California Senate Bill 1000 (2016) requires that general plans include environmental justice strategies and policies that address the needs of Disadvantaged Communities (DACs). This article draws upon principles for engagement developed by environmental justice activists to explore Santa Ana’s 2014-2020 general plan update and understand whether SB1000 contributed to meaningful engagement in DACs. A review of planning documents and interviews with key informants reveals that the initial general plan framework was captured by NIMBYs and that the City was unable to pivot to meet SB1000 mandates. Moreover, the City resisted activist and State demands to halt general plan adoption amid COVID-19. Ultimately, in the case of Santa Ana, SB1000 has not led to meaningful engagement with disadvantaged communities.

(1) Background: exposure to heavy metals is associated with adverse health effects and disproportionately impacts low-income communities and communities of color. We carried out a community-based participatory research study to examine the distribution of heavy metal concentrations in the soil and social vulnerabilities to soil heavy metal exposures across Census tracts in Santa Ana, CA. (2) Methods: soil samples (n = 1528) of eight heavy metals including lead (Pb), arsenic (As), manganese (Mn), chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni), copper (Cu), cadmium (Cd), and zinc (Zn) were collected in 2018 across Santa Ana, CA, at a high spatial resolution and analyzed using XRF analysis. Metal concentrations were mapped out and American Community Survey data was utilized to assess metals throughout Census tracts in terms of social and economic variables. Risk assessment was conducted to evaluate carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic risk. (3) Results: concentrations of soil metals varied according to landuse type and socioeconomic factors. Census tracts where the median household income was under $50 000 had 390%, 92.9%, 56.6%, and 54.3% higher Pb, Zn, Cd, and As concentrations compared to high-income counterparts. All Census tracts in Santa Ana showed hazard index >1, implying the potential for non-carcinogenic health effects, and nearly all Census tracts showed a cancer risk above 10-4, implying a greater than acceptable risk. Risk was predominantly driven by childhood exposure. (4) Conclusions: findings inform initiatives related to environmental justice and highlight subpopulations at elevated risk of heavy metal exposure, in turn underscoring the need for community-driven recommendations for policies and other actions to remediate soil contamination and protect the health of residents.

Although lead has been removed from paint and gasoline sold in the U.S., lead exposures persist, with communities of color and residents in urban and low-income areas at greatest risk for exposure. The persistence of and inequities in lead exposures raise questions about the scope and implementation of policies that address lead as a public health concern. To understand the multi-level nature of lead policies, this paper and case study reviews lead policies at the national level, for the state of California, and for Santa Ana, CA, a dense urban city in Southern California. Through a community-academic partnership process, this analysis examines lead exposure pathways represented, the level of intervention (e.g., prevention, remediation), and whether policies address health inequities. Results indicate that most national and state policies focus on establishing hazardous lead exposure levels in settings and consumer products, disclosing lead hazards, and remediating lead paint. Several policies focus on mitigating exposures rather than primary prevention. The persistence of lead exposures indicates the need to identify sustainable solutions to prevent lead exposures in the first place. We close with recommendations to reduce lead exposures across the life course, consider multiple lead exposure pathways, and reduce and eliminate health inequities related to lead.

Background

Lead (Pb) exposure is a problem that disproportionately impacts low-income communities and communities of color. We applied a community-based participatory research approach to assess the distribution of soil Pb concentrations and related social vulnerabilities across Census tracts in Santa Ana, CA.

Methods

Soil Pb samples (n = 1528) were collected by the ¡Plo-NO! Santa Ana! Lead-Free Santa Ana! partnership in 2018 across Santa Ana, CA, at a high spatial resolution and measured using XRF analysis. Pb concentrations were mapped and spatial interpolation was conducted to generate a continuous smoothed map of soil Pb concentrations across the city. American Community Survey data was used to examine Pb across Census tracts based on social and economic factors, and to allow for the development of a Cumulative Risk Index to identify areas at high risk of health impacts.

Results

Soil Pb concentrations varied by landuse type and socioeconomic factors. Census tracts with a median household income below $50,000 had over five times higher soil Pb concentrations than high-income Census tracts. Soil samples collected in tertiles with the highest percent children, residents without health insurance, renter-occupied housing units, and lowest percent college educated residents had 90.0%, 96.1%, 75.2%, and 87.0% higher Pb concentrations on average, respectively, compared to their counterparts. Overall, 52.7% of residential samples had Pb concentrations in excess of the 80 ppm California EPA recommendation, and 11 Census tracts were characterized as high risk according to our Cumulative Risk Index.

Discussion

This study underscores the need for precautionary measures relating to disturbances of the soil, particularly for areas where children play outside, given children's higher absorption of lead. It also informs environmental justice initiatives and identifies vulnerable subpopulations at greater risk of Pb exposure, thus warranting community-driven recommendations for policies and initiatives to remediate soil Pb and protect public health and health equity.

Ecological theory posits that temporal stability patterns in plant populations are associated with differences in species ecological strategies. However, empirical evidence is lacking about which traits, or trade-offs, underlie species stability, especially across different biomes. We compiled a worldwide collection of long-term permanent vegetation records (greater than 7000 plots from 78 datasets) from a large range of habitats which we combined with existing trait databases. We tested whether the observed inter-annual variability in species abundance (coefficient of variation) was related to multiple individual traits. We found that populations with greater leaf dry matter content and seed mass were more stable over time. Despite the variability explained by these traits being low, their effect was consistent across different datasets. Other traits played a significant, albeit weaker, role in species stability, and the inclusion of multi-variate axes or phylogeny did not substantially modify nor improve predictions. These results provide empirical evidence and highlight the relevance of specific ecological trade-offs, i.e. in different resource-use and dispersal strategies, for plant populations stability across multiple biomes. Further research is, however, necessary to integrate and evaluate the role of other specific traits, often not available in databases, and intraspecific trait variability in modulating species stability.

The stability of ecological communities is critical for the stable provisioning of ecosystem services, such as food and forage production, carbon sequestration, and soil fertility. Greater biodiversity is expected to enhance stability across years by decreasing synchrony among species, but the drivers of stability in nature remain poorly resolved. Our analysis of time series from 79 datasets across the world showed that stability was associated more strongly with the degree of synchrony among dominant species than with species richness. The relatively weak influence of species richness is consistent with theory predicting that the effect of richness on stability weakens when synchrony is higher than expected under random fluctuations, which was the case in most communities. Land management, nutrient addition, and climate change treatments had relatively weak and varying effects on stability, modifying how species richness, synchrony, and stability interact. Our results demonstrate the prevalence of biotic drivers on ecosystem stability, with the potential for environmental drivers to alter the intricate relationship among richness, synchrony, and stability.