Washington, D.C. March 17, 2021 – Chair Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Rep. A. Donald McEachin (D-Va.), authors of the landmark Environmental Justice for All Act, wrote to President Biden today urging him to revoke Army Corps of Engineers permits for the proposed Formosa Plastics petrochemical complex located in St. James Parish. The site is in the heart of Louisiana’s Cancer Alley corridor, one of the most heavily polluted regions of the United States, and the community residents have expressly asked the federal government to protect them from further heavy industrial contamination.
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Category: News Archive
When you see or hear a reference to “the 1 percent,” most people think of socioeconomic status—the people with the top 1 percent of wealth or income in the United States, which is how the term is commonly used in our culture.
Not us, though.
What we think of is the fact that the whole spectrum of reproductive problems in males are increasing by about 1 percent per year in Western countries. This “1 percent effect” includes the rates of declining sperm counts, decreasing testosterone levels and increasing rates of testicular cancer, as well as a rise in the prevalence of erectile dysfunction. On the female side of the equation, miscarriage rates are also increasing by about 1 percent per year in the U.S., and so is the rate of gestational surrogacy. Meanwhile, the total fertility rate worldwide has dropped by nearly 1 percent per year from 1960 to 2018.
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President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid relief package includes a downpayment on his ambitious climate plan, including $100 million to address harmful air quality and environmental health risks in minority and low-income communities.
The provisions begin to make good on Biden’s pledge to address environmental injustice as an integral part of his drive to put the nation on track to net zero carbon emissions by mid-century. And they constitute the U.S. government’s first response to the growing scientific evidence—at least 17 peer-reviewed studies so far—showing that areas with high levels of air pollution have higher coronavirus death rates or more severe outbreaks. Some studies were able to trace the higher mortality specifically to fossil fuel pollution.
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Many agencies of our national government suffered from neglect during the four years of Donald Trump’s anti-governmental reign as president, but EPA was already damaged when Trump arrived. Writing on this issue a year ago, I noted that EPA reduced:
“…staff during the Obama years from 17,049 in 2009 to 14,777 in 2016 and was further reduced [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][under Trump] to 14,172 in 2019. Funding has been reduced from a peak of $10.3 billion in FY 2010 to $8.8 billion in FY 2019. These data do not account for inflation so the reductions over the past decade are underplayed by these figures.”
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The Senate on Monday voted to confirm Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., as President Joe Biden’s secretary of the Department of the Interior, making the second-term Democrat the first Native American Cabinet secretary in U.S. history.
The vote was 51-40, with four Republicans joining Democrats in favor.
Haaland, an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo, earned bipartisan support to run the Interior department, which has a staff of 70,000 employees and is charged with overseeing the country’s natural resources. The agency manages nearly 500 million acres of land, or one-fifth of the surface area of the United States.
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The Senate confirmed Michael Regan to lead the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday, putting the North Carolina regulator in charge of restoring the climate and water pollution regulations that the Trump administration had weakened.
Regan spent four years as secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, where his record of fixing environmental problems faced by low-income residents and communities of color drew national attention. It also propelled him to the Cabinet-level position above more prominent state regulators, such as California’s Mary Nichols.
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President Joseph Biden Jr. has committed to making major improvements in environmental justice communities (EJCs) by pledging to invest 40% of his $2 trillion clean energy plan into these communities.
The question for industry is what this will look like and how it will impact business.
A judicial order in a Louisiana district court case late last year could provide some clues. The EPA’s EJSCREEN mapping tool, used to identify pollution risks in minority and low-income communities, provided pivotal information for the judge.
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A growing number of states are adopting laws that promote environmental justice (EJ), which is the equitable treatment and involvement of all people, regardless of demographic, in the development and application of environmental laws and policies.
These laws are giving regulators and communities new tools to mitigate negative environmental impacts that have historically and disproportionately affected minority and low-income communities.
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Photo Credit: Bloomberg Law and Bloomberg Government
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. — Dariel Yazzie, Environmental Assistant Director for the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) takes a deep breath when asked about why the cleanup of uranium mines on the Navajo Nation is important to him.
“It’s personal,” he said.
Yazzie shares that it has impacted his health and many of his family members’ health.
Yazzie grew up in Cane Valley, southeast of Monument Valley, and said his maternal grandfather Luke Yazzie Sr. found uranium mill tailings less than a mile from their homestead. Their home was demolished in 2009 because of the contamination.
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Photo Credit: Kathy Helms/Gallup Independent via AP
NAVASSA, N.C. (SBG) — Millions of Americans live near Superfund sites, areas the federal government considers contaminated as a result of hazardous waste that was dumped, mismanaged or otherwise left out in the open. Many of those sites are still awaiting cleanup. And with climate change triggering sea-level rise, experts are ringing the alarm bell about the threat of flooding at Superfund sites, which could put the communities that surround them at risk.
Photo Credit: Alex Brauer
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