People should know that diesel fuel is very dangerous,” says Raquel Contreras. “It’s important to know how to defend yourself.” Contreras and her neighbors in Mira Loma, a mostly Latino low-income, rural town in Riverside County, learned these lessons when many warehouses, bringing heavy diesel truck traffic, started locating in their area.

It took years, but by working with the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ), Riverside county residents did defend themselves—and won important protections against diesel fuel pollution.

Involving residents

Neighbor Rose Vielmas got involved “when I read a sign that asked if you knew what was going on in the community and what there was in the air. (So I) went to a meeting in the school.”

Air pollution at the high school was especially bad, adds Contreras, “because all the kids did their activities there and all the trucks were idling there. Many children in the community have asthma and allergies.”

Overcoming obstacles

First the concerned residents “had to convince people to get together by informing them about what’s around our community,” Vielmas recalls. “A lot of people thought we were wasting our time. Other people didn’t believe us and didn’t want to make any changes,” Contreras says.

Winning changes also meant convincing policymakers to listen to a low-income community. “Warehouses and pollution get put in communities where the decision-makers don’t have a stake,” comments CCAEJ executive director Penny Newman. “If they think they can get away with putting these facilities in poor communities, they will.”

Involving regulators

Residents took their concerns to the local Air Quality Management District (AQMD). “We kept the pressure on AQMD by attending their meetings and raising the issue of Mira Loma,” says Newman. The group also held community meetings and got articles in local papers.

The AQMD responded by doing a study of the air quality in Mira Loma—and concluded that there should be a “buffer zone” between warehouses and residential areas. “After a lot of pressure from communities,” says Newman, the California Air Resources Board also created “land use guidelines” recommending a buffer zone.

Residents as researchers

Meanwhile, Mira Loma residents worked with researchers from the University of Southern California on a Children’s Health Study focusing on asthma in young children. USC researchers trained Mira Loma residents to do accurate counts of truck traffic and measure air pollution.

“The P-Track counts the particles of diesel fuel in the air,” explains Contreras, who was trained in using the instrument. “We would sit near the street for a few hours and (then) look at the number on the P-Track.”

Residents’ participation was important, says Vielmas—“We need to know what’s going on here!” Residents then held a community protest and presented results of the study to the Riverside Board of Supervisors.

Real victories

Finally, says Newman, “we had presented so much evidence it was hard for (the supervisors) to keep approving facilities without doing something.” County policy now calls for a 1,000-foot buffer zone between warehouses and residential areas. And, Newman adds, “We stopped more than 700 acres from being developed into industrial warehousing.”

Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, 951-360-8451, www.ccaej.org