Interactive report

Get a close look at the Valley's air-quality problem with audio, video, animations, and an interactive quiz and game. You also can check the smog-test results of any California vehicle or light truck.

Listen to Bee staff

In a podcast, the reporters on the "Fighting for Air" special section discuss the pollution challenge facing the Valley.

Stories

Escaping smog

These families and people have left the Valley, blaming health problems caused by air pollution.

Graphics

Fighting for Air

With months of deadly pollution each year, the Valley faces decades of cleanup.

Catherine M. Rehart finally just had to leave.

Her family has lived in the central San Joaquin Valley since 1873. As a popular local historian, she symbolizes the place perhaps as well as anyone.

But her life was at stake.

"When we have bad-air days, if I take a step outside of my house, I'm just coughing until I almost pass out," she said one day last summer, just before moving to Oregon.

Nessie Williams was like that, too. She couldn't take a 15-minute walk on a summer evening without crushing chest pain. So she and her husband, neurosurgeon Fred Williams, reluctantly pulled up stakes.

"We gave up a tremendous amount to leave," Fred Williams said. "If even one thing had changed, I think we would have tried to stick it out."

That's the problem: While air-quality bureaucrats and special-interest groups wrangle over deadlines, rules and money, bad air is driving people away from the Valley.

And those who stay -- or who cannot afford to leave -- risk getting sicker. Childhood asthma is on the rise, with experts predicting 1 in 4 children here will have the disease in a few years. On average, nearly four San Joaquin Valley residents a day die prematurely because of air pollution.

Local air officials this year celebrated the region's cleanest summer since record-keeping began three decades ago, proudly crediting "residents and businesses who have really stepped up to the challenge."

But these facts remain:

As they did five years ago -- when The Fresno Bee exposed missed deadlines, industry loopholes and bureaucratic neglect in a special report titled "Last Gasp" -- air officials say their hands are tied.

We don't have the power, they say. Tougher rules on business would hurt the economy. We've done all we can.

But a growing number of critics say the district -- distracted by paper shuffling, artificial deadlines and industry fears -- isn't fighting hard enough for people's health.

District air board member Raji Brar is among them. She is a city council member from Arvin, the country's smoggiest place. She is a maverick on the board, one who is determined to help her small city and protect the rest of the Valley's residents.

"We are a public health agency," she said. "We need to have a mindset that we can do more. What we're doing right now isn't working. This isn't working."