Despite persistent exposure to environmental hazards over three generations of grassroots organizing, residents in Kettleman City, a majority-Latinx immigrant rural town in the agricultural Central Valley of California, continue to live without a clean drinking water source. Their mobilization efforts have led me to ask how and why did this happen? What is the history of water in California’s Central Valley? Who is responsible? What voices are silenced and ignored? Why does this continue to happen? I develop a case study of the permit acquisition process for a toxic dumping site owned by Chemical Waste Management, Inc. (Chem Waste). I focus on the time period from 2005, when the permit process began, to 2015, after the approval of permits is granted to Chem Waste--in spite of mobilization efforts by activists with El Pueblo para el Aire y Agua Limpia de Kettleman City (People for Clean Air and Water of Kettleman City) and Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice. I examine how the decision-making process is shaped by intersectional dimensions of power. I use multiple forms of qualitative data for this project, including primary and secondary documents, and newspapers. I primarily draw from Greenaction’s archival collection on the history of Chem Wastes’ application for an expansion permit in Kettleman City. I use a framework rooted in critical environmental justice and intersectionality to observe how the permit acquisition process has functioned and evolved over time. My analysis reveals how meso and macro-level factors intersect in the political and institutional sphere of the environmental decision-making process.

California is facing a heightening teacher shortage that is being felt the most by underserved schools, which have high percentages of students of color, from low socioeconomic status, and/or English Language Learners. Along with a teacher shortage, there is a great racial mismatch between public school students and teachers in California. While prior research has identified how high school academic achievement is important for entering the teaching occupation there is limited research that considers how college academic achievement and overall college experience may mediate or moderate the racial and gendered patterns of obtaining a teaching credential. The research questions for this project are: 1) Are there significant differences by race and gender in the probability of earning a teaching credential? And 2) Are these differences mediated or moderated by college achievement and experiences? This project aims to examine the racialized and gendered patterns of earning a teaching credential among three CalTeach graduating cohorts (2011-13) on three University of California Campuses (n=982). I find that Latinas, Latinos, white men, Asian women, Asian men, and Black women and men are less likely to obtain a teaching credential than white women. I have found that high school achievement (GPA and college entrance exam scores) is not significantly associated with earning a credential, but students’ college GPA at graduation and major are important, especially for Latinas. This suggests that academic outcomes in college are important for who goes into teaching, and especially among Latinas.