The uber challenge facing the incoming Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency in its oversight of 1,570 hazard waste sites is best summed in a name that’s become synonymous with the daunting task: Superfund. The “Superfund” started out as a trust fund created by Congress in 1980 to finance cleanups, paid for by billions of dollars [...]
Mayor Acquanetta Warren responded to an outpour of opposition to ongoing warehouse development in a letter to the editor on Nov. 27, 2020. Unsurprisingly, she failed to meaningfully respond to residents' growing concerns about building warehouses next to our homes and our children's schools, as well as the harmful environmental impacts that are exacerbating in [...]
NORTH HAMPTON – Former state Rep. Mindi Messmer believes residents who live near the Coakley Landfill Superfund site should be concerned by detections of another PFAS contaminant in private wells. “It is concerning because once again we have people exposed to a chemical that we have no enforceable standards for,” Messmer said after perfluorooctanesulfonamide (PFOSA) was [...]
President-elect Joseph R. Biden tapped North Carolina environmental regulator Michael Regan to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and named Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico as his pick for interior secretary, as he moved Thursday to fill out the team tasked with implementing a far-reaching climate agenda. Mr. Regan, a veteran of the EPA during [...]
Introducing his climate team, President-elect Biden said his administration would respond to the existential threat of climate change “by building a modern, climate-resilient infrastructure and a clean energy future” that would put millions of Americans to work. “And we are committed to facing climate change by delivering environmental justice.” Read more... Photo credit: Angelia Weiss, Getty Images [...]
BOSTON (SHNS) – A coalition of more than 40 groups that includes long-standing environmental organizations, big players in the state’s financial world, tech companies, and more sent a letter Friday to the lawmakers trying to hammer out a climate bill highlighting the importance of including environmental justice provisions in the final product. Read more... Photo [...]
By: Zack Schiffer, Organizing Intern It has been one week since I began my community organizing internship with CHEJ. Many pride CHEJ on its ability to organize ordinary citizens and lead them towards accomplishing extraordinary things, but until spending a week with this dynamic team, I did not truly appreciate the level of dedication and energy [...]
The year is 2014, and the sleepy mining and agricultural towns of Northern Appalachia have transformed into gold-rush towns. But this is a new type of gold – Shale gas. These towns sit above an underground formation called the Marcellus Shale that could help make America the world’s greatest producer of natural gas – and [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
