San Joaquin Valley

Scientists suspect that parts of the San Joaquin Valley have started to sink again after years of stability, a troubling development that geologists say can be traced to increased pumping of groundwater. State water managers are worried that falling land surfaces could damage the California Aqueduct, which carries water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the valley and Southern California. To measure the extent of the problem, the U.S. Geological Survey is launching a three-year study that will use sophisticated satellite tracking to map sagging land in the valley's arid floor in western Fresno and Kings counties.

Water built the semi-arid San Joaquin Valley into an agricultural powerhouse. Drought and irrigation battles now threaten to turn huge swaths of it into a dust bowl. Farmers have idled half a million acres of once-productive ground and are laying off legions of farmhands. That's sending joblessness soaring in a region already plagued by chronic poverty. Water scarcity looms as a major challenge to California's $37-billion agricultural industry, which has long relied on imported water to bloom.

Community groups, public health advocates and environmentalists filed suit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Friday to overturn an October 2007 rule that allowed San Joaquin Valley officials to declare victory in a long battle against the airborne dust technically known as coarse particulate matter (PM-10). According to Earthjustice, the environmental law firm that filed the suit in the 9th District Court of Appeals, air quality monitors in the Valley show that federal standards are not being met. The EPA and the local air district say that the recurring violations are natural ones that do not need to be addressed through further controls.

A state senator from the San Joaquin Valley said he would introduce legislation today that would ban some risky farm practices and allow state officials to inspect fields where leafy greens are grown. The proposed law follows several recent deaths and numerous illnesses that have been linked to bacteria on California spinach and lettuce. One of three bills to be introduced by Sen.

About 150,000 acres of San Joaquin Valley farmland would be taken out of irrigated crop production as part of a costly plan, initially funded by taxpayers, to deal with the problem of poorly drained cropland belonging to farmers on the valley's west side. The $2.

Standing in an empty field in southern Kings County facing the horizon, W. Quay Hays enthusiastically surveys the land -- stark and featureless except for two newly planted redwood trees. This desolate patch of San Joaquin Valley real estate along Interstate 5 is the spot Hays has chosen to pursue his vision for a new city: a utopia of 150,000 people living in a solar-powered, self-contained community rising from the dirt flats about 50 miles north of Bakersfield.

Air quality officials in the San Joaquin Valley, one of the smoggiest places in the nation, voted Monday to ask federal regulators for 11 additional years to meet ozone standards, saying the problem could not be solved with current technology. The sprawling farm region faces a 2013 deadline for reducing ozone smog to meet federal standards.

CLOVIS, Calif. -- Under a broad blue sky, they laid to rest another son of this San Joaquin Valley town Friday, another young man felled tragically in war. This death seemed perhaps the cruelest of all, for this was his family's second son to die in Iraq. Nathan Hubbard had joined the Army to carry on what he considered the unfinished business of his older brother Jared, a 22-year-old Marine killed by a roadside bomb in November 2004.

State regulators this week threatened to take steps that could curb water shipments to Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley if long-sought water quality standards aren't met in the troubled Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. After decades of delays in enforcing salinity limits in the delta, the State Water Resources Control Board on Wednesday gave California's two major water projects an ultimatum: meet the standards or your delta pumping will be curbed.

Smog in the San Joaquin Valley is responsible for $3.2 billion annually in health costs, according to findings released Wednesday by a Cal State Fullerton team. The lion's share of those costs -- an estimated $3 billion -- is tied to 460 smog-related deaths each year. Other major factors are school and work absences, hospital admissions and treatment for bronchitis and other illnesses.