SuSol Seeks to Engage Indigenous Voices in Our Work

May 22, 2023

By Sustainable Solano

Sustainable Solano works with local communities here in Solano County and honors the lands that we are lucky to do that work on. As this land originally belongs to the Patwin, Miwok, Karkin, Muwekma, Confederated Villages of Lisjan, and Ohlone peoples, these indigenous communities continue to hold and steward this land as they have for time immemorial. We thank the original peoples of this land with the utmost gratitude for their stewardship of this beautiful Earth and their resistance to its destruction past, present, and future. Because it is our mission to nurture initiatives for the good of the whole, we recognize that true equity arises when we intentionally engage and empower communities who historically have been mistreated by the systems in place.

It is our intention to get our resources into communities that are not regularly afforded access to these resources, but we have realized that we have not been making enough effort to invite indigenous people to the table. As an organization we seek to counter the harm these systems perpetuate with action, one way being through opening up our platform to directly uplift indigenous voices.

We are actively looking to engage with more indigenous community members in our work. SuSol team members have been in communication with representatives from local tribal communities, and we want to see how we can support the identified desires of indigenous groups and individuals in ways that intersect with our mission.

As a part of many of our programs, we are always seeking people to teach classes to the wider community. This is paid work, where we look to bring people together in gardens and beyond to learn more about permaculture, sustainability, resilience, waterwise gardening, farm-to-table cooking, and connecting with love for and solidarity with our Mother Earth. We acknowledge that we have a responsibility to make these jobs especially accessible to indigenous communities, whose knowledge is the foundation for so many permaculture practices and ways of connecting with the Earth, our non-human relations and each other.

This is a starting point for working together. If you are an indigenous community member and are interested in partnering with us, please contact info@sustainablesolano.org 

Our goal is to open up a space to share your knowledge, foster community connections, and to come together to support increasing access to land. We wish to uplift our communities by prioritizing connections based on equity and decentralization, while learning together how to live in harmony with our neighbors of all species.

New Program to Focus on Air Quality in Fairfield

Feb 25, 2022

Sustainable Solano Awarded 3-Year, $260,000 Community Air Grant

By Sustainable Solano

Photo credit: Visit 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. The goal of the program will be to build public awareness around air pollution, its environmental causes and health effects, and engage community members in ways to monitor and mitigate air pollution on an individual and community scale. It will launch later this spring.

“From the crosswinds to the local environmental conditions, poor air quality impacts the population of Fairfield greatly,” Sustainable Solano Executive Director Elena Karoulina said, citing the grant and highlighting its importance. “Our goal is to increase public awareness and strengthen community capacity to monitor and respond to air quality issues in real time with help of local youth leaders.”

The program will engage high school youth leaders through a Youth Air Protectors program. These youth will research the air quality challenges for their communities, create outreach campaigns and support community-based projects centered around air quality. The program also will increase the number of air monitors in and around Fairfield, and will build community resilience through air quality mitigation projects, such as planting trees or improving community spaces to make them more appealing for foot and bike transportation.

Ultimately, the youth involved in the program will create an air quality plan for the City of Fairfield that incorporates what they have learned through research and community engagement and could set the foundation for future air quality improvement projects. This plan could serve as a model for other Solano County communities, as well as the greater region.

Sustainable Solano was one of 33 community organizations and five Native American Tribes that received a total of $10 million in grant funding from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) for projects that would help reduce air pollution in communities.

The Community Air Grants program is part of CARB’s overall efforts to implement Assembly Bill 617. Community Air Grants are designed to establish a community-focused approach to improving air quality and reducing exposure to toxic air pollutants at the neighborhood level. AB 617 is unique in that it requires CARB and air districts to work with residents, businesses and other stakeholders to tackle air pollution at the community scale. The current grants elevate community voices and their specific priorities regarding air pollution where they live.

As a result, the projects funded will help communities identify areas with the most harmful air emissions and then take actions to reduce exposure or address the underlying cause of the pollution.

“The Community Air Grants provided by CARB are an important tool to help residents and Tribal communities throughout the state identify and combat the harmful effects of local air pollution — and create a cleaner environment for their families,” said CARB Chair Liane Randolph.

Read more from CARB’s press release about the Community Air Grants program and find additional resources here: https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/news/carb-awards-10-million-grants-dozens-communities-statewide-fight-air-pollution

 

About Sustainable Solano

Sustainable Solano is a countywide nonprofit organization that is dedicated to “Nurturing Initiatives for the Good of the Whole.” The organization brings together programs that support and sustain one another and the Solano County community. Initiatives include sustainable landscaping, local food, resilient neighborhoods, youth leadership, sustaining conversations and community gardens.

For more information, visit sustainablesolano.org

About CARB

CARB is the lead agency in California for cleaning up the air and fighting climate change to attain and maintain health-based air quality standards. Its mission is to promote and protect public health, welfare, and ecological resources through the effective reduction of air and climate pollutants while recognizing and considering effects on the economy.

Conversation Circles Program Creates New Opportunities and Environmental Resources

May 14, 2021

By Gabriela Estrada and Jonathan Erwin, Program Managers

Flood map of Suisun City from Adapting to Rising Tides report

While the Conversation Circles program in Central Solano (formerly the Listening Circles program) has come to the end of its grant term, our commitment to increase the understanding of environmental issues that affect Solano communities is ongoing. Using what we learned through the Conversation Circles program, we will continue to help residents access important environmental, health and other data that you can use to inform decision-making within your community.

Toward that end, we have created our Environmental Resources section of the website, where you can learn more about some of the environmental and health factors that affect our communities and see resources at the county and city level when it comes to addressing environmental concerns and preparing for disaster. The pages also list organizations that are working in our communities.

We have robust data for Fairfield, Suisun City and Vacaville out of the Conversation Circles program, and hope to build similar data for our other Solano County cities going forward.

As part of closing the Conversation Circles program, we created a Neighborhood Impact and Assessment Report where we documented the project, challenges and opportunities. Here are some of the newly created opportunities and lessons learned through this project: 

Connecting with Other Community Groups

Connecting with other organizations in each of the cities we worked with is key. These partnerships have opened the door for future collaboration efforts and further community engagement at a neighborhood level. Equally important, it also created an opportunity for us to combine efforts towards a common goal.

Building Trust and Showing Up

While we have a lot of partnerships with other organizations, this project brought us to a few neighborhoods that we’ve never worked in before. By collaborating with other organizations serving these areas, we were able to begin building trust and a sense of community. Sustainable Solano will continue to show up and create opportunities for engagement and will continue to work with community members in creating a happy, healthy and thriving community.

Connecting with Government Officials

Connecting with government officials gave the project manager a clear idea of the “lay of the land” to learn about the neighborhoods, the opportunities, the history and some of the potential challenges (both environmental and social) that a project might face. Connecting with government officials also created room for future collaboration efforts, including urban forestry efforts, community gardens and resiliency efforts through our other programs.

Increasing Reach with Support from Other Programs

We will continue to seek creative ways we can connect with community members through our other programs about the environmental data that affects their neighborhoods. 

For more details, read the complete Neighborhood Impact and Assessment Report. 

We plan on building on these lessons to inform the Environmental Resources pages and the rest of our programs, including the Resilient Neighborhoods program, now expanding to Suisun City, and the Youth Leadership program.

As we have continued to scale our Resilient Neighborhoods program and our research across Solano County, we realize that there is a disconnect in the information on environmental progress and the general public access to that information. City and county plans are often spread across many websites and buried with departments and commissions. Within this cacophony of public information, it can be difficult to find what is relevant and what is most up to date within the county and selected cities. As we found with last fire season, and potentially any upcoming disaster, knowledge is power and can mean the difference between safety and struggle. We will continue to find ways to make that information more easily accessible within Resilient Neighborhoods and beyond.

The Youth Environmental Leadership Fellowship now in development will encourage high school youth to examine CalEnviroScreen and other data, examine environmental justice issues within the county and their communities, participate in hands-on mitigation training, and present to city leaders and community members about the environmental information and possible solutions at the individual, community and policy level. This will continue to engage the wider community through the youth presentations and projects, and the data they collect will make our Environmental Resources pages more robust throughout the county. 

Through these pages, we seek to emphasize relevant local work and organizations that share our mission of nurturing initiatives for the good of the whole. See anything we missed? Let us know at info@sustainablesolano.org

 

The Conversation Circles program and Environmental Resources page development was generously funded through the California Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice Small Grants Program.

Seeking Vacaville, Suisun City Residents to Monitor Air Quality and Help Communities

Jun 1, 2020

By Gabriela Estrada, Listening Circles Program Manager

Mapping the data for Central Solano County neighborhoods determined which would benefit the most from air monitoring

In Central Solano County, poor air quality is a top concern because pollution from various sources, whether traffic or wildfires, can create a harmful environment, particularly for people who already have health conditions such as asthma or heart problems. But in Vacaville and Suisun City, air monitors that could track pollutants and particulate matter in the air and offer valuable information to residents are lacking. This is worrisome, especially when you take into account the high asthma rates in Central Solano County, indicating people who would benefit from real-time air quality monitoring. Air monitors can be a great way to measure air pollution and help individuals actively avoid going outside on overly contaminated days and also try to implement measures to curb pollution.

It has been difficult to know exactly where to place these monitors, but after some initial data analysis from the Cal EPA EnviroScreen 3.0, Sustainable Solano was able to take 50 census tracts from Fairfield, Suisun and Vacaville and narrow them down to 10 neighborhoods where there was an immediate need to improve the air quality due to the high number of people living there with cardiovascular disease, asthma and socioeconomic challenges. After these sites were selected, we began to host neighborhood Listening Circle meetings with the objective of finding how our organization could support the vision residents had for their communities. We were only able to hold two Listening Circles (one more successful than the other) in Suisun City and Vacaville.

Sustainable Solano’s Listening Circles program began out of a need to educate communities about the environmental hazards affecting them, and to ask individuals living in these neighborhoods how they would like to transform their neighborhoods into resilient and thriving spaces where everyone could be happy and healthy.

A PurpleAir monitor / credit:PurpleAir

While the Listening Circles had to come to an abrupt stop due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the sense of purpose that we feel towards residents of Solano County has not stopped. At the first Listening Circle in Vacaville, community members said they wanted to be knowledgeable about the quality of their air and water. Toward this goal, we were able to purchase PurpleAir monitors that community members could use at no cost to them. These monitors (no bigger than 5 inches) will measure Diesel Particulate Matter 2.5 concentration. Diesel PM 2.5 can come from on-road sources (vehicles) and off-road (ships or trains) and is concentrated near ports, rail yards and freeways. These ultrafine particles are known to contain cancer-causing chemicals, and carry a strong connection to cardiovascular and pulmonary disease, including asthma and lung cancer. Sensitive populations already suffering from these diseases can become even more susceptible due to these environmental conditions.

The PurpleAir monitors connect to a WiFi network and can be placed outside homes, community buildings, churches or schools. The data can be accessed via the PurpleAir website, allowing for people to monitor when the air quality is worse and take actions to protect those who are most vulnerable. With the fire season coming up it will be especially important to track air quality, and it is also important for individuals who have asthma or other conditions that can be exacerbated by poor air quality.

If you or someone you know might be interested in hosting one of these air monitors FREE of charge and you live in Vacaville Neighborhood 1 or Suisun City neighborhoods identified in the map below please feel free to reach me at gabriela@sustainablesolano.org or (707) 339-8623.  Participants will get a free air monitor, free set-up and configuration and will play an instrumental part in informing their neighborhoods of the quality of their immediate air. I hope to hear from you!

 

Community Will Gain Knowledge, Guide Solutions in Listening Circles

Feb 3, 2020

By Gabriela Estrada, Listening Circles Program Manager

February will mark the beginning of Sustainable Solano’s first Listening Circle sessions. For the next five months, I will be facilitating up to 10 Listening Circles in central Solano County (Fairfield, Vacaville and Suisun City). A Listening Circle is our attempt at finding community-guided solutions to community issues/problems. The goal is to not only strengthen community knowledge and participation, but to get active buy-in from community members into the solutions since no solution is sustainable without community input and interest. For the last few months, I’ve been busy analyzing and comparing data from the California Environmental Protection Agency’s CalEnviroScreen 3.0 and California Department of Public Health Nutrition Education and Obesity Prevention map to learn about the different environmental hazards in central Solano County and the population characteristics and socioeconomic outcomes. The goal was simple: to understand the environmental pollution burdens and compare that to population characteristics to find neighborhoods that might have a need for green infrastructure support. But what is green infrastructure? Green infrastructure is a resilient approach to managing climate impacts that provides many community benefits, including reducing and treating storm water at its source while delivering environmental, social and economic benefits. 

This new project came about when we as an organization realized that the California Environmental Protection Agency’s CalEnviroScreen 3.0 does an excellent job mapping communities that are disproportionately burdened by pollution, but like any cumulative data source, this methodology has its limits. In Solano County, only South Vallejo received the Disadvantaged Community Designation, which gives this area the highest priority for all state green infrastructure funding such as from Prop 68 and for most private foundation grants. However, working on the ground, we saw a great need for green infrastructure programs in multiple neighborhoods and communities across the county. Prop 68 was approved in 2018 with the goal of three kinds of projects: conservation efforts, new parks for struggling communities and water needs. These funds currently fund a lot of these types of community greening projects.

Here are some examples of how we can use a deeper dive into the data to identify communities that would benefit from such projects:

Environmental Pollution Burdens

Exposure Indicators

In Vacaville, for example, the measurement for ozone is the highest in all of Solano County. Why this matters is because when inhaled, ozone reacts chemically with many biological molecules in the respiratory tract. Similarly, drinking water contamination in Vacaville and pesticide use is the highest in the county. Fairfield traffic density by far exceeds any other city in the county. Traffic density has been known to have an effect on respiratory health, especially for those in sensitive populations, such as those who have asthma or cardiovascular disease. Diesel particulate matter, which has known carcinogens, such as benzene and formaldehyde, is recorded in Fairfield at 25.18kg/day and in Suisun City at 24.1kg/day. This is important because very small particles of diesel particulate matter can contribute to health problems including heart and lung disease and lung cancer.

Effects Indicators

Additionally, groundwater threats are almost as high in Suisun City and Fairfield as they are in Vallejo. CalEnviroScreen 3.0 shows groundwater threats in Suisun City and Fairfield as a couple of the highest in the county. Shockingly, there are 20 cleanup sites in Fairfield and 19 in Vacaville, the second and third highest in the county respectfully. Cleanup sites are places contaminated with harmful chemicals and need to be cleaned up by property owners or government. These sites pose risks for nearby residents because the contaminants can move off-site and impact surrounding communities through groundwater plume migration or windblown dust. Some studies have shown that neighborhoods with cleanup sites are generally poorer and have more people of color than other neighborhoods. Fairfield has a high number of hazardous waste facilities and hazardous waste generators, such as recycling, treatment, storage or disposal facilities by registered hazardous waste transporters. When it comes to solid waste sites and facilities, such as landfills or composing facilities, there is a disproportionately higher number of facilities in Suisun City at 17 facilities — the highest number in the county.

Population Characteristics

Sensitive Populations

There are some population characteristics worthy of note in Central Solano. Fairfield has a high asthma rate, just below the rate of Vallejo. Low birth weight, which has been correlated with increased risk of later health problems and increased infant mortality, is the highest in the county in Fairfield.

Socioeconomic Factors

The census tract with the highest linguistic isolation, at 18.4% of households not speaking English, is in Fairfield. This lack of language makes it harder for members of these communities to participate in local decisions. Additionally, Fairfield shows a few tracts with poverty rates above 54%. The housing burden in Fairfield is at 35.5%, meaning that many low-income households are highly burdened by housing costs.

While each city has its own unique set of needs and challenges, doing work on the ground, you soon realize that there is a high need for green infrastructure projects that help address environmental issues in smaller neighborhoods within each city. We are excited to begin this work and hold sessions with community members to ensure that they are aware of this environmental health information. A clear goal is to not only provide information that will support their lived experiences, but to also provide tangible tools as well as projects that they might want to bring to their communities and would like to participate in and support on. This is a chance to have community members be at the center of proposed solutions that will lead to a healthier and more resilient community.

At the end of all the Listening Circles, we will then hold three presentations (one in each city) where I will present to the community the analysis and proposals that came out of the Listening Circles in an effort to create a feedback communication loop within the community to ensure that residents know the results and are aware of any next steps or projects.

Community engagement and community knowledge are at the center of this project. As someone who grew up in Solano County, it has been a real privilege to be able to work within my community to make it healthier, thriving and more resilient.

Be on the lookout for future updates!

The Listening Circles program is funded through Cal EPA. Learn more here!

This Giving Tuesday, Support Sustainable Solano Through Give Local Solano

Nov 18, 2019

By Sustainable Solano

Sometimes the gifts we get at Sustainable Solano are the small moments that come out of the work we do. While our work is focused on effecting change within our communities to build resiliency and sustainable living, what happens on the human scale is much more personal:

  • A woman getting to know neighbors and new friends while planning a resilient neighborhood.
  • A man planting in a community garden recalling how his mother prepared certain vegetables during his childhood.
  • Students researching and connecting with the food they grow on campus to send home for families.
  • Farmers connecting in conversation to share practices and ideas.

During #GivingTuesday, Dec. 3, we invite you to become part of fostering that human connection in creating a world that works for everyone. Sustainable Solano is participating in this year’s Give Local Solano. The program gives you a chance to give to area nonprofits that are doing important work in the county. All donations go to the organizations selected, and 100% of the donation qualifies as a charitable gift. Here are more details on Give Local Solano.

While we have a Donate button at the top of our website for any time of year, Give Local Solano gives us a chance to highlight our programs with people who may not have heard of Sustainable Solano and the work we do. We hope those of you who know us, volunteer with us and have joined us for workshops will help spread the word — while every dollar will help bring more programs to the county, every new connection is someone who can help us grow and spread the important work we’re doing to create sustainable landscapes, shape resilient communities, provide education and support local food.

See Sustainable Solano’s profile and donate here on Dec. 3!