BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — Lawncare industry blog LawnStarter releases an annual ranked list of cities in the United States by different dimensions of urban pollution, including per capital carbon emissions, trash in landfills, and infrastructural worthiness. This year, Bakersfield ranked number 6 on LawnStarter's list of the top ten dirtiest cities in America.
Other California cities making notable entries on the list were San Bernardino at number 3 and Fresno at number 8. The number 1 dirtiest city in America on LawnStarter's list? Houston, Texas.
Further down the list, Palmdale is number 17, Riverside is 47, and San Francisco is down at 97.
Looking into the breakdown of dirtiest by type, worst air quality is a five-way tie between Riverside, San Bernardino, Fontana, Ontario, and Rancho Cucamonga. Irvine and Glendale also make an appearance in the top five highest amount of landfill waste per 10,000 residents.
On the plus side, Stockton, Oakland, and Anaheim are in the top five cities producing the least greenhouse gases per resident. Additionally, Rancho Cucamonga, Salinas, and Santa Clarita are in the top five cities with the lowest share of residents who think their cities are too dirty.
And on the LawnStarter list, Bakersfield is number 1 in share of residents upset by all the pollution. The top five cities also include San Bernardino, Fresno, and Stockton.
The LawnStarter blog team used data collected from a variety of sources, including the Centers for Disease Control, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Energy, the EPA, and U.S. Housing and Urban Development to determine their categories and rankings for the different cities. Data collected includes information like the percentage of smokers in a community, how many EV charging stations there are in the city, and the rates of overcrowded homes and unhoused people.
According to the LawnStarter blog, studies and rankings like this matter because dirty cities aren't just unpleasant, they can be unhealthy. Inadequate municipal sanitation, a high number of residents without a way to care for their needs in a private, clean manner, and low air quality affect both physical and mental health.
Bakersfield's top ten showing on the list of dirtiest cities may be disappointing, but its number one ranking as the most fed-up-with-dirt city in the country shows there's hope for change. If it's true that acknowledging the problem is half of the solution, then Bakersfield's never looked better.
