Every day, Ron Baptiste’s home in West Long Beach is invaded by dust and ash. If he cleans it in the morning, his shelves and furniture are coated again by the afternoon. Read more here.
Tag: healthy schools
Senators Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois), and Tom Carper (D-Delaware) announced the formation of an environmental justice caucus on Monday. Read more here.
Four million cases of childhood asthma could be caused by air pollution from traffic – around 13% of those diagnosed each year, a global study suggests. Read more here.
CHEJ was involved in three of the United States field Tribunals in Athens and Youngstown, Ohio and in Charlottesville, VA. Lois Marie Gibbs served as a Juror in all three field Tribunals. These field hearings provided the basic information for the large Tribunal held in Oregon. This is an incredible victory which provides yet a new tool in the tool box for communities to fight back against Fracking.
The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal released its Advisory Opinion, recommending a worldwide ban on hydraulic fracturing, the extreme oil and gas extraction technique known as ‘fracking.’ The Tribunal found that the materials, and infrastructure of fracking inherently and necessarily violate human rights. The specific rights violated include the rights to life, to water, to full information and participation, and especially the rights of indigenous people, women and children. Governments have an affirmative obligation to protect the rights of their citizens, according to internationally recognized human-rights Covenants and Declarations. When governments fail to adequately regulate harmful oil and gas industry practices, they fail to meet their human rights obligations. And when governments fail to take measures to prevent the advance of climate change and its impacts on the rights to life, liberty, and security, they are failing to meet their internationally recognized human-rights obligations. Widespread government failures have created a global “axis of betrayal,” according to the international court, in which governments and fossil-fuel industries collude – at great cost to people and the planet – in human-rights violations to their mutual profit.
The Special Session was conducted for five days in May of 2018. Four Preliminary tribunals had been conducted in the months prior to the Plenary hearings. The Pre-tribunals included rich oral testimony from Australia, the US states of Ohio and Virginia, and other places, supporting documentation, and findings from those Pre-tribunal’s local judges. All materials and reports from those Pre-tribunal hearings, all the Plenary session’s oral testimony and arguments, all Plenary session reports, amicus curiae briefs and full documentation are available, in both video and text formats, on the website for the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal Session on Human Rights, Fracking and Climate Change. The full text of the Opinion is attached. It is also available on the website for the PPT Session on Human Rights, Fracking and Climate Change and on the Jurisprudence page of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal website at their headquarters in Rome.
Deep gratitude to all who have taken this long journey with us to get this opinion finalized, and contributed in big and small ways along the way! Now the work of getting these important findings out to the world begins….
Peace and Blessings,
~Simona
Simona L. Perry, PhD
Cell 240 599 6655
Google Phone USA +1 912 289 1158
International Women’s Day adopted in 1975 by the United Nations. Today, CHEJ is honoring and celebrating an extraordinary women Janet Marsh Zeller who changed our world and made the lives of so many safer, healthier and joyful.
“One person speaking alone may not be heard, but many people speaking with one voice cannot be ignored.“- Janet Marsh
In 1984, when the Department of Energy announced that Ashe County, NC, was being considered as the site of a high-level nuclear waste dump, Janet Marsh organized her friends and neighbors, holding the first meetings at the Holy Trinity Church of what would become the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League. At the time, she was raising young children and farming in Glendale Springs, and shared concerns about the Federal Government’s plans with other parents, farmers, teachers and merchants in the area. A study group was formed, and the example that has served as the model for BREDL and its chapters was born. Janet served as BREDL’s Executive Director for over two decades, 1986 until 2012. From July 2012 until her death, Janet acted as strategic adviser to the BREDL Board Executive Committee.
In her early adult life, Janet was a successful teacher and a rising star in the educational establishment of North Carolina. Blinded by a congenital disorder in her twenties, Janet’s career was cut short. Nevertheless, she founded the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League to fight a national nuclear waste dump near her home in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The community group was successful in stopping the dump, and the fight brought together the founding members of BREDL. The principal organizers, recognizing an ongoing need, stayed together to form a 501(c)3 nonprofit. The community organizing strategies, vision, and tactics which helped win BREDL’s first victory guide us today. Today BREDL is a league of more than fifty community-based chapters serving the Southeast with the founding principles of earth stewardship, public health protection, environmental democracy and social justice.
A woman who shouldered much responsibility without fanfare, Janet poured herself into the organization she founded. Under Janet’s leadership, BREDL received numerous awards and accolades including the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund National Award for Environmental Activism in 1989, CHEJ National Award for Outstanding Work in 1993, the NC Governor’s Conservation Achievement Award for air quality protection in 1999, and the Bob Sheldon award in 2014, in honor of BREDL’s thirtieth anniversary.
In December 1988, the Winston-Salem Journal featured Janet in the paper’s Tarheel Sketch series. In the article, she stated “We think in the short term. We think of the quarterly ledger sheets or of the next sales profit – but not of the consequences of our actions.” Janet was also featured in an article in The Independent from the December 19, 1986-January 15, 1987 edition. That article was titled “She has the vision to see we can live without fear”. Sandy Adair, the BREDL administrator at the time, had this to say about Janet: “Her mind is like a steel trap, as far as reading official documents and reading between the lines. She sees shortcomings and she sees places where they’ve tried to gloss over an issue. She can see the empty loopholes.” Most recently, an interview with Janet appeared in the May 2014 issue of All About Women, a lifestyle magazine that recognizes women in leadership in the high country of western North Carolina.
Janet was a role model to many activists and organizers in the environmental justice movement. She served on the board for the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice, and achieved countless grassroots victories through her work with BREDL. Janet’s words and work will continue to inspire people with her belief that, “One person speaking alone may not be heard, but many people speaking with one voice cannot be ignored.”- Janet Marsh
The BREDL family, Center for Health, Environment & Justice and communities throughout the Southeast have lost a true friend and advocate.
There are many cheap and effective ways to provide safe water to the world’s poor regions. But projects often fail due to inadequate planning, maintenance or persuasive power
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Washington — House lawmakers are launching a new task force devoted to PFAS issues Wednesday, aiming to craft bipartisan legislation related to the crisis and press for more funding for research and to clean up contaminated sites.
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Today, many of our school districts are not getting their water tested. You would think after the water crisis in Flint, Mich., that all public entities in the United States would be testing their tap water regularly and making the results available to the public.
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Categories
Inspiring Women of Ecology
In fighting to protect her community from toxic waste, this housewife started a movement that led to the creation of the EPA’s Superfund.
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As parents we are concerned that our children have all they need for school. We go to the store with our list of supplies in hand that was provided by this year’s teachers. Stand in line with screaming children, irritated and tired parents. But we get through it.
There is an assumption that the school is safe. That the air and drinking water will not harm the children but rather foster a healthy environment to learn and play.
But what if that is wrong? I asked a friend recently if their children’s school tested the water for lead. She said I received a letter from the school that said the water was safe, so I’m feeling pretty good.
As it turns out the school used the testing results for the city water as evidence of safety. Just because the water leaves the city treatment plant clean and safe does not ensure that when it comes out of the faucet at school it’s clean. So many people are duped by this assertion of safety.
Where the water moves from the city service line into the school feeder line(s) those lines could be made of lead and contaminate the water. Or, inside the school plumbing could be lead pipes, lead solder, or other lead related plumbing fixtures.
So, to find out if your child’s school water is safe from lead you need to test every faucet. Has your school conducted that level of testing? Probably not. It’s easy to do and yes it costs money but far less than it would cost if children were exposed and became sick.
No level of lead is exposure is safe for children. We need to protect our children from lead that can cause learning delays, especially in their schools.
Children are required to attend school, but schools aren’t required to test that their water is safe for children to drink! It is outrageous that in a country like the United States there is no federal law that requires schools to test the quality of their water at each discharge location.
That’s why we need a national bill that requires schools to test their water and protect the health of our children where they are trying to learn. Senator Duckworth (IL) has proposed a bill that would require schools to test their water, share results with communities, and fund projects that replace lead pipes or provide filters.
The Get the Lead Out of Schools Act mandates all schools to test for lead in their water and provides action grants to fix any contamination. Protect our children—contact your federal senators and make sure they support the Get the Lead Out of Schools Act when it goes to the Senate Floor.