As with Katrina, the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy left thousands of people without a home or access to essential needs. The people in the South Bronx and New Jersey affected most by the hurricane were predominately poor and black. As a result of the catastrophe, and the refusal to be left out, 200 environmental justice activists decided to take action by gathering together in New York to discuss how to integrate environmental justice needs into the larger redevelopment process.

An article highlighting the environmental justice movement's efforts is found here: http://colorlines.com/archives/2013/04/environmental_justice_soldiers_on_without_a_king_queen--or_major_dollars.html

When we think about environmental communities, generally the focus is on low-income, African American or Hispanic populations. Similarly, often times when we think of international environmental justice issues, the focus is on indigenous populations. But, there are indigenous populations within the borders of the United States. Native Americans and their communities are significantly burdened with environmental injustices, and despite the proclamation "all men are created equal," Native American communities are marginalized and disproportionately burdened.

As a voice to be heard, Native American communities continue to fight against the Keystone XL pipeline project. In March, the Obama Administration came out with their draft supplemental environmental impact statement, stating within it that the pipeline project would have no substantial impact on the rate of development in the tar sands. The Native communities have spoken out, claiming that the pipeline project would indeed be detrimental to the ecosystem, as well as the communities living there. In the article "Environmental Justice and the Keystone Pipeline," one member even went so far as to call the tar sands a "national sacrifice zone" for indigenous people.

To read the article, see: http://ecowatch.com/2013/environmental-justice-keystone-xl/

Urban green space, like urban gardening is another aspect of environmental justice that I find interesting, and one that is gaining more recognition. Urban green space involves the lack of open space and parks in and around cities. It is considered an environmental justice issue because the lack of such amenities creates a poor living environment, and contributes to increased exposure and adverse health effects from pollution. The increased risk tends to affect low-income and minority populations the most because their exposure to pollution sources is greater, and their ability to mediate the harms associated with such exposure is limited. There have been numerous studies conducted on the benefits of having access to green space, and even on the benefits of trees in urban areas. These studies show that parks and urban forests can help mitigate the impacts from soil and air pollution; can help reduce stress and asthma levels; and can help reduce obesity rates.

Despite the benefits of green space, cities, historically, have overlooked its impact in planning. As a result, many cities around the country are severely lacking in trees and park space. Los Angeles is/was one such city. I say is/was because the city has relatively few parks compared to the population. However, in the early 2000s, organizers got together to stop the city from redeveloping a rail yard into an industrial warehouse complex. They were successful in convincing the city that green space was crucially needed (the elementary school in the area didn't even have one single blade of grass!), and the Cornfield plan was put into motion. The Cornfield, also known as the Los Angeles State Historic Park, is a dedicated 32 acres of open space on a redeveloped brownfield site in the heart of Los Angeles. To this date, due to development changes, 13 acres of the park are open to residents, with the remaining acreage to be developed soon.

For more information on the benefits of urban green space, see: http://www.srs.fs.fed.us/pubs/ja/2012/ja_2012_jennings_001.pdf
For more information on the Cornfield, see: http://www.nrdc.org/ej/partnerships/green.asp , http://www.cityprojectca.org/ourwork/urbanparks.html , http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=22272 , or http://la.curbed.com/archives/2012/02/full_cornfield_park_project_finally_moving_forward.php

I was reading about water today, and how it plays into the larger picture of environmental justice. I found a paper entitled, "A Twenty-First Century U.S. Water Policy." The relevant chapter, written by Amy Vanderwarker, discusses water and environmental justice. Ms. Vanderwarker says that U.S. water policy has prioritized economic water uses, as opposed to water use for human consumption. She says water policy focuses on large-scale water developments such as dams, irrigation, flood control, but fails to consider the communities and environments such developments affect.

While federal agencies are supposed to consider the disparate impacts their actions have on low-income and minority communities, their oversight to truly consider the cumulative effects their decisions and projects have on environmental justice communities can be seen in various policy areas. For example, when the EPA considers a permit application under the Clean Air Act, only the specific facility's emissions and the regional air quality are taken into account. It does not weigh the fact that a community may already have four other air polluting facilities located within its borders. Similarly, when approving a water polluting permit, as long as the total maximum daily load for the water body isn't exceeded, the permit will be approved. Approving a water permit does not take into account the facility's air emissions, or the number of trucks that will be entering and exiting the facility on a daily basis, or the amount of waste the facility will process or ship off-site. Cumulative effects on the community and the environment are not considered; this is a major failing in U.S. policy, which prioritizes economic gain over the welfare of the people.

To read the paper, see: http://pacinst.org/us_water_policy/water_and_environmental_justice_ch3.pdf

Have you ever watched the movie A Civil Action? I watched it again last night, and it made me curious to find out more about Woburn, MA and the contaminated wells. If you have never seen the movie, or read the book, it is basically about a small town in Massachusetts that suffers from contaminated water. Many people in the town living closest to the wells have developed some form of leukemia. It turns out that several 55-gallon drums of toxic chemicals have been abandoned near the wells, from which the toxins are seeping into the groundwater, causing people to get sick.

This morning I did a little research, and found that Woburn, MA is located in the Mystic River Watershed. The watershed covers about 1% of the state's land, but is home to more than 500,000 people. The watershed has been the location of many of the state's industrial industries, such as: power plants, hazardous waste sites, incinerators, landfills, transfer stations, and various other polluting facilities. It is also home to three superfund sites, of which the site Wells G&H in Woburn is included. Eight of the fifteen Massachusetts communities considered the most overburdened with pollution lie in the Mystic River Watershed; most of these communities are considered environmental justice communities.

This map shows minority and low-income populations in the Mystic River Watershed area. It's hard to see the legend, but basically, if it's not grey, it's an environmental justice community. Thankfully, there are some environmental justice organizations who are helping to keep the residents informed and educated about the water quality issues and how to stay safe. Additionally, the EPA continues to work with the communities to clean up the superfund sites, including Wells G&H in Woburn.

To get a closer look at the map and find out more information about the Mystic River Watershed, please see: http://mysticriver.org/environmental-justice
To learn more about the EPA's clean-up efforts at Wells G&H, see: http://yosemite.epa.gov/r1/npl_pad.nsf/701b6886f189ceae85256bd20014e93d/25001afe0850c69a8525691f0063f701!OpenDocument

On April 3-5, 2013, Howard University School of Law hosted the 2013 National Environmental Justice Conference. This was an opportunity for policymakers, educators, and activists to come together to learn about and discuss environmental justice issues. The conference involved members from federal, state, and local organizations. It focused on discussions regarding agency policies and practices, and how they affect environmental justice. Some of the topics on this years agenda included: consulting with tribal governments on policies and practices; the forest service's outreach to environmental justice communities; environmental justice activism from community organizations; how social status/demographics affect health; the EPA's superfund program; climate change; the Civil Rights Act and the role it plays in environmental justice; and the responsibility of industry in environmental justice. There were also environmental justice training workshops to help participants recognize and understand environmental justice issues when they see them, and to help with grant writing.

One particular presentation of note came from Kathleen Mecca, president of the Niagara Gateway Columbus Park Association in Buffalo, New York. Ms. Mecca was asked to present a case study about the Peace Bridge located on Buffalo's west side regarding the effects of diesel air pollution coming from the bridge on residents of the community. I came across a video on this very issue that I thought was interesting because it highlights the struggle the community faces, not just from the abundant pollution, but also due to procedural justice issues.

Check it out here: http://movetheplaza.com/a-health-epidemic-the-facts/nejc/
For more information on the 2013 conference, see: http://thenejc.org/?page_id=698
For infomation on the 2014 conference, see: http://thenejc.org/?conference=national-environmental-justice-conference-and-training-program

The EPA's Environmental Justice Office

I came across an interview today between Yale Environment 360 and the head of the EPA's Environmental Justice Office, Matthew Tejada. Before joining the EPA, Mr. Tejada led a group called Air Alliance Houston. The group is a grass-roots organization in Texas that seeks to fight air pollution from refineries, chemical plants, and the shipping industry along the Gulf Coast. I found the interview interesting because it is often said that while the EPA has an Office of Environmental Justice, the office is small and maybe not that effective. The agency has a reputation that it, like the big green organizations, often forgets the human element in environmental issues. Instead, environmental efforts tend to focus on nature, protecting trees and wildlife, and regulating industry based on scientific criteria that fails to take into account the cumulative effects of pollution on already overburdened communities.

The EPA's addition of Mr. Tejada to its Office of Environmental Justice illustrates, I think, the agency's commitment to environmental justice issues. Mr. Tejada will bring a needed perspective to the table as one who has dealt with environmental justice at the ground level. He will be able to relate the hardships and actual effects polluting industries have on communities of low-income and minority populations. I think his appointment is a good thing...a very good thing.

You can find the interview here: http://e360.yale.edu/feature/interview_with_epa_environmental_justice_director_matthew_tejada/2627/

Since I've been talking about air pollution, here is a link to air pollution, in general, and its effects on human health. http://www.medscape.org/viewarticle/589135

Today, I read an article about air pollution in Los Angeles. The article, entitled Balancing economic development with air pollution curbs, highlights the struggles many communities face in modern America. Los Angeles is a twisting maze of freeways, with a city grown up around them. The communities that abut the freeways are primarily low-income and minority. It is these communities that suffer the most harmful effects of air pollution caused by the thousands of trucks and cars that pass by them everyday. The people surrounding Los Angeles freeways suffer from increased asthma risk and occurence, increased cancer and heart disease risk, and danger of underdeveloped lungs. Children in these communities have very high instances of missed school due to respiratory related diseases. Despite the danger of air pollution and the effect that it has already had on Los Angeles communities, the city continues to expand its freeway system.


The article mentions the THE Impact Project. THE (trade, health, environment) Impact Project focuses on addressing health effects associated with air pollution in the Los Angeles and Long Beach port areas, with a specific focus on air pollution caused by traffic. The Project is a community-academic partnership that has worked together to provide education to the communities with the goal of reducing environmental burdens. Community members were given the tools to assess levels of pollution in their neighborhoods, which they then presented to policymakers. The goal of the research is to improve distributive and procedural justice for low-income and minority communities, and ultimately to invoke action by government to reduce the hazards. Despite their efforts, economic factors loom large, and in March of this year the Los Angeles harbor commissioners approved a $500 million rail yard in the city, which would bring tens of thousands of jobs....and a lot more pollution. The coalition doesn't plan to give up, though; an appeal is on the way.

For more information on air pollution in Los Angeles, see http://www.psr-la.org/issues/environmental-health/air-pollution-and-goods-movement/
To read the article, see http://www.niehs.nih.gov/news/newsletter/2013/4/spotlight-goods/

Environmental Justice and Lead Poisoning in San Diego

Recently, I posted an article from Anne Lowe on the lead poisoning page of this blog. Her research on this issue, and the fact that I live in a house that was built in 1960, inspired me to do a little research on my own to find out what other communities are doing to prevent and remediate lead poisoning.

Lead poisoning is a giant environmental justice issue, largely because it tends to affect children of color more than anyone else. Even in comparable-age homes, it tends to affect african american and hispanic children more broadly. Lead poisoning is associated with lower iq and learning disabilities.

I fully believe that the best way to attack environmental justice issues is through collaboration across different levels of governement. And, so, when I came across this article, http://www.environmentalhealth.org/index.php/en/media-center/press-releases/178-lead-poisoning-prevention-task-force-to-receive-national-achievement-in-environmental-justice-award, regarding an organization in San Diego receiving an achievment award in environmental justice from the EPA, I thought it deserved more attention.

The award was presented to San Diego's Lead Poisoning Prevention Citizen's Advisory Task Force honoring their achievements in lead poisoning education and prevention. The task force, made up of local and city organizations, serves to empower residents and businesses in the active clean-up and testing for lead in the community and its members. This is a prime example of procedural justice at its best; the coming together of leaders, organizers, and community members to make a difference and take action to improve the lives of those affected by environmental injustices.

At the beginning of 2012, the task force had attracted more than $18 million, tested hundreds of children for lead poisoning, and remediated 1000 homes of lead contamination.

Urban Gardening in Milwaukee

Today’s post focuses on Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Milwaukee is a great example of federal, state, and local non-profit organizations coming together to solve the problems of pollution, abandoned buildings, food scarcity, and lack of economic opportunities in low-income and minority communities across the city.

Milwaukee has a long history of housing industrial and manufacturing facilities. As its manufacturing base has diminished, the city is left with a plethora of toxic, abandoned properties and communities steeped in poverty. The EPA has named Milwaukee’s 30^th Street Industrial Corridor a showcase community. The initiative seeks to work with state and local communities to redevelop Brownfields. The redevelopment efforts seek to improve the human, environmental and economic health of low-income and minority communities along the corridor through urban agriculture. To this date, EPA has provided the city with $1.3 million in revitalization funds, and has granted 4 brownfields assessment grants, totaling $800,000.

The city is working on converting the brownfields properties into urban gardens, which are leased to non-profit and neighborhood organizations.  These gardens instill a sense of purpose into these communities, and provide the residents with access to fresh food and jobs. A great example of this is the Victory Garden Initiative, an organization committed to creating urban gardens throughout Milwaukee to ensure everyone has access to fresh foods. The founder of this organization, Gretchen Mead, was chosen to have her idea included in Milwaukee’s application to the Bloomberg Mayor’s Challenge, a contest/program that awards millions of dollars to the best solutions to problems faced by American cities. Her idea, in my opinion, is ingenious, and could help revitalize communities across the nation. Specifically her idea is to commit foreclosed properties and abandoned land to urban agriculture with the goal of farming the land for at least five years. Once a person farms the land for five years, the foreclosed home becomes theirs under a homestead law. This idea would provide incentive for potential homeowners to grow their own food, invest in and provide a resource to their community, and possibly provide jobs to others in the community. By tying the agriculture to home ownership, the city empowers residents and alleviates the ever-present problem of abandoned properties.  

More information on EPA’s showcase communities can be found here: http://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/grants/ej-showcase-r05.html

Information on the Victory Garden Initiative can be found here: http://www.uuworld.org/news/articles/281127.shtml and here: http://victorygardeninitiative.org/

The urban gardening movement is going strong, and many low income and minority population communities are getting involved to clean up their environments and provide food security for their residents. The background image for this blog, located here http://grist.org/article/the-new-wave-of-urban-farming-how-to-get-fresh-food-from-small-spaces/, is just one example of urban gardening in America. The article is a good source for beginner urban gardeners; it lays out ideas on how to start a garden and answers some common questions about gardening in urban areas.

Today, and in next few posts, I will be showcasing a few communities who are working with their local governments and the EPA to create urban gardens.

First up is the Ironbound community in Newark, New Jersey.

What started out as a small community garden has expanded into a network of gardens throughout the city. Community involvement has played a large role in this expansion, with many residents helping out with the revitalization of the land, and by attending community meetings with a call for more improvements and garden locations.

The Ironbound Community consists of approximately 50,000 people; 75% of these residents are non-native English speakers, and the community is plagued with high unemployment and poverty. In addition, the community is home to chemical plants and a trash incinerator. The children suffer from high asthma rates, and the water is polluted with toxins and pathogens.

Urban gardening is a way for this community to improve its living conditions. As a result of the Ironbound Community Corporation’s efforts, the EPA has granted the community a $25,000 environmental justice grant to improve community gardens and provide environmental education.  

The EPA’s environmental justice small grant program has provided disproportionately affected communities with over $23 million in funding, and has helped over 1,200 communities with environmental justice issues.

The Ironbound community continues to pursue improving itself through urban gardening, and is currently raising money for its next garden expansion project.

For more information on the Ironbound Community’s efforts and its EPA grant, see http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/6427a6b7538955c585257359003f0230/8500b892eb5c805d8525798e00659684!OpenDocument and http://www.njconservationexchange.org/tag/icc.

Environmental Justice and Food Security

As I research environmental justice in the United States, I am drawn more and more to issues surrounding the lack of environmental benefits that communities experience, as opposed to direct environmental harms. Environmental justice encompasses both sides of the coin; while burdening communities with pollutants seems the more obvious injustice, lack of amenities such as green-space and parks or fresh food also plays a role in people’s quality of life, and is an environmental injustice to those communities who do not have access to such essential amenities.

Access to fresh food is sometimes characterized as a separate movement known as the community food security movement, despite its common goals with environmental justice. Both seek to ensure justice to communities lacking in equality, and both look at the big picture to recognize that there are many different factors contributing to the injustice. I think the issue of food security should be characterized as a subset of environmental justice. After all, our environment is more than the trees, air, and water around us. Our environment is made up of whatever surrounds and affects us. It not only involves where we live, but how we live, what we’re exposed to, how it benefits us or doesn’t. If you were enrolling your child in a new school, you would probably want to know about the environment…that doesn’t mean you are wondering if there are any trees around or whether the air quality is good (although in some cases, to be discussed at a later date, it may). What you are really wondering is if the school environment will enrich your child, allow him or her to reach their full potential, provide a safe place to learn, be encouraging and supportive, and ultimately serve the purpose for which it was intended. We need to look at communities the same way. The environment in which we live definitely involves trees, air, and water, but it is so much more than that; access to fresh food is a vital component of the quality of one’s environment, and lack of access to it is an injustice to that community.

Welcome!

Welcome to Environmental Justice For All! This blog is intended to be a place of information regarding environmental justice issues around the world. Environmental justice, at its core, involves injustices suffered by those less fortunate, namely minorities and low income populations, due to environmental harms caused by government and corporate decisions. The movement in the United States began with a focus on racial discrimination in the siting of toxic pollution sources. The environmental justice movement today encompasses much more than just siting decisions; it includes issues regarding clean water and clean air in urban environments, lack of green space in cities, exposure to pesticides for farm labor, housing development, and everything in between. The environmental justice movement is about social justice and the disproportionate effects decisions at the top have on marginalized individuals and communities.

I hope you enjoy the information contained in these pages. Please feel free to leave a comment or start a discussion, for it is through such discourse that we can begin to make a change.