The Climate Gap: Coachella Valley Farmworkers on the frontlines of the climate crisis

Nomei Solórzano and her husband are agriculture workers in the Coachella Valley, a rift valley in the Colorado Desert, east of Los Angeles. Solórzano's husband immigrated to the United States from El Salvador as a teenager, and she decided to leave Mexico to follow her father's footsteps to work the fields in California. Both work from sunrise to sunset, barely scraping by, while raising three children.

Video Transcript

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OMAR GASTELUM: The Coachella Valley is at the forefront of this climate crisis. But at the same time, it's not the only area that's dealing with these issues as well, right? The climate crisis is going to affect rural communities all over the states, all over the world.

MARIELA LOERA: They're communities of color. They're communities with undocumented family members or mixed-status families, because if you have that fear, then it's scary to just go to a random person and be like, hey, this is happening to me. What can I do? How can you help me?

CARMEN VALENCIA: So why come to the desert to talk about climate change? Deserts are supposed to be hot and dry, right? Well, this isn't just desert. It's home to thousands of farm workers. And the food they grow here feeds people all over the country.

The issue we're seeing here is something called the climate gap, the idea that low income communities are the first and worst-hit by global warming. Pre-existing problems, like unstable energy infrastructure, lack of affordable housing, and income inequality, are all compounded by rising temperatures caused by climate change.

MARIELA LOERA: The number one challenge for community right now is just the instability of power and energy in their homes. So not having energy, in and of itself, is horrible. Your appliances, your cell phone, your computer, the internet, all of the aspects in your family and in your day to day lifestyle require energy, are impacted. But then, when you live in an area with 120 degree weather, and then you have a horrible power outage the lasts three-plus days, it's all of these experiences amplified.

NOEMI SOLORZANO: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

CARMEN VALENCIA: The aging energy infrastructure in the Coachella Valley faces a number of problems, starting with frequent outages caused by downed power lines.

- Gusty winds at Bombay Beach in Imperial County caused 14 power poles to topple. Recent wind events have caused scattered outages in parts of the Valley.

- Powerful winds taking down 33 power poles along a major transmission line, shutting off the lights for 1,400 customers initially.

CARMEN VALENCIA: But the electric problems don't stop with power poles snapping in high winds. Record-breaking heat waves can push the demand for power beyond what's available and create rolling blackouts. And it's the residents of the eastern Coachella Valley that feel it most acutely.

OMAR GASTELUM: The Coachella Valley can really be split into the western side and the eastern side. The western side consists of the more developed tourist areas, like Palm Desert, Palm Springs. The Eastern side consist of smaller communities, usually where more farm workers live. We do see a lot of problems with power outages. Most of the mobile homes and mobile home parks in the area-- the units themselves are very old. So they are pre-'70s era, when the standards changed to increase better regulations and better standards for these homes. So these homes have inadequate insulation, which means that, during the summer months, during the extreme heat, the home is basically an oven.

MARIELA LOERA: The lack of adequate energy infrastructure that will give them adequate energy and constant energy in their homes, which also affects their accessibility to water, given that a lot of these homes rely on septic systems, which rely on power.

NOEMI SOLORZANO: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

- [SPEAKING SPANISH]

NOEMI SOLORZANO: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

CARMEN VALENCIA: Without reliable power for air conditioning or drinking water, the affordable housing options seem destined to fall further into disrepair.

MARIELA LOERA: These communities are unincorporated communities. They don't have a city. Nobody's reaching out to them. So if they need anything, and if anything is going on in their community, it really has to be initiated by them saying, hey, we need this. How are you going to get it to me? And we're already dealing with community who can't afford to lose a day of work.

OMAR GASTELUM: Being that it's largely an agricultural community, it's a very low-income area. And given the lack of affordable housing in the area, there's also very few alternatives for people to move and look for better situations.

MARIA POZAS: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

CARMEN VALENCIA: And as summer temperatures continue to rise, conditions in the fields become more and more dangerous.

MANUELA RAMIREZ: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

MARIELA LOERA: So they wake up in the morning to polluted water, which may or may not be there because of the possible lack of power. And then they're outside working in a really hot temperature to go back home to a home that, because of the way that it's built, it's like an oven. It's extremely hot. There's all of these issues going on, which are only getting worse with climate change. And all of these things are connected to each other.

CARMEN VALENCIA: The farm workers in Coachella Valley are caught in the climate gap. The problems they face feed into one another. And as the rest of the world attempts to prevent some future climate catastrophe, for them, the disaster is already happening.

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