The Environmental Protection Agency has paused operations at three Superfund sites in North Carolina that are projected to be in the direct path of Hurricane Dorian. Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station in Craven County, and Camp Lejeune and ABC One Hour Cleaners in Onslow County all pose potential health risks with the coming storm. The EPA is taking precautionary steps to prevent further toxic release accidents, similar to those resulting from Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and Hurricane Florence in 2018. Read More.
Author: CHEJ Intern
The Environment Integrity Project released a report assessing the impact of Houston’s current plastics industry and the industry’s projected expansion. The report reviewed a total of 90 plants in the area revealing that nearly two-thirds of the facilities do not meet current compliance standards. Further, a total of 48 expansion proposals for plastic producing facilities in Houston are projected to add thousands of more tons of pollutants into the air over the next few years. Read More.
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Veto Ohio Senate Bill 33
If you live in a state with any type of oil, gas, pipeline, PAY ATTENTION! In fact, if we start seeing bills like the one before the Ohio legislature it doesn’t even have to be an oil/gas producing state. The Ohio bill lists 73 different “Critical Infrastructures”.
Below you will see a letter to Ohio Governor Mike DeWine from citizens of Ohio asking for him to veto SB 33 if it comes to his desk. The letter will help you understand what is going on in many states.
To Ohio Governor Mike DeWine:
The undersigned environmental justice, racial justice, civil justice, criminal justice, and other civil society groups and individuals urge you to veto Ohio Senate Bill 33 (SB 33). The bill would undermine and silence already marginalized voices. SB 33 is an unnecessary proposal that creates new draconian penalties for conduct already covered by existing criminal statutes and could have dire unintended consequences. SB 33 is part of a national trend of so-called “critical infrastructure” legislation promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) that is intended to neutralize citizen activism around oil and gas infrastructures. We urge you to oppose SB 33.
Critical infrastructure bills disproportionately affect some of the most underrepresented communities, criminalizing their right to protest. These bills target many already marginalized voices, in reaction to some of the most high-profile protests in recent history. Communities of color, low-wealth communities and our Native American population are most affected by unchecked environmental pollution; family farms have the most to lose by unfair land-grabs for large infrastructure projects. These communities have a right to peacefully resist environmentally unsafe and unjust policies and unchecked corporate abuse.
SB 33 is purportedly designed to protect critical infrastructure, but the definition of “critical infrastructure” is overly broad and would cover large swaths of the state in urban, suburban, and rural areas, creating the unintended consequence of ensnaring many in Ohio’s already overburdened criminal justice system.
Additionally, the bill does not distinguish between criminal damages of one dollar or a million dollars. At a time when many people, including lawmakers, have recognized the deleterious effects that mass incarceration has had on society and have attempted to rectify laws that have criminalized certain conduct or imposed unreasonable penalties, SB 33 is a giant step backwards. By creating a whole new class of nonviolent offenders who could serve serious prison time, it is antithetical to criminal justice reform.
Environmental advocacy, including civil disobedience, does not threaten physical infrastructure or safety. It threatens profits. Critical infrastructure bills are based on model legislation crafted by corporate interests to establish special protections for some private industries engaged in controversial practices that attract opposition and protest. These bills, including SB 33, are rooted in governments hostile attitudes toward environmental justice advocacy because it threatens the profits of these corporations. Whenever states enact legislation based on these hostile attitudes towards particular political speech, it has a chilling effect that will be felt widely.
We urge you to veto SB 33 if and when it comes across your desk. From a criminal justice reform perspective, this bill is damaging, as it creates new steep penalties for conduct that is already covered under existing criminal law. These new steep penalties and special protections for so-called critical infrastructure are rooted in animus towards anti-pipeline protesters. It is inappropriate for states to seek to legislate in order to penalize individuals for their First Amendment-protected points of view.
A public auction will be held on Monday, September 23 to determine the fate of the property for the late Tonawanda Coke factory. The facility closed its doors in 2018 after being convicted of criminal offenses in wrongful disposal of hazardous waste and exposure to toxic emissions. The auction will determine who will receive ownership of the land for future use and cleanup. Read More.
The Ohio Environmental Council released a report Thursday, August 22 addressing Ohio’s children at the greatest risk to climate change. As wild fires rage on in the Amazon and carbon dioxide levels cause climate temperatures to rise, the OEC has voiced concern for asthma and allergy problems, water contamination, and dangerous algae blooms <Read More>.
A study released Tuesday, August 20, 2019 by the University of Chicago has linked proximity to air pollution to an increased rate of neuropsychiatric diseases. The study examines the worst polluted counties in both the United States and Denmark and associated data in those counties on cases of bipolar disorder and depression. Counties in the United States with the worst air pollution had a 27 percent increase in bipolar disorder and a 6 percent increase in depression compared to counties with the best air quality. A similar result was observed in polluted counties in Denmark.
Computational biologist and member the University of Chicago research team, Atif Khan, explains, “Our study in the United States and Denmark show that living in polluted areas, especially early in life, is predictive of mental disorders.” <Read More>
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Global Youth Climate Strike
This September, millions of people across the world will walk out of their jobs, classrooms and homes to join in the annual Global Youth Climate Strike. On Friday, September 20 and 27, participants in more than 150 countries will disrupt their daily routines to speak out against the coal, oil, and gas industry with a goal to demand an end to the use of fossil fuels. More information on how to organize a climate strike and strike event locations can be found on the Global Climate Strike website. <Read More>
by Kenia French, CHEJ Communications Intern
As a college student studying environmental science, I find myself constantly inundated with terrifying news about my future. The world’s collapsing if we don’t make sweeping change to the structures of our lives by 2030? Great. We’re posed to lose an obscene amount of Earth’s biodiversity in this century? Fun. The ice caps in Greenland are melting at unprecedented rates after July 2019 went on record as the hottest month ever recorded? Amazing.
It can be really hard to stay motivated in a field where every fight feels like an uphill battle. However, working at CHEJ this past summer opened my eyes to environmental justice, and with that an entirely new perspective on motivation, uphill battles and the impending end of modern society as we know it.
It’s not that the issues we confront at CHEJ are any easier for the soul to process. Charlie Powell and the people of Northern Birmingham have watched friends and family die and have faced every single roadblock imaginable advocating for the right to live in a community that wouldn’t poison them. The people of Minden, West Virginia have suffered for 30 years in a PCB-contaminated town, and only now is the government beginning to take action that may help their situation change.
Spending my summer working at CHEJ, I was struck everyday by how the work we were doing was having a real, tangible impact on people’s lives. Even more striking is that everything CHEJ has achieved and has helped others to achieve is through grassroots community action.
According to CHEJ, community action is the way: overall, the big institutions that govern our country like stability and not doing work. Even if emission standards exist that are meant to protect communities from toxic pollution and hazardous waste, it doesn’t at all mean that people are actually enforcing these standards. Community action, then, is the way forward in our democracy, a way to get your voice heard and get the law enforcers to pay attention to you and fix your situation in order to shut you up.
CHEJ’s community action philosophy is different from any other that I’ve ever come across, and is defined by two main principles. First, community action must run on a community based approach: in order to be successful, you have to go into a community and understand what their specific issues are and what they want to achieve through community action.
CHEJ’s approach to community action has nuance that I had never considered before. This nuance is that in order for community action to be successful, communities themselves have to be willing to do the legwork and fight for their rights. Lois Gibbs is a realist: she will offer her services to any community that needs help. However, if a community isn’t willing to do the work she knows is necessary to be successful, she’s honest and straightforward and doesn’t waste her time and resources trying to convince them to organize because there are others who would benefit more from her time.
This mindset, that especially when it comes to the environment, time is valuable and should not be wasted, is my biggest takeaway from the summer. It’s what makes CHEJ so effective, because if a bureaucracy is trying to waste Lois’s time, she won’t just sit down and take it, she’ll think of a creative, out of the box solution to get what she wants. More often than not, her solutions work: she’s helped countless communities across the United States to get out of toxic situations.
While Lois and CHEJ’s story is unique, the lessons I’ve learned here have given me a new understanding of how to make things happen in the environmental world. I’ve learned that community action is a powerful tool, but that it’s only going to work if the people involved genuinely want to do the work necessary to see success. If they don’t, don’t waste time trying to convince them of something: move onto a different solution.
I’ve found these lessons immensely comforting as we round the corner into our action deadline for the climate. Yes, it’s an uphill battle, and yes, we need to make revolutionary change to our lifestyles, and no it’s probably not something that can be achieved in a mere decade.
However, we also can’t be afraid to think outside of the box and think of new approaches to the environmental challenges we face, and we can’t be afraid to stray from a conventional approach to change. If people aren’t hearing us, maybe we shouldn’t just yell louder, but we should change the way the message is being delivered.
Last Thursday, there was a major explosion as part of the Texas Eastern Transmission gas pipeline ruptured, sending flames 300 feet into the air. The explosion killed one, hospitalized five, destroyed railroad tracks and caused the evacuation of the nearby mobile home park. The case was transferred over to federal investigators, who say that corrosion may have contributed to the pipeline rupture. <Read more>
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EPA has almost finished clearing arsenic-contaminated soil at a Superfund site in Southern Minneapolis. The soil became contaminated after an industrial pesticide storage site leached into local soil, affecting 600 homes. This represents the conclusion of EPA’s $25 million project to clean the Superfund site. <Read more>