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Naval Power Plant Proposal Tests Virginia On Environmental Justice

In the first major test of Virginia’s historic environmental justice law, the state’s air board Dec. 3 approved a U.S. Navy proposal to build a power plant near a predominately Black community with higher-than-normal rates of respiratory illnesses.
Environmental and health advocates were dismayed by the State Air Pollution Control Board’s 5–1 decision, saying it shows that the state still hasn’t fully embraced equity and justice at the regulatory level. Board members, meanwhile, pointed out that the Navy plans to install technologies that will ensure the plant produces few emissions.
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Photo credit: Don S. Montgomery, USN (Ret.)

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Claims of ‘Bleak’ Environmental Justice Record Appear to Fell a Biden Favorite

WASHINGTON — When Joseph R. Biden, Jr. won the presidential election, his top candidate to lead the nation’s most powerful environmental agency appeared clear: Mary D. Nichols, California’s clean air regulator and arguably the country’s most experienced climate change official, was seen as a lock to run the Environmental Protection Agency.

Now Mr. Biden’s team is scrambling to find someone else, according to several people who have spoken with the presidential transition team. The chief reason: This month, a group of more than 70 environmental justice groups wrote to the Biden transition charging that Ms. Nichols has a “bleak track record in addressing environmental racism.”

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Photo credit: Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press

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Environmental Justice Leaders Look for a Focus on Disproportionately Impacted Communities of Color

For environmental justice advocates who have spent decades fighting to protect communities from polluters, the new year cannot come too soon. After four years of the Trump administration shredding the Environmental Protection Agency into “little tidbits,” as President Donald Trump put it during his first campaign, change is in the air.
President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to make the climate crisis and environmental justice guiding principles of his administration from day one, Jan. 20. It’s a huge promise—and a tall order.
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Photo credit: Spike Johnson

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Florida Sees Signals of a Climate-Driven Housing Crisis

If rising seas cause America’s coastal housing market to dive — or, as many economists warn, when — the beginning might look a little like what’s happening in the tiny town of Bal Harbour, a glittering community on the northernmost tip of Miami Beach.

With single-family homes selling for an average of $3.6 million, Bal Harbour epitomizes high-end Florida waterfront property. But around 2013, something started to change: The annual number of homes sales began to drop — tumbling by half by 2018 — a sign that fewer people wanted to buy.

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Photo credit: Rose Marie Cromwell for The New York Times

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Backyard Talk

Fighting Polluters with the Science of Environmental Justice in the COVID-19 Era

By: Leija Helling, Communications Intern
As evidence highlighting the racial inequity of COVID-19 impacts has grown clear over the past few months, activists have harnessed the science to fight against polluters.
Data through the end of May 2020 showed Black and Latinx people were three times as likely to become infected with COVID-19 and twice as likely to die from it. Research points to the disproportionate exposure of Black and Latinx communities to polluted air as a key driver of disparity. A CHEJ Blog post last week stated that particulate matter (PM) in the air is a “huge risk factor” for COVID-19; even a small increase in PM leads to a large increase in COVID-19 mortality.
Residents of Andreson, North Carolina, are one of many predominantly Black communities experiencing a storm of injustices threatening their health, and using the science COVID-19 racial inequities to back their fight. In support of the group’s efforts to stop an asphalt mixing plant from being built in their town, the CHEJ Science and Technology Team wrote a letter to North Carolina officials underscoring the devastating effect an asphalt plant would have on the health of the community, especially during COVID-19 pandemic. “Particulate matter in the air causes health risks, and these risks are disproportionately shouldered by Black people,” the letter reads. “Both of these facts are exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Invoking racial disparities in COVID-19 impacts has already succeeded in shutting polluters out of communities. In July, the community group Livable Arlington was able to stop fracking wells from being built by a preschool in a low-income, predominantly Black and Latinx neighborhood of Arlinton, Texas. The area also had the highest rates of COVID-19 infection in the city. In a Living Room Leadership interview with CHEJ in September, Ranjana Bhandari, the founder and director of Liveable Arlington, explained that the group used research linking air pollution with higher COVID-19 mortality rates to convince the City Council to oppose the permit.
Going forward, these fights should remind us of the power in approaches that draw links between science, systems of oppression, and health outcomes. The pandemic has not introduced new inequities but rather amplified those that already exist. Although COVID-19 will be temporary, the strategies leading activists to invoke COVID-19 racial disparities are evergreen because they highlight a broader conversation about equitable public health and safety. “The pandemic has made the disproportionate impact of environmental justice issues on poor minority communities more clear,” Ranjana says. “I hope we remember what COVID has taught us about how inequitable our country is—who is most vulnerable, and who has the least protection.” 

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Northern hemisphere breaks record for hottest ever summer

This summer was the hottest ever recorded in the northern hemisphere, according to US government scientists.
The new record surpassed the summers of 2016 and 2019. Last month was also the second-hottest August ever recorded for the globe. The numbers put 2020 on track to be one of the five warmest years, according to Noaa.
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Photo credit: Kimimasa Mayama | EPA

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Stories of Local Leaders

Advocates at Right to Breathe Caravan Call for Environmental and Racial Justice in North Birmingham

By: Leija Helling, Communications Intern
This summer, community organizers in Birmingham, Alabama, coordinated a series of caravan protests calling for racial and environmental justice at the 35th Avenue Superfund site in North Birmingham. 
Enviro-rally-7.11.20Communities living in and around the 35th Avenue site are facing decades of unabated industrial pollution, and after years of fighting for the EPA to intervene, people are tired of waiting. The contaminated area, encompassing three predominantly Black North Birmingham neighborhoods, was designated a Superfund site almost a decade ago due to high levels of lead and carcinogens such as BaP and arsenic, yet the community has seen little response from officials since. Meanwhile, coke oven plants, steel production facilities, asphalt plants and quarries continue to pollute the land, water and air, exacerbating health disparities.


“We are just going to have to start taking to the streets like everybody else,” said Charlie Powell, founder and president of the advocacy group
People Against Neighborhood Industrial Contamination (PANIC). On July 11, members of the Right to Breathe Caravan gathered for a socially distanced rally where speakers shared stories and enumerated demands, most importantly calling for officials to move the site to the EPA’s Superfund National Priorities List. Afterwards, the group drove dozens of cars decorated with signs and posers through neighborhoods in North Birmingham to raise awareness about the problem and galvanize the community into action. The events were live-streamed via Facebook and Zoom.
PANIC coordinated the protests alongside the Greater Birmingham Alliance to Stop Pollution (GASP) and other local partners including the Birmingham chapter of Black Lives Matter. According to GASP executive director Michael Hanson, the caravan was largely inspired by protests and calls for racial justice following the murder of George Floyd. Hanson says the global movement provided an opportunity to “highlight the way that environmental issues intersect with systemic racism and oppression.”
On Aug. 27, a second Right to Breathe Caravan traveled from Birmingham to Montgomery, the state capital, seeking a response from Governor Kay Ivey to their demands for justice for those living in and near the Superfund site. PANIC and GASP have been requesting a meeting with Gov. Ivey for months with no response, and she has yet to take a public stand on the issue. So, organizers, residents and their allies took matters into their own hands and drove to the Governor’s Mansion, seeking her support. With racial disparities in the COVID-19 pandemic further highlighting the need for racial health equity, the community needs remediation more than ever. “This is an environmental injustice, and we want relief,” Powell said.
To learn more about the environmental crisis in Birmingham, Alabama, check out parts one, two, and three of a series published by Scalawag Magazine and the Huffington Post in 2019.

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Liberty Utilities Drops Plans For Major Gas Pipeline In N.H.

“Liberty Utilities says it will not build the proposed Granite Bridge natural gas pipeline in Southern New Hampshire, after finding a cheaper way to serve new customers by using existing infrastructure.” Read more.
Photo credit: 350 NEW HAMPSHIRE

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Chevron Is Trying to Crush a Prominent Climate Lawyer – and Maybe the World

“The fossil fuel industry has really dug in and is using its enormous financial clout and its influence in the federal courts to resist and openly attack this citizens’ movement and the advocates and lawyers who are on the frontlines.” Read more.
Photo: Amazon Watch

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Toxic Tuesday: Creosote

Creosote is a large mixture of chemicals that is used as a wood preservative in the United States, as well as for roofing, aluminum smelting, and road paving. Houston’s Fifth Ward has been pinpointed as a Cancer Cluster: an area that has a “greater than expected number of cancer cases,” largely due to the community’s exposure to creosote from the Union Pacific railroad site in Houston’s 5th Ward.
Creosote is released into soil and water systems and may take many years to break down. Due to groundwater contamination, creosote can make its way into drinking water systems, putting entire communities at risk for exposure. Creosote may cause irritation of the respiratory tract and can lead to stomach pains and burning of the throat and mouth. The International Agency for Research on Cancer and the EPA have determined that creosote is likely a carcinogen, meaning that exposure to the chemical can likely cause cancer.
CHEJ has been working with the Texas Health and Environment Alliance (THEA) to help the communities of Houston’s 5th Ward further understand the extent of the contamination and what different health investigations can do to propel THEA’s goals of raising awareness of their exposure to creosote. CHEJ and THEA have been hosting informational Zoom town halls about Houston’s 5th Ward Cancer Cluster. You can learn more about Houston’s Cancer Cluster by watching Fault Lines’ mini documentary or by visiting THEA’s Facebook page to learn and listen in on their past and future town hall meetings or learn how to get involved.
To learn more about creosote, click here.