“Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?” asked Tupac Shakur.
I did—it’s the story of Black survival in spite of living in undesirable environmental conditions.
Living conditions must be improved to ensure Black futures. As a Black woman passionate about environmental justice, this is the charge that guides my work, volunteering, and activism around transportation.
Racism and the political disenfranchisement of Black communities underlie transportation inequities. Following the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, urban planners routed freeways through poor communities of color to achieve the urban renewal goal of “slum” clearance and to reinforce racial segregation. Freeway construction proceeded largely without community input. Despite a few successful freeway revolts, construction continued.
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Photo Credit: howard dyckoff/flickr
Day: May 27, 2021
Categories
The Fight for Equal Protection
By Judith Eppele, Community Organizing Intern
Have you ever wished you were a tomato? Probably not, but in the context of health issues, you may change your mind. Think about how fast health authorities respond to E. coli outbreaks in lettuce, Listeria in milks and cheeses, or even Salmonella in–you guessed it–tomatoes. Now think about health issues caused by pollution. How long has Flint, Michigan been without clean drinking water? Objectively, way too long. The disparity between the length of these responses–or lack thereof–is obvious and appalling. Thankfully, CHEJ has recognized this problem and is actively working to fix it, through our Unequal Response Unequal Protection campaign.
This campaign has been the main focus of my internship with CHEJ thus far, and so I’ve had firsthand experience with finding a solution for the Unequal Response issue. Most notably is trying to figure out how to build a model from the ground up that gives communities a fair and equal response to public health issues, in which an entity has to meet with them and have a conversation about the specific issue in their community. One of my favorite parts of this model is that it’s a joint effort between the community members and the health authority entity. Therefore, the entity and community members will be in conversation with each other throughout the process. This will allow for community members to finally be justly heard and respected in their fight against toxic chemicals, and nothing can be swept under the rug without them knowing. Further, the entity is able to make a more informed decision on what the actual problem is and how best to solve it, as they’re able to have constant communication with the community at hand. This ensures for a more transparent and efficient health investigation affair, and thus a win-win situation.
Eventually, we’d like for the Unequal Response Unequal Protection campaign to be implemented into national legislation. Doing so would be monumental for community groups across the country–possibly being the best thing since sliced bread! We are one step closer to living in a world where people are able to live peacefully in a safe and healthy community, with no fear of chemicals in their drinking water, food, or air. After living a year in a world where safety and health are never promised, a type of national legislation that covers the environmental aspect of health issues could not be more welcome.
In case you’d like to read more about the goals of Unequal Response Unequal Protection and our progress thus far, feel free to check out the page on our website HERE. You can also email us at info@chej.org if you have any questions or comments, or if you’d like to join us on our campaign journey. In the fight against toxic chemicals, the more support from awesome people like you, the better. Let’s win this fight together!
Photo Credit: CNN
The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals this month ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to go back and reconsider its lead hazard standards for homes—again.
On May 14, in A Community Voice et al. v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the appeals court ruled that the EPA violated the court’s 2017 mandate to reevaluate hazard standards for lead in dust and paint that persist in millions of American homes, posing health risks, particularly to young children. For separate reasons, the court also ordered the agency to update its definition of lead-contaminated soil.
The EPA was found in violation for not strengthening its health standards for lead safety and instead considering such outside factors as feasibility and testing capabilities. In its ruling, the majority of appeals court judges also rebuked the agency for its glacial pace in setting standards over the last three decades.
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Photo Credit: MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images
The battle over the massive Gowanus rezoning plan roiling Brooklyn involves urgent environmental issues that we ignore at our physical and moral peril.
The latest news is the discovery by a longtime Gowanus blogger that lethal coal tar poisoning land next to the canal had, as early as 2005, migrated beyond that land and slithered underneath existing buildings to the north, the canal itself and beyond to the east and Smith St. to the west. Katia Kelly dug into official archives maintained by National Grid, which is responsible for the site cleanup, and found proof of the migration. Neither the utility nor the state Department of Environmental Conservation overseeing the cleanup ever announced it publicly.
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Photo Credit: City of New York
An estimated 2,200 tons of asbestos are buried in a mound behind the five-acre former Carolina Asbestos Company in downtown Davidson. It’s the leftover byproduct of the company that made shingles, automotive brake linings and other asbestos products from 1930 to about 1970.
While the factory was up and running, sometimes asbestos floated in the air into surrounding yards. Over the years, it also ran onto neighborhood streets and into a stream downhill from the factory. And some was moved around town intentionally — carried from the mill to fill in people’s yards and driveways. Longtime resident Marvin Brandon knows that firsthand.
“They could go over and get the asbestos, put it in the trunk of the car, bring it home, spread it out on their driveways and crush it up, just break it up, or drive over it to break it up. Because I remember my dad doing it several times,” Brandon said.
Asbestos also may have been used to help fill in what’s now the town-owned Roosevelt Wilson Park, off Griffith Street. Sections of the park these days are surrounded by orange fencing and warning signs while the town awaits an EPA cleanup.
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Photo Credit: David Boraks/WFAE
The city of Newark, New Jersey, resolved yearslong litigation Tuesday in connection to its water crisis, in which city drinking water was contaminated with illegally high levels of lead.
Officials from the city and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) reached an agreement with the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Newark Education Workers Caucus, which sued city and state officials in June 2018 for ongoing violations of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, including their failure to address the lead crisis on a timely basis.
A New Jersey federal judge signed an order Tuesday approving the settlement.
Around the time the lawsuit was filed, quality reports published by the city found drinking water in parts of Newark to be unsafe for 18 months. In 2018, according to the city’s water quality report, lead levels at several sites were above 47 parts per billion; federal EPA guidelines say lead levels should fall below 15 parts per billion.
Photo Credit: CNN
“Lifting up these communities makes us all stronger as a nation and increases the health of everybody,” Biden said.
Biden signed an executive order establishing a White House interagency council on environmental justice, create an office of health and climate equity at the Health and Human Services Department, and form a separate environmental justice office at the Justice Department. The order also directs the government to spend 40 percent of its sustainability investments on disadvantaged communities.
Photo Credit: David J. Phillip/AP
Everyone’s talking about the Covid-19 vaccine these days – who gets it first; how will it be distributed; is there enough; where do I sign up; and so much more. While it’s still early in the rollout, it’s already become clear that African Americans and Latinos, who have been hit the hardest by the Corona virus and Covid-19, are getting vaccinated at disproportionately low rates. The early data (though limited by many factors including poor data on who is being vaccinated) indicates that vaccinations are not reaching the populations the virus has harmed most and that Black and Brown people are getting vaccinated at a much lower rate than their share of cases and deaths.
In Maryland, only about 16% of the first doses of the vaccine have gone to African Americans, and 4.6% have gone to Latinos. Those groups represent 31% and 11% of the population, respectively. Black residents have accounted for approximately 33% of Maryland’s coronavirus cases and 35% of deaths from the disease; Latino residents account for 19% of infections and 9% of fatalities. In New York City, about 5% of those vaccinated are Latino or African American, but these groups make up 29% and 24% of the city’s population, respectively. In Philadelphia, 12% of those vaccinated were Black while the city’s population is about 44% Black.
These results are consistent with a report released last week by the Kaiser Family Foundation that evaluated race and ethnicity data on vaccinations for 17 states obtained from the federal government. Kaiser found that “the share of vaccinations among Black people is smaller than their share of cases in all 16 reporting states and smaller than their share of deaths in 15 states. For example, in Mississippi, Black people account for 15% of vaccinations, compared to 38% of cases and 42% of deaths, and, in Delaware, 8% of vaccinations have been received by Black people, while they make up nearly a quarter of cases (24%) and deaths (23%). Similarly, Hispanic people account for a smaller share of vaccinations compared to their share of cases and deaths in most states reporting data. For example, in Nebraska, 4% of vaccinations are among Hispanic people, while they make up 23% of cases and 13% of deaths.”
Conversely, Kaiser found that “the share of vaccinations among White people is larger than their share of cases in 13 of the 16 reporting states and larger than their share of deaths in 9 states.” For example, in North Carolina, 82% of vaccinations have been among White people, while they make up 62% of cases and 65% of deaths.
These figures make it clear that the early rollout strategy is not adequately nor appropriately targeting those most susceptible and vulnerable to Covid-19. It is early and much has been said about the logistics difficulties in getting the vaccine into the arms of the people who need it most. But it does seem apparent if not obvious that the rollout strategy for the distribution of the vaccine is not centered on equity – getting the vaccine into the arms of the people who have been infected the most and who are dying at the highest rate.