Calif. Farm Town Is Nation's Smoggiest

[jpak]

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nat-gen/2007/aug/09/080902268.html

ARVIN, Calif. (AP) - Lying in a rich agricultural region dotted with vineyards and orange groves, this central California community seems an unlikely place for a dubious distinction: the most polluted air in America.

Hemmed in by mountains, Arvin is the final destination for pollutants from cities as far away as San Francisco Bay, and its wheezing residents are paying the price. Many of them complain that the air smells toxic.

"It's common for people here to say, 'I'm going to the beach so I can breathe,'" said Raji Brar, a councilwoman and member of the board that oversees the San Joaquin Valley's Air Pollution Control District.

Arvin has none of the smoke-belching factories or congested freeways of cities such as Los Angeles. In fact, it produces little pollution. But the pollutants that blow in from elsewhere get trapped by the mountains, causing airborne particles to coat homes and streets and blot out views of the nearby Tehachapi range on hot summer days.

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[Sapere aude]

1. I drive through Arvin a couple times a week.

It is 99% Hispanic and 50% illegal immigrants. It smells because a dairy farm and a garbage dump are a few miles from the city along with the stale air. I remember a few weeks ago I was driving through at about 8:30PM as the sun was going down and I could see the dirt in the air. My headlights were bouncing off it. It looks like brown fog but it is polution. I hold my nose when I drive through it.

If you drive through about 5:30 AM any day you see a long string of old cars with farm workers going to the fields to work. I had a temp job at the city hall there for a few weeks.

Lamont is another Hispanic town just down the road. It is about the same as Arvin.

If you have ever seen the movie "Grapes Of Wrath", the scene where the Jodes drive into Wheatpatch camp was filmed about 1 mile from the town center. It was filmed at the actual migrant camp. There is low income housing there now but the building in the movie is still there. The camp was a migrant camp during the dust bowl days. It is called Weedpatch and every October there is a celebration of Dust Bowl Days. Okies who use to live there as kids in the 30's come to the celebration. The area is the setting for the book Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. The book is dedicated to the manager of Wheedpatch camp.

The Okies were poor migrants from the midwest who moved west because they could no longer make a living were they were born. Now migrants from Mexico take their place. The residents of Bakersfield hated the Okies back then and the feeling is about the same for the newer migrants. The things said about the Okies in the '30's are now said about the Mexican migrants. Times really change very little in some ways.

[LSparkle]

2. I drive Interstate 5 to visit my mother and I hold my nose ...

From the bottom of the Grapevine to where I turn off on Highway 46, it's onions and cow dung ... I run my air conditioner and drive like a M.F. to get through that stretch of my trip as quickly as possible. No surprise about the smog ...