Monitoring the community’s air
As an Oxnard resident who has spent the past year serving on the Community Advisory Committee for the “My Oxnard Air” project, I want to highlight this essential collaborative effort to protect our local public health. This initiative brings together Climate First: Replacing Oil & Gas (CFROG), California State University Channel Islands, the Port of Hueneme, and the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District to deliver continuous, real-time data on our local air quality.
Our focus is black carbon, or soot — a major component of diesel exhaust that easily bypasses the body’s natural defenses to enter our lungs and bloodstream. Inhalation can lead to severe health issues like asthma, respiratory illness, heart attacks, strokes, cancer, and birth defects. Beyond health risks, these particles absorb sunlight and warm the air, contributing to climate change. To track this threat, our committee worked with project partners to position air monitors near industrial zones, busy trucking corridors, and in historically underserved neighborhoods.
We encourage all community members to visit the project website www.myoxnardair.org to see this data in action. The site features live monitoring information from each of our four stations, showing both raw measurements and a weighted black carbon index that highlights unusual spikes in local baseline conditions. Visitors can use an interactive environmental data viewer to see how pollution levels correlate with local weather factors like wind speed, temperature, and humidity.
The platform also hosts an interactive map of monitor locations, a comprehensive FAQ section, and community videos explaining how this pollution impacts residents. Finally, the site provides numerous external links to additional air quality monitoring tools. Please visit www.myoxnardair.org today to access these resources and help inform science-based action for a cleaner Oxnard.
Isaac Khalaf, Oxnard
Congress must reject merger
We the People must determine our sovereignty as a nation at the community level, or our future is in peril. All politics is local, and as our Congressional representatives returned to Washington, DC, consideration of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2027 that would increase annual Pentagon spending by a whopping 67% to $1.5 trillion will be introduced, combined with the so-called SAVE Act, restricting voter registration.
Before members can vote on the legislation, the Rules Committee, consisting of nine Republicans and four Democrats, must first vote separately on the rule, which establishes the terms of the debate and determines which amendments may be considered. The problem is that because of a dispute over the SAVE Act, the House voted down the rule. The Rules Committee must meet again and draft a new rule.
Based on what just happened in the committee, the Massie-Khanna Amendment and other amendments that would remove the unconstitutional U.S.-Israel military merger and other deeply controversial provisions from the NDAA could be refused, not allowed by the Rules Committee, and the merger provision would remain in the bill.
Please immediately contact your Congressional Representative or call the Capitol switchboard, 202-224-3121, if you don’t know who they are. The Ventura County representatives are Salud Carbajal, CD 24, at 202-225-3601, and Julia Brownley, CD 26, at 202-225-5811. Urge them to support making in order the Massie-Khanna Amendment and other amendments to remove Section 219 from the NDAA, vote against the rule if those amendments are blocked, and if the rule passes, vote against the NDAA until Section 219 is removed.
Congress should and must defend American sovereignty, uphold the Constitution, and reject any measure that integrates the executive and military of the United States with those of a foreign government.
Roslyn Scheuerman, Ventura
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Need cleaner air in Oxnard, reject military merger | Letters
Reporting by Ventura County Star / Ventura County Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Ventura County Star | USA TODAY Network
