'm a policy advocate with the Environmental Health Coalition, working mainly out of the Logan Heights Barrio Logan community. So EHC is an organization that has been around for over 40 years. We are binational. We work in the San Diego-Tijuana region, and we really strive to fight for justice to communities that are heavily impacted by environmental racism.

I do want to note that we mainly work with grassroots organizations to empower the community members to be the ones that voice what needs to be changed. So environmental racism gets thrown out around a lot, and I want to just really solidify what we think it means and what we work against. So it's a disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color because of systemic racism.

So these are the policies and laws that result in people of color and/or low income people being exposed to greater environmental hazards. So I do want to emphasize that it's a systemic thing. And so what EHC does is we try to bring environmental justice, which is the right of all people and communities to live, work, and play in a clean and safe environment. So this is really the movement's response to environmental racism. But how did this movement really come about?

It's really rooted in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. During this time, people were talking about the disinvestment in their communities, how they noticed that redlining and white flight really affected. Like Dr. Weber mentioned, there was racist policies put into effect prior to this, like the Federal Aid Highway Act and industrial zoning, that really all added up to the makeup of our communities that were mainly people of color.

And it wasn't until 1987 when the United Church of Christ released a report called The Toxic Waste in the United States, where race was solidified as the most significant factor for health impacts. And in 1991, during the People's Summit, environmental justice, that term finally became into our vernacular, and during this summit, there was also the principles that the EJ movement used to this day. That's when they were drafted. So how does this affect us in California?

As mentioned, the Cal EnviroScreen is a tool that we use a lot because it's really good in showing how these different indicators affect our communities. So, of course, there is that pollution burden that is seen, like the diesel particulate matter, traffic, lead risk.

But then it also goes deeper to see the real demographic of the community, the income level, the race, the linguistic barriers, and even health, like asthma and life expectancy. And as you can see here, that's the San Fernando Valley, which is really the factory backbone of California, and you see very abundantly the color difference in how much pollution really affects them because of industry. I wanted to do a little deeper dive into some other communities.

We have the port of Long Beach and downtown Los Angeles on the left. Then the Bay Area, we have Oakland and other portside communities in the middle. And then lastly San Diego, as mentioned by Paula right there, that red mark, that's Barrio Logan, Logan Heights. That's where I do most of my work. And actually where I'm from, I'm second generation Logan resident. So all of these things that I'm talking about are very personal to me because I see these negative effects in my community daily.

So why are we disproportionately infected? Again, as clearly seen, we were redlined. We have mixed zoning where industry is right next door to neighbors. We have a freeway and the Coronado Bridge that bisected our community and displaced thousands of families. And this becomes into real life. This is a picture of the port. We are one of the few ports that don't actually get to have access to our bay.

We have a small little park that we get to see the water we don't actually get to go into. Instead it attracts industry and attracts other polluters like big diesel trucks that go into our neighborhood. You have the incompatible land use that has these factories literally in the middle of our community. If you can notice in the back, that is a house right across the street. And all of that smoke that you see, it just goes right into the air.

And as you know, air, there's no barrier. So these people, these elders, the elders of our community, our kids, our youth are having to breathe this daily and they can't escape it. They're just living in the home that they have. And I really want to emphasize that again, community was here before the industry was. So these are people that had to deal with what's happening to them without having a voice, really.

Pictures do say a thousand words, but I did also want to put into context of numbers. The makeup of our community in Barrio Logan is 97% people of color and 35% of our families are in poverty. They have to deal with about just shy of 128,000,000 pounds of toxic substances yearly in our community. You compare this to a more affluent community in San Diego, La Jolla, where only 14% are people of color and only 3% are suffering in poverty. 3 million pounds is what they deal with annually.

So it really shows in the health impacts of our community. We are in the 99th percentile of most impacted communities, 95th percentile for cancer risk nationwide, our community members have a 10 year shorter life expectancy than everyone else, and we are three times more likely to have asthma related and other respiratory related ER visits than the whole county average.

These are real life numbers that don't only affect our health, but it also affects our financials, it affects our education, it affects our job stability, because people not only have to care for themselves when they're sick, sometimes they have to care for their family Members and miss these things. Unfortunately, we do have a lot of burdens that happen to our community, but we are resilient people. As mentioned, I am a Logan resident, so I know how strong we fight.

And I'm very fortunate that the Environmental Health Coalition works in this type of community, and they really empower residents to give them the opportunity to share their concerns, to develop solutions to these problems. I feel like I'm a true testament to that. A couple of years ago is when I found Environmental Health Coalition as a community member, just trying to find out why these things were happening and what can be changed.

And here I am, a couple of years later, being able to be as a policy advocate in front of all of ya'll to really give the true testament to what's going on in their communities. So I am super happy to be able to share some of the wins that we've been able to see in the past couple of years. In 2021, the city finally adopted new zoning that separated industry and residents. And last year, the Coastal Commission was approved.

So I'm excited to see this buffer zone be implemented and really have some kind of relief to our community members. But the fight isn't over, because we do now need to advocate to be able to implement ways where the industry that is in that buffer zone have a way to get out in not only a safe manner for the community, but also for their businesses.

I mentioned that there's a lot of trucks that come in because of port and other industry just going back and forth to disperse throughout San Diego. And prior to this truck route adoption that happened in 2018, they were allowed to go onto all residential streets. So you had kids out on the street trying to play with these big, heavy trucks just coming, zooming down.

It was a huge win for us, and now we really are working to find more funding to build infrastructure to dissuade these trucks from veering off of the route. Community makes it very abundant and clear that we don't need more policing to be able to enforce these rules. We need to find more different solutions to really invest in our community.

The port was in the process of creating a marine clean air strategy and, sorry, maritime clean air strategy and community fought hard to ensure that there was goals that included electrifying not only the trucks, but also all of the equipment in the port by 2030, which is five years quicker than the state goal. So that was a huge win and we're going to continue to monitor and make sure that implementation is there. And lastly, I wanted to touch upon the Transformative Climate Communities Grant.

This is a wonderful grant that we were awarded this past December. It was a really big battle to ensure that we had everything on time for the grant. We had so many different partners and grassroots organizations working hard to be able to bring these projects, and I'm very excited to see this money come in to fund these projects to actively combat this overwhelming pollution. We're going to be planting more trees, electrifying buses.

We created a community land trust to be able to stop gentrification, and this is going to finally be able to fund some land acquisition. I do want to note, though, that the funding for this grant has been reduced significantly over the rounds and unfortunately, it is not guaranteed to come next year. So I really urge for all of us in this room to advocate for the funding of this program that can bring much needed resources to fully deserving communities.

Thank you so much for giving me this chance to be able to speak upon this matter. And again, air is super important. As Paula mentioned, we can't escape it. We can't go away and just stop swimming for a while. We have to breathe this air. So it's very important that we fight to make it cleaner for all of our community members in all of San Diego and all of California. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Well, I really want to thank all of the panelists. I had questions for each of you, but I'm being nudged because we're running a little bit behind schedule. But I did want to highlight what Maritza Garcia was saying, because it is so very important when you're talking about environmental justice, recognizing that environmental injustice as well, that it is a systemic issue and that this is not something that just happened.

She stated communities were there, and then there were policies and laws and procedures that were put in place to specifically place these various communities at risk. And when you look at who's living in those communities, whether it's here in San Diego County, when we're talking about Barrio Logan or we're talking about other areas within the state, like Carson in the Los Angeles area. It's very clear that these industries and these pollutants are in areas where you have predominantly minority communities and also lower socioeconomic status communities.

And we also in the audience have a lot of our health systems here. And so even though they are oftentimes not physically in the community, and I talk about that a lot, I know you mentioned La Jolla, all of our major hospital systems are located up there, but we need to make sure in order to have a healthy region that we do have a presence in these communities as well.

I strongly recommend that the health systems that are here, if you don't have relationships and programs within these communities, since we already know that they are at high risk for certain health issues, to develop those relationships and those programs, to go in and do earlier screenings, earlier interventions, so that we're not continuing to see the harmful health impacts of these things as we're working on improving the air quality and the water quality.

There are other things that health systems can do in partnership with these different community organizations and the residents that live in those communities to ensure that they are healthy going forward. So I want to really thank our panel, and we will now move to our third panel, which is going to focus on green open spaces. We have Sameera Rao, who is the Assistant Deputy Director of the San Diego City Planning Department. She will be joining us remotely.

And we have Roman Partida-Lopez, the Senior Legal Counsel for Greenlining Institute. And we will start with Samira.

Good morning, everyone. Can you all hear me?

Good morning. We can.

Thank you. I'm Sameera Rao, Assistant Deputy Director with the City Planning Department, and I'm very excited to be part of this panel. I would like to provide an overview of the City of San Diego's Equity Forward Initiative this morning.

This umbrella initiative comprises of the Environmental Justice Element, the Chollas Creek Master Plan, the Citywide Trails Master Plan, developing the Park Needs iIdex, gathering input on infrastructure priorities, streamlining the process to work with community based organizations to help provide public infrastructure that the community needs, and the Inclusive Public Engagement Guide to meaningfully engage with community members, especially those that have been underrepresented for decades. Environmental Justice next slide, please.

Environmental justice calls for fair distribution of environmental benefits and burdens among different communities, ensuring that no group is disproportionately impacted by environmental hazards or deprived of environmental benefits. The January 22 storms in San Diego further exacerbated existing disparities, disproportionately impacting environmental justice communities, the environmental justice element becomes even more critical in addressing and rectifying these imbalances.

The storm served as a stark reminder of the urgent need to prioritize equitable development and environmental justice initiatives to ensure that all communities, regardless of their development patterns, are resilient in the face of environmental challenges. Next slide. For this initiative, we have been collaborating with various community based organizations to ensure meaningful and inclusive engagement on this initiative.

We have hosted over 40 in person engagement events over the last several months at various locations within the City of San Diego to gather input on these important policies and goals. Next slide. The next initiative part of Equity Forward is a Chollas Creek Watershed Regional Park Master Plan. This initiative was identified as an implementation action of the Parks for All of Us initiative, which was adopted by City of San Diego's City Council in August of 2021.

Next slide. We're thrilled to be embarking on this initiative alongside with the environmental justice element. Recognizing the inherent interconnectedness of these two vital initiatives, environmental justice element represents a powerful policy endeavor and through the development of the Chollas Creek Master Plan, we have a unique opportunity to pilot the identified policies within the environmental justice element. This integrated approach will pave the way for a more equitable and sustainable future for our community.

Next slide. We've been working with various CBOs to map the existing conditions within the watershed, gather input from all age groups and abilities to help guide the development of this very critical Chollas Creek Master Plan. Next slide.

That contributes significantly to the growth and well-being of our city. We understand the complexity involved in the process of creating such projects and we are committed to collaborating closely with all of our community-based organizations, community leaders, and community members to identify opportunities for streamlining and process improvement.

Partner for Progress is an initiative where the city staff can join hands in order to foster an environment that encourages innovation and efficiency, empowering our community leaders and stakeholders to bring their visionary projects to fruition.

Next Slide please. we currently lack a streamlined process for implementing quick and collaborative projects, which is a missed opportunity leading to a loss of funding sources and over the years resulted in a lack of trust in local governance.

As part of this initiative, we are working with various community leaders and community based organizations to brainstorm ideas and opportunities for streamlining processes to be able to provide quick build projects and a streamlined process. Next slide please.

With a streamlined process for quick build high impact projects, we are aware that we will be opening doors to many opportunities for transforming underutilized spaces to public spaces of excitement and enjoyment for our communities. We are currently meeting with community leaders to learn from their experiences, map their journeys, and identify opportunities for improvement.

As next steps, we will continue to meet with various community leaders and prepare our draft process improvement proposals and share with the community to gather input and further streamline and improve it before it can be formally adopted. Next slide please. Can we go one more slide?

The next initiative as part of equity forward is the infrastructure prioritization. We've been working very closely with various communities and also host a citywide survey.

This is going to be an annual exercise where the survey is open all 365 days a year to gather input from community members to then help put together the five-year outlook for the capital improvements projects and also guide the budget process for the City of San Diego. Each year we heard from over 1200 community members.

This year we also conducted various in person engagement events within the southeastern community and we're getting ready to host a series of workshops in Linda Vista and City Heights over the next several months to gather input through various engagement tactics, in person as well as virtual, to then continue to update and guide our five-year CIP outlook as well as the budget process.

Next Slide. Here's a quick little graphic on how the infrastructure prioritization process works, so we will host various engagement events and surveys to gather input from community members.

The input that we receive from community members is then categorized based on asset types of parks, streets and other different other assets, and then shared with various asset departments across the city.

The asset owning departments then review the feedback and then incorporate that into their five-year plans, which they then share with our engineering and capital projects to put together the five-year outlook. CIP Outlook was recently published for City of San Diego.

We are now in the city planning department working on putting together a summary report, summarizing what we heard from community members and what project ideas were incorporated into the five-year outlook.

We're hoping to have that report ready to share with community members in the next few months. Next slide please. We can go one more slide. The next initiative part of equity forward is a Citywide Trails Master Plan. Citywide's Trails Master Plan was also an implementation item identified as part of the city's parks for all initiative that was adopted by City Council in August of 2021.

We recently received grant funds and we will be kicking off this project in the next month and we are getting ready to walk all the trails. We will be working with various community-based organizations on this initiative to hear from them about the existing gaps in the city's trail system.

Opportunities to make sure that our trail system is accessible and enjoyable to people of all age groups and abilities. Next slide please. The next initiative is the Parks Needs Index.

As mentioned previously, the Parks Master Plan was adopted by City Council in August of 2021 and several implementation items were identified and one of the items was Park Needs Index. Park Needs Index is a metric that is being currently developed and will help guide park investments in areas with greatest needs and greatest growth.

This index is a metric that will take into consideration various factors such as access to recreational opportunities within the community and various health factors such as obesity, lack of safe paths for walking.

So it is going to take into consideration the existing conditions with the community, which calls for greater recreational opportunities, and also the existing park conditions within the communities to then ensure that our investments are in the right direction, that our investments are equitable, and in areas with the greatest needs. Next slide, please.

And finally, the city planning department is also working on an inclusive public engagement guide which will go over various goals and policies for city staff to be able to engage with community members in a meaningful manner to make sure that engagement is inclusive and that we are engaging with communities and community members that have been underrepresented for decades.

Next Slide. The Inclusive Public Engagement Guide will go over policies that will share engagement techniques and also ideas of locations for engagement and engaging in a way that engagement is inclusive, meaningful, exciting and inviting to community members of all age groups and abilities.

Next slide. We can go one more slide. As part of this initiative, the team has been working with a focused group, gathering input, identifying techniques, and putting together a guide that will then be implemented across all city departments for engagement on all future city initiatives.

Next slide. That brings us to an end to the presentation and I want to say that as part of this initiative, equity forward, we are engaging with community members in a comprehensive manner on various initiatives.

One is a policy initiative, the other one is a master planning initiative and then the infrastructure prioritization initiative is helping us gather input now to guide the budget process and the five-year outlook in order to be able to see projects getting implemented and funding in the next few years.

So this is a very comprehensive approach that we are taking to bring various initiatives forward, and we look forward to hearing from the panel, the committee members, and all community members. We have a web page.

You can reach us at www.SanDiego.gov equity forward or also email us at publicspaces@SanDiego.gov. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for that presentation. We will now move to Roman Partida-Lopez, senior legal counsel for Greenlining Institute.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, everyone and members of the committee. I'm Roman Partida-Lopez with the Greenlining Institute. For those not familiar with Greenlining, we're a racial and economic equity advocacy organization fighting the lasting legacy of redlining and working towards a future where communities of color can build wealth, live in healthy places filled with economic opportunity, and are ready to meet the challenges posed by climate change.

We work closely with communities of color to understand the racist barriers to economic opportunity and combat the injustices that persist by demanding accountability from the public and private sectors. We work in partnership with community-based organizations to foster consensus building that produces long term change and success.

We fight the restrictions of redlining by opening opportunities for greenlining, by building an abundant future that proactively brings investments and opportunities into our communities.

Today, I will focus my remarks on how redlining has and continues to impact our most vulnerable communities and ways to intentionally identify and advance solutions that provide direct and meaningful public health benefits through green and open spaces.

I will note that even though I am focusing on this particular issue, all of this is intersectional. We can't talk about green and open spaces without talking about clean air, without talking about clean water and other issues.

First off, I do want to set the stage by unpacking redlining and its impact on our communities. We have heard now redlining multiple times throughout today, so I do want to provide some more context into it. Redlining is a discriminatory practice that consists of the systemic denial of services to residents of certain areas based on their race and ethnicity.

To put this into context, between 1932 and 1962, the Federal Government backed $120,000,000,000 of loans. More than 98% of that went to white Americans.

So at the time when white Americans were amassing intergenerational wealth to buy homes, start businesses, and fund their children's education, people of color were effectively locked out of these opportunities.

Redlining was codified segregation that shaped American cities and has led to the extreme wealth inequalities that we see today. And let's be clear, even though redlining was technically outlawed decades ago, its practices still exist today, just in more subtle ways.

The lasting impact of redlining was not just felt in the economic sector, but also in the transportation decisions, like where do we build freeways? And through which communities and the type of access that communities have to green and open spaces. Redlining was a practice that impacted the entire nation, including here in San Diego.

And if we were to compare redlining maps of San Diego to today, these redline communities would overlap with regions represented by district four, district eight, and district nine, communities that are primarily low income and communities of color. These communities are the ones that continue to bear the brunt of these injustices and disinvestments.

Just take a look at the impacts of COVID recently and where that hit hardest, or where the majority of the devastation happened during these last week floods.

Reports after reports have found that the life expectancy varies based on a person's environmental exposure. Here in San Diego, which has the second largest urban park system in the US, the city currently operates and maintains over 400 parks, three national historic landmarks, more than 200 miles of trails, and over 42,000 acres of open space areas.

Yet over the last decade, new park development has concentrated primarily in the city's northern communities.

Research has found that communities that are below the I-8 have a lower life expectancy due to the higher exposure to air pollution, lack of clean water, and inadequate green infrastructure.

When mapped out, these negative health outcomes are primarily concentrated in previously redlined communities like southern San Diego, Encanto, City Heights, Ota Mesa, Sanicidro, amongst others. We know green and open spaces are essential to help support our community's public health. Yet our communities continue to fall behind.

Studies have shown that, on average, low-income neighborhoods have 15.2 less tree cover and are 1.5 Fahrenheit hotter than high income neighborhoods. Lower income neighborhoods often have less access to public amenities that alleviate the intensity of climate change.

These amenities include access to parks, green space, tree canopy cover, recreational facility, and other natural spaces. The areas with the highest impacts are also frequently areas where communities of colors are concentrated. This disparity can be traced back to the legacy of housing segregation and neighborhood redlining.

Therefore, we need to do better at improving these conditions in our communities. We need to be more intentional in securing funds to help support programs and projects that address these challenges. Local governments and state agencies are trying to take action to identify and address these inequities.

We see this reflected in the community engagement models that the city just presented on. We see this and in their plans where we have sections that now call out years of disinvestments in these communities.

We are also seeing steps to rectify this by developing programs that are more directly investing at projects that help alleviate some of these conditions. For example, as the city talked about earlier in their Parks Master Plan, equity was a core component of their plan update. And they developed a funding approach to address some of these long-standing inequities in the city's park system suffered by people that live in the communities of concern. Yet more work is still needed in order to see that come to fruition.

State agencies like the California Nature Natural Resource Agency and Calfire have urban greening and forestry programs that help mitigate the effects of extreme heat and provide additional benefits that help decrease air and water pollution and reduce the consumption of natural resources and energy.

The Strategic Growth Council administers programs like the transformative climate communities and regional climate center programs that support communities to address the specific climate change and public health needs.

These programs, like my colleague at EHC mentioned, provide significant funding to help tackle many issues at once and pressing issues that the community has long been asking for. However, we need state and local governments to step up and help keep these programs going to provide the adequate resources needed to fund these and future projects.

Now, I am optimistic and have hope that we can create a better future for our communities, but in order to do so, we must approach these challenges head on and with intentionality.

Equity is a practice, not just a talking point. We must be intentional about operationalizing equity and advancing strategies that will deliver direct and meaningful benefits to our most vulnerable communities. We must ensure we have the needed funding and resources to make this happen.

When we look at the amount of state funding coming to San Diego to help address these challenges, it still remains relatively low.

We need to secure more of it, and in order to do so, we need the commitment of the local governments and at the state level to maintain the funding for these programs. We know it's a challenging budget year, but because of this, and because of the existing conditions that our most vulnerable communities continue to live, we must be intentional about how and where we use these limited resources.

For us, in order to operationalize equity, we advocate for six standards that will help guide the process for a greenlined future. One we must emphasize race conscious solutions. Race conscious policies like redlining and urban renewal got us to this point, and race neutral approaches can't fix the underlying inequities. Investments need to target and prioritize the most impacted communities.

We need to prioritize multisector approaches. Programs may be siloed, but again, our problems are not.

We need to prioritize approaches that address multiple issues and sectors at once. We must deliver intentional benefits. Benefits cannot trickle down to communities. They need to go directly to the people in the most impactful ways while avoiding increasing or creating new burdens.

We must build community capacity. Long term disinvestment and discriminatory policies can erode a community's capacity for leadership, organizing and political capital. Acknowledging the ways that structural racism has impacted the community.

The capacity of communities of color to undertake community development projects is a key part of improving investments. We must be community driven at every stage. Lifting up community led ideas and sharing decision making power is an important element of truly community centered investments.

Community members and organizations should be part of every phase of the project or policy, from goal setting to analysis, and we need to establish paths towards wealth building.

We need community ownership of assets and opportunities to continue to build wealth in a greenline economy and a greenline future. As many people as possible should be able to participate in wealth building, which will include a broader set of pathways beyond homeownership with lower barriers of entry.

We are in a critical moment right now as the impacts of climate change continue to worsen. We don't need our communities to continue to bear the brunt of it.

We need them at the forefront of our investments and our solutions. We must learn from our past to make the future better for all, and especially for those who have been traditionally left out. Failure to do so will only create new problem and injustices. Ignoring the root causes of our current health and economic crisis leave us vulnerable to the next crisis.

Our vulnerability ends only when all members of our ecosystem are strengthened, and we radically meet the needs and priorities of the most vulnerable among us. Thank you for your time.

I want to thank both of our panelists with our third panel so very much. And just to highlight some of the things that was just stated by Mr. Roman Partida-Lopez. For those of us who are natives of the San Diego County region, we are very well aware of the south of eight versus north of eight discussion and resources. And I really wanted to hone in on your comment that equity is a practice, not just a talking point.

And along those lines, I do have a question for Sameera Rao. I know we're running behind, but in August of 2021, Chollas Creek Watershed was noted as an area of concern, that it was one of the most neglected watersheds in our region. And we know that here in January of 2024, that was the creek watershed that over-flooded, and all of those homes in those areas are now destroyed.

So my question is, recognizing this at least three-four years ago, what efforts were done on the ground to try to mitigate what happened last week, and not just like talking with community, but what actually did the city do to try to prevent what happened last week since it was recognized a few years ago as a problem area?

Thank you so much for that question. I'm not authorized to talk anything beyond the presentation that I gave and the Equity Forward presentation today, but I can definitely get back and provide responses over email. I know that the January 22 storm was thousand year storm, and a lot of resources are now being made available as part of the city's emergency operations team, and I can definitely send an email.

But at this point, I'm not authorized to speak about anything else other than the topic of the presentation.

Well, I want to thank both of our panelists, both Sameera and Roman, and not necessarily wanting to put you on the spot or have you speak on something that you are not allowed to speak on.

However, I do want to point out not just in this particular area, but oftentimes we will do a lot of talking, we will do a lot of investigating, we will do a lot of reporting, but we won't necessarily take what we know and put it into action to improve the things that we know are there. And so I think, unfortunately, what happened along the Chollas Creek Watershed is a perfect example of that.

So I am very much looking forward to, and will be watching, what the city is going to do, knowing that this is a problem area, knowing that this and other areas are problem areas, what we will do preventatively, proactively, to prevent these and other like minded events from occurring in the future. Since we know that these things are problem areas. With that, we will turn to our very last panel, which deals with data driven policy tools. Our first panelist is Dr. Rashmi Joglekar.

Please forgive me if I'm saying your last name incorrectly. She will be joining us remotely. She is the Associate Director of Science, Policy, and Engagement at UC San Francisco. And we have, also, Eden Bruckman, who's the chief sustainability officer for the County of San Diego Office for Sustainability and Environmental Justice. And we will start with Dr. Rashmi Joglekar.

Great. Good morning. Thank you. Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Excellent. Thank you, Assembly Member Akilah Weber, for convening this public hearing on cumulative impacts of toxic chemical exposures and the social determinants of health. I'm Dr. Rashmi Jogleker. I'm a toxicologist and the Associate Director of Science, Policy at the University of California, San Francisco's Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment, and also Director of Community Engagement at the UCSF Environmental Research for Translation for Health, known as the EaRTH Center.

At PRE and the EaRTH Center, we conduct research to understand how industrial chemicals and environmental pollutants impact people's health. Our mission is to create a healthier environment for people by using scientific research to advance health policies that promote health equity and improve public health. Clean air, clean water, and clean spaces are collective rights that must be preserved and maintained to ensure the health of communities and future generations. Next slide, please.

The problem is that toxic chemicals are widespread in our air, water, food, homes, and workplaces, and as a result, every day, people living in the United States are exposed to dozens of chemicals. Toxic chemicals in our outdoor spaces, including air, water, and soil, can stem from environmental releases by polluting facilities. Chemicals in our indoor spaces can stem from contaminated building materials and household and consumer goods, including personal care products, toys, textiles, and even food packaging. Next slide, please.

There are around 40,000 chemicals used in commerce in the United States, and about 30,000 pounds of chemicals are produced for every person in the US each year. Also every year, hundreds of thousands of workers manufacture billions of pounds of toxic chemicals in the US. The CDC estimates that 13 million workers in the US are potentially exposed to chemicals that can be absorbed through the skin alone.

Residents of communities near facilities that release these chemicals, also known as fenceline communities, are exposed to millions of pounds of chemical releases. Next slide, please.

The problem is that most chemicals in commerce have not been tested for safety. In fact, for the vast majority, apart from around 350 that are biomonitored in the US, measurements of chemicals in humans have not been conducted. Next slide, please.

As a result of their widespread nature, toxic chemicals end up in people. Large scale biomonitoring studies have shown that certain categories of chemicals, including PFAS, which is short for per, and polyfluoral alkal substances, also known as forever chemicals, have been detected in nearly all people tested. Next slide, please.

These same chemicals have been detected at unsafe levels in the drinking water for more than 200 million people living in the United States, as indicated by the light blue dots in this map prepared by the Environmental Working Group. Next slide, please.

Because of their ubiquity in our indoor and outdoor spaces and in our bodies, toxic chemical exposures begin before birth and continue throughout life. Our studies at UCSF found that pregnant women were exposed to more than 43 different industrial chemicals, many with serious health hazards. Next slide, please.

And as a result, to a disturbing extent, babies are born prepolluted with chemicals in their bodies. Our research has also shown significant links between prenatal exposures and adverse birth outcomes, lower IQ and changes in visual memory function in infants and children. Next slide, please.

We know that these exposures take a measurable toll on people's health and can increase the risk of cancer, infertility, asthma, neurological disease, cardiovascular disease, and multiple adverse impacts on child development and timing matters.

Exposure to toxic chemicals can have significant and lifelong effects, especially if exposure occurs during susceptible developmental periods like pregnancy and infancy. For example, chemical exposures during pregnancy can impact the developing fetus and result in behavioral disorders, cancer, learning disabilities, and asthma. In fact, there is now scientific consensus that toxic chemicals play a role in neurodevelopmental disorders. Learning, developmental and intellectual disabilities like autism spectrum disorder and ADHD now affect one in six children in the US, an alarming number.

Evidence finds that these outcomes can occur with extremely low levels of chemical exposures during critical developmental periods. Next slide, please.

Although harmful exposures to many toxic chemicals is widespread among the general population, certain subgroups experience disproportionate exposures and harms. Research has shown that certain sub-populations are more susceptible to harm from these exposures due to intrinsic factors such as preexisting disease, life stage, sex or genetic traits, or extrinsic factors such as food insecurity, poverty, racism, or adverse childhood experiences. Slide 12, please.

As an example of a susceptible subpopulation are residents of fence line communities, who are more likely to be people of color. Numerous studies have shown that hazardous waste facilities, oil and gas wastewater disposal wells, and other polluting facilities are more likely to be located in and around communities of color.

In addition, residents of fenceline communities are likely to experience additional social determinants of health, including income inequality, health care inequity, food insecurity, and disproportionate burdens of underlying disease, which collectively increase their susceptibility to harm from chemicals released by nearby polluting facilities.

Moreover, due to discriminatory land use practices, inequitable sighting practices, and other forms of environmental racism that were highlighted today, people of color and indigenous people are more likely to live in neighborhoods with multiple polluting facilities clustered close together, putting them at greater risk of harm.

One study found that neighborhoods near clustered hazardous waste facilities are nearly 70% people of color, as compared to 51% in neighborhoods near nonclustered facilities, and these staggering statistics only reflect a small portion of the types of facilities that pose threats to fenceline communities. Next slide, please.

It is critical that regulatory agencies address the totality of these chemical and non chemical stressors when regulating the manufacturing, use, and disposal of toxic chemicals. The combination of these stressors can be described as cumulative impacts, which the US EPA defines as the totality of exposures to combinations of chemical and non chemical stressors and their effects on health, well being, and quality of life outcomes. Currently, regulatory agencies like the US EPA are not doing enough to address cumulative impacts in regulatory decision making.

For example, the traditional approach of conducting single chemical risk evaluations does not fully capture these real world chemical exposures and risks, particularly for susceptible subpopulations like fenceline communities. Next slide, please.

The good news is that we have the scientific evidence and tools that we need to address cumulative impacts at the state and federal levels. In 2021, President Biden signed Executive Orders 13985 and 14008 to advance racial equity, increase resources for underserved communities, and address the climate crisis.

Executive Order 14008 specifically calls on all federal agencies to make achieving environmental justice part of their missions by developing programs, policies, and activities to address the disproportionately high and adverse human health, environmental, and other cumulative impacts on disadvantaged communities. At the federal level, the Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA, is a statute that offers strong protections for children, pregnant people, workers, and fenceline community residents against the harms of toxic chemicals.

The amended TSCA specifically includes language requiring EPA to evaluate the risk posed by toxic chemicals to potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulations and issue risk management rules that eliminate any unreasonable risk to these groups to protect human health. Cumulative risk assessment, which EPA states accounts for the combined risks to health or the environment posed by multiple agents or stressors, is one way to adequately characterize risks and address the health harms of real world chemical exposures.

At pre, we work with a number of government and NGO partners to develop and promote the best available scientific methods for cumulative risk assessment, both for EPA and for California EPA. Federal and state agencies can also regulate classes or groups of chemicals. As a case example, the State of California has passed multiple bills that regulate PFAS, a class of over 12,000 chemicals. California passed legislation that limits the use of PFAS in certain children's products, food packaging and cookware, textiles and cosmetic products.

This is critical because there is strong scientific consensus that PFAS are highly persistent in the environment. Next slide, please.

Many are also bioaccumulative and toxic, which can inform additional class based regulations for their manufacturing use and disposal. Next slide, please.

Health protective environmental regulations that address multiple chemicals can also have significant health and monetary benefits. For example, California's ban on a toxic class of flame retardants called PBDEs in 2006 resulted in 40% lower levels of these chemicals in breast milk over time, and EPA's recent proposed drinking water regulation for six PFAS would provide health benefits as high as $2 billion annually. Next slide, please.

And people living in the United States want safer products. In a recent nationwide public opinion survey, over 90% of voters, including Republicans, Democrats, and independents, agreed that the federal government should require products to be proven safe before companies are allowed to put them on the market and agreed that it is important for companies to keep harmful chemicals out of everyday products, even if it increases the cost. Next slide, please.

The State of California is ripe with opportunity to issue health protective rule rulemakings that utilize the best available science and greatly reduce the risks associated with the cumulative impacts of toxic chemical exposures. Next slide, please. Thank you for your time and the opportunity to speak today.

Thank you so much. We will now go to Eden Brukman, Chief Sustainability Officer for the County of San Diego Office of Sustainability and Environmental Justice.

Thank you. Greetings everyone, and much appreciation to Dr. Weber for this invitation to participate today. As Chief Sustainability Officer for the County, I lead the relatively new Office of Sustainability and Environmental Justice, or OSEJ, which serves as a central point of coordination for advancing external and internal sustainability efforts. OSEJ- next slide, please- is a uniquely positioned office.

We serve the entire region and we support other county departments and offices as we collectively strive to achieve zero carbon emissions while safeguarding the health of people and natural systems. We intentionally and actively work alongside communities to steward sustainability solutions, and our efforts are particularly centered on communities that have been disproportionately impacted by systemic and institutional inequities and environmental burdens.

Internally, OSEJ supports the implementation of an ambitious, countywide effort to lead by example in our programs and operations, and we are creating dynamic data tools to support that work, too. But today I want to give a snapshot of how we're using data to inform our implementation of the Regional Decarbonization Framework. The RDF is an initiative for facilitating collaborative action that moves the entire San Diego region to zero carbon emissions by mid century in buildings, transportation, energy supply, food systems, and land use sectors.

Next slide, please. This pie chart shows the distribution of regional greenhouse gas emissions by sector. It reflects one type of data, the analytical results of our technical report, which is a foundational, science-based publication that helped establish the Regional Decarbonization Framework. It maps out the greatest need for greenhouse gas reductions on a macro scale. By publishing this information, we established a baseline as well as common ground for climate action.

And yet the work that we need to pursue in and with community will be reflective of their specific strengths and priorities, so there is a need for more granular understanding. Next slide, please. This data and resulting communications with community representatives is leading to opportunities for us to build co-capacity with community based organization, like this Spring Valley SEEDS effort, the Sustainable Environments and Engaged Development Strategies. It's underway now thanks to a two year planning grant from the California Strategic Growth Council's transformative climate community program.

Maritza mentioned how difficult it can be for community based organizations to access funds through complex state and federal grant processes. So we are piloting a process as a pass through administrative lead, partnering with five community based organizations to elevate the community's self-identified priorities to increase economic resiliency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and address public and environmental health issues.

They collectively identified five planning projects: a community land trust feasibility study, which is a structure that allows land to be held in trust for community needs outside the influence of market pressures; first and last mile audits and bike safety events; food systems programming, including a design for community based kitchen composting facilities and youth entrepreneurship from agriculture to food service; federally qualified health center assessment; and business community connections to further expand economic, workforce, and business opportunities. Next, please.

So the pie chart is one type of approach to data, and here's another. What you're seeing here is one layer of our Environmental Justice StoryMap version 1.0. This layer is the overall Cal EnviroScreen score, and several panelists have showed it earlier as well. Our data visualization tool aggregates information from Cal EnviroScreen, the Healthy Places Index, and other state and federal sources at the census tract level.

The StoryMap currently includes seven indicators: asthma, diesel particulate matter, housing, lead risk, low income households, low food access, lacking park facilities, and tree canopy. Next, please. Here is the overlay for asthma percentiles, for example. One way that asthma incidence coalesces with decarbonization is in our building sector. For example, studies have shown that the use of gas stoves in our home has linkages to asthma and other respiratory illness, since they increase exposures to formaldehyde, carbon monoxide, voldor organic compounds, or VOCs, and other pollutants.

This exacerbates health conditions, particularly for youth, people with preexisting health conditions, and community of color who are disproportionately impacted by asthma and respiratory illness, making them more vulnerable to gas appliance pollutants. Next, please. Here is another overlay for diesel particulate matter. Unsurprisingly, most of the worst concentrations are in urban areas and alongside freeway routes. This coalesces with decarbonization in the transportation sector.

Federal agencies such as the US Department of Transportation set standards for medium and heavy duty vehicles to reduce harmful pollutants to human health from diesel exhaust. These pollutants, include particulate matter and nitrogen oxide, are linked to specific health problems for humans, including asthma, bronchitis, and heart disease, among others, as you've heard from previous panel members. The Department of Transportation also identifies that those exposed to diesel exhaust are more likely to be people of color and those with lower incomes. Next.

Thank you. The third overlay here is tree canopy. I've highlighted this indicator because it goes beyond the ability to absorb or draw down carbon and other pollutants. This is also an example of how land use and natural climate solutions contribute to other co-benefits, as Dr. Weber mentioned earlier, like shading that lowers heat island effect and helps reduce extreme heat scenarios, crime prevention through environmental design, and reducing stormwater runoff. That in turn reduces erosion and pollution, among others.

All of the indicators are interconnected, so we need to evaluate them as weighted composites that demonstrate the relationships and reinforce community priorities. Next, please. This brings me to some strengths, opportunities, and what's next for the EJ StoryMap. Looking again at Spring Valley in another way, by census tract, the StoryMap shows the current indicators together as a list, so we're starting to get there.

But the current version of the tool also underscores the limits of using often invisible boundaries that are census tracts to reflect issues impacting our communities, especially when they aren't self selected or ground truth at a micro scale. Next, please. On the right, I've placed a composite data for the neighboring census tract.

This area is considered to be less healthy overall, but is not considered by Cal EnviroScreen to be an EJ community, nor is it designated a live well community, though it is considered to be low income with low food access, a park deficit, and high rates of asthma. We must ensure that areas like this are eligible for funding and support, even without a formal designation.

We are in the early stages of developing the next version of the StoryMap where we hope to address some of these data incongruencies that counter the community's lived experiences and superficial boundaries of the health and environmental impacts that they are exposed to. This next gen overlay will help us take a more comprehensive approach to community partnerships and problem solving, as well as shape future programs and policies. It will also support better cross jurisdictional efforts to secure funding via state and federal opportunities. Next, please.

This brings us full circle back to the County's four environmental justice commitments that you see here and one of the County's primary sustainability goals: to safeguard the health and well being of everyone in the region, with a focus on collaborating with community partners and advocating for environmental justice for systemically impacted communities. Next slide. Thank you. My contact information is here if you have additional questions following this event.

Thank you so much for both of our panelists and our last panel. And keeping our time in mind, I'm going to hold off on my questions and open it up for public comment, starting with a Councilmember from La Mesa, Jack Shu. And if anyone else wants to make a comment, they may do so after he finishes. Council Member Shu.

Thank you, Dr. Weber, thank you for having me. First, I'll try to be very brief since we've gone over time. First, I really want to thank you, Chair and other Members of the Select Committee for holding this session. It is extremely important that we have this locally so that members of the community can participate and hear this important information. And thank you so much for bringing up the topic of environmental justice, that's so important.

Long ago, when we were just getting data about lead poisoning, I remember someone bringing up the information that lead poisoning or lead in our water correlates with a map that shows juvenile delinquency, a map that shows poor academic attainment. To me, we know what lead does, and we know this issue is an environmental justice issue. I really like the county environmental maps, but there's a problem.

I've been seeing the maps and where the areas are red, yellow, over and over and over with no goal of changing those colors, of addressing the issue. We've done something akin to that with regards to climate change, which granted is an environmental justice issue. But for climate change, we have set a goal. We have a set of goal of carbon neutrality, of reducing carbon emissions by a particular date, because that's what the science has stated.

We have now science that shows that pollution in these communities causes more asthma, more death, more cancer. Why is there no mark? Why is there no goal of reducing that to a specific level? We have it in some instances because AB 617 has given us a few communities in which we have set a goal of reduction 80% by 2030 or 31. We need backup for much of the rest of our region on that.

Because when it comes to diesel particulate matter, when it comes to these pollutions, communities throughout our region are affected. The most affected communities should be, of course, worked on first because we would have the most amount of gain. CARB has recently put out a scoping plan that says because of climate change, we need to reduce vehicle miles travel per capita 25% by 2030, which means a VMT reduction of 2 to 3 to 4% every year starting this year.

So every elected official, every planning agency needs to be asked, what are you doing to reduce VMT by 3 to 4% this year? And I know what the answer is going to be. We don't even measure it and we have no means. That's fine. Our next question should be, we'll give you a year. What's your plan two years from now to reduce of 7%?

Those are the kind of things that we need to put forward, and particularly in the communities that we just spoke about, the communities that are poor, the communities that are most impacted. If we can't do it for the whole state, let's start in the communities that need that reduction the most.

So let's go to Barrio Logan, let's go to the area right outside here, part of El Cajon, which is in the 85 percentile diesel particulate matter, and say, what are we doing, City of El Cajon, to reduce your diesel particulate matter by 2 or 3% this year? Or we'll give you next year, but do it by 7%. Air Pollution Control District, which I actually am lucky enough to chair the board, privileged to chair the board. We're trying to set those goals.

We need the state laws to give us that kind of tool, whether it's indirect rule, so we can actually address some of the most impacted communities. That's the rules we need. And state mandates. We have some state mandates. Let's keep them forward. CARB just gave us this target of 25% reduction. That is a science based number. Transportation agencies like Caltrans need to be asked these questions, the same ones I just mentioned, as well as regional transportation agencies.

Right now, SANDAG, along with the other metropolitan transportation agencies, are dealing with an old 10 year old goal of 9% greenhouse gas reduction by 2035. That's like using old science to try to solve a problem that we have now. I don't think that's how we got vaccines quickly. To save us from the worst effects of COVID we use current data, current science. We need to do the same when it comes to these environmental hazards, and particularly with regards to environmental justice.

And lastly, I'm going to give a little short plug. Recently, I saw a video which is available publicly on PBS, and the title is We're All Plastic People. It's about 57 minutes long. I suggest people watch that because we have a lot of challenges and I hope we can meet them. And I know with your leadership, we're in the right track. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Councilmember Jack Shu. As I said at the beginning when we introduced you, you have been in this fight for environmental issues, environmental justice, for a very long time and appreciate you coming and appreciate your knowledge. My office will definitely be reaching out to you because you hit it on the nail. Setting goals. That's how we can stop seeing the same things over and over and over and over again for generations and generations to come.

Like I said before, we do a lot of studies, we do a lot of research. We talk about what we find, but we don't talk about how and when we're going to fix those issues. If anyone else is interested in making any public comment, you can come up to the mic now.

Hi there. Alysson Snow from Lemon Grove City Council. I really appreciate you bringing attention and highlighting this. This last week has been really difficult in our community. I just got the list of people who are impacted by the floods, and nobody had insurance. And some of these issues we knew were problems. I liked that they discussed Chollas Creek. I'm disappointed that they didn't own the problems that it caused there. As a city leader, it's time for us to do better, and I appreciate that.

One of the issues I wanted to address and highlight was the discussion on equity. Our community in particular, is one of the most diverse communities. We have definitely a dearth of resources, everything from health care to clean water and making sure our water is good and having the testing that we need in those communities and then making sure that we're fixing these things. All of that was fantastic. But equity was one of the things where I'm like, we have to dedicate money.

And that's a lot of what these problems boil down to, is where we allocate our money. Where we dedicate our money is where our priorities are. And we have to be seeing that money in these communities that are most impacted. I appreciated the County's presentation just now and showing what's happening in the Spring Valley in particular. They're our close neighbors. And she know it's important for us not to just look at this by boundaries, but a lot of it has been boundaries.

The gentleman spoke on greenlining, and we've had years of redlining in these communities. We have to be very concerted in where we put these monies, and the priority has to be the people who have been redlined all these years. We have to put the priority on these communities in particular. I know everybody's hurting, but these communities have been neglected far too long, and that's where we need to put our resources. So I really appreciate you coming down here, doing this presentation. The speakers were absolutely phenomenal.

I am grateful to take this back to our community, but please keep that focus on making sure equity is a top priority, and we make sure that priority is attained by putting money toward where our mouth is. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Councilwoman, you are completely correct. Any other comments?

Full disclosure, I had no idea what I was getting myself into today. As I walked up, the lady at the front greeted me. I said, what is this about? She said, a hearing. I'm like, what is that? So I came in and I just want to read something I just wrote. My name is Valerie Gardner, by the way. As a resident of San Diego County and a resident of Spring Valley, I'm so glad that I received an email from my sorority and showed up today.

I feel that I have been educated about three critical life living elements that are needed, and I wish all citizens in this district had attended as they, too, would have been enlightened like I have. Thank you for having me.

Thank you. Thank you so much for that comment. And we have one more public commentary.

Thank you so much for presenting this. I also kind of came last minute, but particularly the guy from the Greenlining Institute and the County Sustainability. They are so right on. I'm totally going to connect with them because this kind of presentation absolutely needs to be given more, and I want to see how I can make sure that other people get to hear it and see it. Obviously, we need our legislators to be at the core of that which you are.

And I'm very grateful that I got redistricted into your area. But I want to see other people get this because there's a lot of ways that just people in the community, on their organizations, their churches, where they go shopping, all of that can help with this impact and to enunciate and make it louder, amplify it. That's the word I was looking for. Thank you so much. I'm so grateful that I had the opportunity to actually hear it. Thanks.

Thank you so much. And for everyone's knowledge, that was Michelle Krug. She is very active within the San Diego community and also very active within the environmental justice area. And so before I close, I do just want to touch on to that point.

I want to thank everyone who came today, but for those who were not able to come and have not been able to watch it live, this is going to be on the Assembly website because this is one of our committees, so they can always find it there. But we will also provide a link on our website, on my Assembly website, so that you can have your neighbors and members of your different organizations and your communities watch it and learn about this, because knowledge is power.

And so once you learn what's happening in your community, you can become better advocates for your families and for your communities and start really holding those of us who are elected, whether it's at a local, state or federal level, our feet to the fire and say, what are you going to do? How are you going to focus these resources in on my community?

Because the lack of focus and the lack of resources is just continuing to make us sicker and sicker while other communities continue to thrive. We have covered a broad range of environmental topics today, and we could have actually spent a whole hearing on each of these panelists. They provided much information on uncovering the layers upon layers of complexity that surround these environmental issues, these systemic injustices that are oftentimes rooted in racism and classism. Climate change has made the weather and environmental factors extremely unpredictable.

Yet there are many aspects of this issue that we can control, that we can predict, and we can try to influence. Each person here today and those who are watching and those that will be watching play a role in mitigating and making positive changes. Whether you are a member of a grassroots organization, local government, in the medical field, or just a resident of this great state of California, we all play a vital role.

As the new Chair of Budget Subcommittee Number One on Health, I will consider the issues highlighted here today and their correlation with some of our existing health programs. And even though, as has been stated from a few people, the state is facing a budget deficit, we must prioritize the most impactful programs and really continue to focus on those communities that have been ignored for far too long. I encourage all of you to reach out to my office in Sacramento or my district office here in La Mesa with your thoughts and your concerns.

If you're not members of the Assembly District or constituents or residents of the Assembly District 79, you can still reach out to us, but you can also reach out to your local elected because we all play a part in improving every community here in California. I must thank the City of El Cajon for allowing us to use their space today, and thank you all in the audience who took time out of your day to attend this hearing.

I, along with many of my other Members in the Assembly, specifically those in the San Diego delegation, are committed to continuing to work in this space, and I want to thank you all again. We are adjourned.