CEC Receives $300,000 Grant for Air Quality Monitoring, Environmental Education in Guadalupe

A Santa Barbara County environmental nonprofit is setting out to tackle air pollution and environmental justice issues in the agricultural communities of North County. 

The Community Environmental Council (CEC) recently received a $300,000 grant to monitor and share findings on air pollution, wildfire smoke, and pesticide exposure at the neighborhood level in Guadalupe and the Santa Maria Valley.

The California Air Resources Board awarded the CEC the grant to implement Assembly Bill 616, which requires the state to support on-the-ground efforts to reduce pollution exposure and address its underlying causes. 

Guadalupe is a high-scoring area in air pollution tracking within CEC’s designated region, and is designated by California as a disadvantaged community.

As a largely agricultural community, Guadalupe’s farm workers and community members are well aware of the impacts pollution has had. According to CEC’s climate justice associate Alhan Diaz-Correra, who is local to Guadalupe, the grant will largely be addressing environmental injustices in the North County town.

“We can’t really gauge or prioritize our concerns when we don’t have the data to back it up,” Diaz-Correra said. “The point of education is to talk about the complexity of the issue, but not to educate on the issue itself.”

According to CEC’s Director of Climate Mitigation Cameron Gray, the nonprofit focuses on reversing, reducing, and repairing climate change impacts with a focus on rapid and equitable solutions. Their goals for Guadalupe are to monitor and repair poor air quality and address environmental injustices in the community. 

“The work that we’re doing with this is really grounded in the voices of farm workers and other community members who have been disproportionately impacted by poor and hazardous air quality,” Gray said. “I think it’s important to note that this project is really lifting up those voices.”

More than half of the $300,000 grant will be allocated for air quality sensors and equipment construction. CEC is working with Blue Tomorrow, an environmental consulting group based in Santa Barbara, to build and distribute air monitors throughout the community, including at many schools within the Guadalupe Union School District.

The funds will additionally be used for community education and outreach efforts. Gray recognized CEC’s efforts to educate community members, but also emphasized the importance of learning from the community itself. 

“We do some educating in the technical areas where we can provide information about air pollution, or wildfire impacts, or climate change,” Gray said. “But we’re also really looking to communities to be our teachers. We want to learn from them because we recognize that communities have a lot of knowledge and input to share about their own issues and concerns.”

CEC’s final focus is to use the information collected in Guadalupe to improve the district’s understanding of air quality pollutants, and finding comprehensive solutions. A pressing aspect of this will be to create higher quality and multilingual communication systems so that there is more equal access to information on current air quality. 

The range of languages spoken by Guadalupe-area residents is vast, including English, Spanish, and indigenous languages including Mixteco. Diaz-Correra said translations from English into other languages can be presented without full depth, leaving many at a disadvantage of understanding their environmental safety.

“Language support is not necessarily cultural competency,” Diaz-Correro said. “Many of the residents who speak those languages are farm workers, and cannot get this in-depth information in their native tongue. They often have to rely on a game of telephone.”

CEC plans to build and implement the air monitors by May, and the monitoring project is estimated to take two years. However, activists and community groups hope that this initiative will positively impact Guadalupe and the Santa Maria Valley for years to come.

Click here for countywide air quality information from the county’s Air Pollution Control District.

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