AB 617 Stockton

Catholic Charities Diocese of Stockton Environmental Justice Program, Little Manila Rising, Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, and San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District serve as partnering co-leads for the development of the Stockton AB 617 Community Steering Committee meetings.

Stockton is the largest metropolitan area in the Northern Region of the District, with a current estimated population over 310,000. A number of heavily trafficked freeways pass through the City of Stockton, including interstate 5 and highways 99 and 4, contributing a significant amount of PM2.5 emissions in the community. Specifically, Southwest Stockton (Figure 1) is a densely populated community within the City of Stockton directly impacted by large freeways, the Port of Stockton, freight locomotives, industrial sources, and emissions traveling downwind from the northern portion of the city.

The proposed community of Stockton defined in Figure 1 is approximately 12.2 square miles and has an estimated population of 51,000. The Southwest Stockton community is impacted across a number of health and pollution indicators. Using the State CES tool, all census tracts located within the Southwest Stockton proposed community rank in the top 5% most disadvantaged communities in California, and rank highest in the Valley amongst census tracts not already a part of an AB 617 community. Southwest Stockton also contains the highest ranked census tract in the District’s Northern Region (San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Merced Counties) for overall CES score, which represents a number of health and socioeconomic factors (asthma, cardiovascular disease, low birth weight, educational attainment, housing burdened low-income households, linguistic isolation, poverty, and unemployment).

This community also ranked highest in PM2.5 impacts, and second highest in diesel PM exposure, compared to all other disadvantaged communities in the northern District counties. Specifically, the average overall CES score, PM2.5 exposure, and pollution burden values are all above the 90th percentile. Additionally, most of the community is within the “Rise Stockton” Transformative Climate Community boundary, which allows the District and community to leverage resources to maximize benefits under AB 617.

Learn more at: http://community.valleyair.org/selected-communities/stockton/