Air Quality
Vision for the Air Quality Program
Our Air Quality program seeks to empower residents to reclaim their city from poor air quality and push for a greener, healthier future.
Launching in Fairfield, this program is split between two interconnected programs: the Youth Air Protectors and community-building. High school students will have the opportunity to learn more about the air quality issues in their neighborhoods and translate their experiences into community outreach and education. Sustainable Solano will work with these youth and facilitate conversations between local leaders to create practical solutions the community can adopt.
These two sides of the program will be mutually reinforcing: Student activists will provide education to inspire action among Fairfield’s residents, while community-building efforts will ensure that the needs of our affected neighborhoods are heard and that we find collaborative solutions to our degraded air quality. This community feedback will be used to inform students’ outreach efforts to empower more people to advocate for clean air.
How to Make Fairfield More Breathable
(Click on the links below)
Daily Practices
- Be mindful of your at-home energy use
- Walk or bike short trips
- Limit idling your car
- Drive gently and keep up maintenance of your vehicle
- Plant a garden
Get Involved!
- Share your support for a community garden on Illinois Street
- Sign up for a free Purple Air Monitor
- Talk to you friends, family and neighbors about the need for cleaner air
- Attend and comment at city council meetings
- Learn more about how Fairfield’s city government operates
- Participate in creating a clean-air action plan for Fairfield
- High school students: Join the Youth Air Protectors program
Learn More About Air Quality
Why Fairfield?
While it is easy to envision contaminants such as wildfire smoke or plumes emanating from industrial smokestacks polluting our air, many of the more banal and everyday threats to air quality go mostly unnoticed. Rush hour traffic along the I-80 and SR-12 has led to a significant increase in ground-level pollutants such as ozone and carbon monoxide in Fairfield. Both the visible and invisible air contaminants in the city have caused Fairfield’s residents and children to be considerably more vulnerable to lifelong illnesses such as asthma and cardiovascular disease. Air pollution can make it dangerous for children to play outside, increases your likelihood of developing chronic illnesses, and makes it harder to enjoy all that Fairfield has to offer. We, as a community, can still rally together to tackle air pollution head-on through programs such as this one.
Resources
Interested in learning more about the air quality and related health factors in your neighborhood?
- CalEnviroScreen 4.0 (use the maps to look up environmental data in your community)
- PurpleAir Current Air Quality Map
- AirNow Current Air Quality Index
New Program to Focus on Air Quality in Fairfield
A new program that will focus on air quality concerns, causes and solutions will help Fairfield residents to address air pollution within the community. Sustainable Solano was recently awarded a $260,000 Community Air Grant that will support the planning and implementation of this new program over the next three years.
Selected Neighborhoods
Through the Conversation Circles program, Sustainable Solano identified Central Solano neighborhoods for outreach based on pollution burden and population characteristics. (You can learn more about the Fairfield neighborhoods here and in the map above.)
For the Air Quality program, neighborhoods were also identified for engagement and projects due to an overall lack of tree cover/greenspace in urban areas and proximity to high-traffic motorways.
The Air Quality program is funded through the California Air Resources Board and is part of California Climate Investments, a statewide initiative that puts billions of Cap-and-Trade dollars to work reducing greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening the economy, and improving public health and the environment — particularly in disadvantaged communities.