Project Overview:
In 2017, the California Air Resource Board (CARB) created the Community Air Protection Program under the Assembly Bill 617. The focus of the program is to reduce carbon emissions and improve public health in the most polluted communities.
Through CARB’s Community Air Protection Program, a team of nonprofit organizations: Valley Vision, Civic Thread, Green Tech Education, and BREATHE have been empowering residents in Old North Sacramento and Oak Park neighborhoods to monitor their air, understand how air quality impacts health and their community, and develop a plan to reduce exposure to air pollution.
Click here for more information and background about why these neighborhoods were selected.
Click here to read the CARB press release announcing this grant award,
Project Partners:
A group of local nonprofit organizations collaborating on this project are:
Project Goals:
The Sacramento Neighborhoods Activating on Air Quality (SNAAQ) 1.0 project empowered residents, business owners and educational institutions in the selected communities to identify solutions for achieving cleaner air and to take ownership of environmental decision-making processes that affect neighborhoods. The project involved four primary components:
- Air monitoring outreach
- Education
- Community workshops
- Coalition building.
In February 2022, an additional Community Air Grant, SNAAQ 2.0, was awarded to continue the work with residents of public outreach for clean air in these neighborhoods.
The SNAAQ project team worked with residents of the selected neighborhoods to accomplish the following by the end of March 2024:
- Established an all-resident Steering Committee to make key decisions and guide a participatory budgeting (PB) process to spend allocated grant funding on community projects to address air quality.
- Sent 29,000 physical survey mailers to households in North Sacramento and Oak Park to gather resident’s priorities for clean air projects.
- Developed Community Air Action Plans for each neighborhood.
- Educational Events held in each neighborhood that included neighbor-led Environmental Justice listening circles, community-based planning campaigns, and survey collection.
Looking ahead, a third round of the Community Air Grant was awarded for SNAAQ 3.0 to continue advancing implementation of the emissions reduction strategy developed as part of a result of SNAAQ 2.0. The project team will soon develop the action plans for 2024-2026.
Check back for updates in the near future!
For further project details and updates please visit Valley Vision’s website.
Project Area Map:
