This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience while browsing it. By clicking 'Got It' you're accepting these terms.
Most recent
Trending
Top Videos
The best of EcoWatch, right in your inbox. Sign up for our email newsletter!
Oil and chemical refinery plants cover the landscape next to African American communities along the Mississippi River near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Andrew Lichtenstein / Corbis via Getty Images
By Derrick Z. Jackson
The Trump administration is trying mightily to gut the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the law that mandates rigorous, science-based environmental impact reviews for major infrastructure and construction projects prior to federal permitting. NEPA also reserves significant time for the public to weigh in on the impact of projects to their communities.
The loss of public input in the administration's proposed changes to NEPA has environmental justice leaders up in arms. For them, the silencing amounts to regulatory racism.
<p>At a Feb. 25 public hearing on the proposal in Washington, DC, Hilton Kelley, a 2011 Goldman Environmental Prize <a href="https://www.goldmanprize.org/blog/environmental-racism-in-america-spotlight-on-the-gulf-coast/" target="_blank">winner</a> for his work in reducing emissions from petrochemical facilities and incinerators in Port Arthur, Texas, told the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) that, with at least six explosions and plant accidents in his city over the last year, the events had become so common that children play basketball right through the noise and plumes.</p><p>"When you're talking about weakening NEPA and expediting a process, this is what happens," <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/02/25/us/politics/bc-us-trump-environmental-rollbacks.html" target="_blank">Kelley said,</a> as reported by The Associated Press. "Don't lessen the regulation. Don't silence our voices."</p><p>That is precisely what the Trump administration is trying to do in <a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/kathleen-rest/how-the-trump-administration-plans-to-gut-our-nations-bedrock-environmental-law" target="_blank">rewriting</a> the implementation guidelines for this bipartisan act signed by President Nixon and designed to allow the public input needed to <a href="https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/nepapub/nepa_documents/RedDont/Req-NEPA.pdf" target="_blank">ensure</a> that "man and nature can exist in productive harmony."</p><p>Cheered on by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the <a href="https://www.unlockamericaninvestment.com/about/" target="_blank">nation's leading</a> fossil fuel, chemical, construction, manufacturing, airline, trucking and farming interests, the Trump administration is trying to cut the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/20200110FINAL-FACT-SHEET-v3.pdf" target="_blank">average</a> time for environmental reviews by more than half.</p><p>The Trump NEPA rewrite would <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2020/01/16/479454/5-ways-trumps-latest-anti-environmental-proposal-allow-fossil-fuel-companies-bulldoze-communities/" target="_blank">undermine</a> the act by allowing companies and contractors to write up their own environmental reviews. It would free builders of chemical and petrochemical factories, oil and gas pipelines, highways, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/climate/trump-nepa-climate-change.html" target="_blank">port terminals</a> and other infrastructure from accounting for the cumulative effects over time of pollution, <a href="https://ceq.doe.gov/docs/ceq-publications/ccenepa/sec1.pdf" target="_blank">land and wetland loss and erosion</a>.</p><p>Plant owners seeking federal approval would no longer need to fret about indirect effects of downstream and downwind <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/air-pollution" target="_blank">pollution</a>, nor about a facility's contribution to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/climate/trump-nepa-climate-change.html" target="_blank">climate change</a>.</p>
<h3>More Harm to Communities Already Under Siege</h3><p>For communities long polluted by industry, which are <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/03/11/702348935/study-finds-racial-gap-between-who-causes-air-pollution-and-who-breathes-it" target="_blank">disproportionately poor and of color</a>, the Trump administration's changes promise particular devastation. Such communities already suffer higher rates of illnesses from asthma to cancer, life-altering effects such as low birth weight and cognitive child development, and daily insults to quality of life in diesel exhaust, soot penetrating into homes and contaminated yards and playgrounds.</p><p>If the administration has its way, NEPA implementation guidelines would be rewritten so that even in neighborhoods already densely packed with toxic industries, a proposed facility need only assess its own pollutants, not how much they combine and compound those of nearby facilities to worsen the overall quality of air, water and land.</p><p>To make sure residents cannot complain about such compounded damage, the Trump administration is trying to severely limit the opportunity for mothers, fathers, seniors, teens and community leaders to speak directly to the government.</p><p>The rollout of the proposed changes is a case in point. Despite the sweeping environmental risks Americans currently face, with <a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/derrick-jackson/let-the-children-breathe-particulate-matter-how-the-trump-administrations-polluted-policies-are-hurting-children" target="_blank">air pollution</a> that kills <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/116/18/8775.full.pdf" target="_blank">100,000 people per year</a> and 77 million Americans drinking tap water in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/us/tapwater-drinking-water-study.html" target="_blank">violation </a>of health regulations, the White House Council on Environmental Quality allowed only two hearings on the proposed changes to NEPA before the close of public comment period March 10, in Washington, DC, and in Denver. By way of comparison, The Washington Post reported that major issues involving NEPA usually get around nine hearings.</p><p>One community leader who did get into the Washington hearing called out the cynicism of the Trump administration for its scant public scheduling. Belinda Joyner of Northampton County, North Carolina, who has <a href="https://energynews.us/2017/12/01/southeast/critics-highlight-atlantic-coast-pipelines-environmental-justice-impact/" target="_blank">spoken out</a> against dumping in her lower-income African American community by a wood pellet facility, <a href="https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article237592194.html" target="_blank">industrial-scale hog farms</a> and a part of the proposed Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/02/25/us/politics/bc-us-trump-environmental-rollbacks.html" target="_blank">told the CEQ panel</a>, "You act like you're listening, and I'm not going to say you're not. But we see the results of these hearings."</p><p>In Denver, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/indigenous-peoples" target="_blank">indigenous Americans</a> spoke out strongly against the destruction of NEPA. Seventeen-year-old Navajo Najhozhoni Rain Ben drove seven and a half hours <a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2020/02/11/nepa-review-denver-hearing/" target="_blank">to say</a> to the CEQ panel, "We shouldn't be talking about this. We should be implementing plans for the future. This is not for the future. This is for profit." Musician and spoken word artist Lyla June Johnston, also Navajo, drove six hours from Santa Fe to <a href="https://www.coloradoindependent.com/2020/02/11/nepa-hearing-denver/" target="_blank">tell</a> the panel that the proposed changes were "a slap in the face to our democracy — a slap in the face to the integrity of our mother earth."</p>
<h3>The Modern Need for NEPA</h3><p>NEPA originally was conceived amid growing public awareness and outrage in the 1960s over river and lake pollution, pesticide poisoning of birds, highway proposals that would blast communities apart, and tanker oil spills that fouled beaches and wiped out wildlife. There is no less need for it today as <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-change" target="_blank">climate change</a> is already slapping America and the world in the face with more devastating storms, chronic coastal flooding, deadly heat waves, western and Alaskan <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildfires" target="_blank">wildfires</a> and acceleration of species extinction.</p><p>There is arguably even more of an immediate need for NEPA in communities that were dumping grounds long before the concept of climate change, even before the signing of the act itself. It has been <a href="https://www.naacp.org/climate-justice-resources/fumes-across-fence-line/" target="_blank">proven beyond coincidence</a> that — similar to the tobacco industry marketing to vulnerable populations — toxic industries and builders of massive infrastructure projects <a href="https://comingcleaninc.org/assets/media/images/Reports/Who%27s%20in%20Danger%20Report%20FINAL.pdf" target="_blank">target locales</a> where they assume residents will offer the least political resistance.</p><p>That significantly explains the shameless shoehorning of petrochemical plants into Louisiana's <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/st-james-louisiana-plastic-petrochemicals-buy-out/" target="_blank">Cancer Alley</a> in predominantly African American areas. That explains the routing of the Keystone XL pipeline and the <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/national-environmental-policy-act-nepa/" target="_blank">Dakota Access Pipeline</a> through lands and over waters indigenous Americans consider sacred, and the Atlantic Bridge pipeline protested by Joyner. It explains the <a href="https://prospect.org/greennewdeal/toxic-injustices-little-village-chicago/" target="_blank">concentration</a> of industry in heavily Latino and African American Southeast Chicago, which is dealing with an <a href="https://prospect.org/power/epa-rollbacks-hurting-americans-live/" target="_blank">endless siege</a> of dust and neurotoxic contamination from coal ash, lead, and manganese dust.</p><p>That explains the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/feb/21/roads-nowhere-infrastructure-american-inequality" target="_blank">ramrodding</a> of roads through redlined communities and why people of color drove or flew hundreds and thousands of miles for the only two hearings offered by this administration. They said the NEPA, especially in a White House that is also <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/images/2018/06/Catalyst-Spring-2018.pdf" target="_blank">hollowing out</a> the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is one of the last tools standing between them and a wholesale hostile invasion by industry.</p>
Hope in the Courts
<p>There is a glimmer of hope that the U.S. courts will determine that President Trump and his industrial partners are reaching <a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1062092145" target="_blank">too far</a> in the rewrite of NEPA, as it relates to environmental racism. Take the Atlantic Bridge Pipeline, which is in the public eye for its upcoming Supreme Court case on whether it can transect the hallowed federal Appalachian Trail.</p><p>The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/fourth-circuit-delivers-another-blow-to-atlantic-coast-pipeline/" target="_blank">recently vacated</a> a Virginia state permit for a compressor station along the pipeline because developer Dominion Energy did not adequately assess its environmental impact on the historic African American host town of Union Hill. The town <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/federal-court-revokes-gas-project-permit-in-win-for-historic-african-american-community/2020/01/07/76bb3538-3170-11ea-a053-dc6d944ba776_story.html" target="_blank">was founded</a> by free African Americans and formerly enslaved people. The federal courts have also sent other fossil fuel projects and Trump administration oil and gas leases back to the drawing board for their inadequate consideration of environmental and climate impacts.</p><p>"Five years ago, Dominion told us that there was going to be a compressor station in Union Hill and there was nothing we could do about it," Chad Oba, president of a Union Hill coalition protesting the Atlantic Coast Pipeline compressor, <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/477199-atlantic-coast-pipeline-loses-permit-battle-with-historically-black" target="_blank">said in The Hill.</a> "That's not fair, and it's not American. This is a win for a group of citizens who were committed to protecting their community and never ever gave up."</p><p>Such victories give hope that this is one rollback the Trump administration may not ultimately get away with. The assault on NEPA is so sweeping and blatant in its turning control of the environment over to industry, it is sure to receive a massive court challenge from environmental groups and environmental justice advocates. If communities like Union Hill refused to give up, there is no reason for anyone opposed to the rewriting of NEPA to throw in the towel, either. There is still time before the March 10 deadline for <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/01/10/2019-28106/update-to-the-regulations-implementing-the-procedural-provisions-of-the-national-environmental" target="_blank">public comment.</a></p><p>Recently, Union of Concerned Scientists colleague Adrienne Hollis interviewed Mildred McClain, an <a href="https://www.savannahnow.com/news/20200218/savannah-heads-toward-clean-energy-goal" target="_blank">environmental justice leader</a> in Savannah, Georgia, about the importance of NEPA. McClain <a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/adrienne-hollis/conversation-with-the-nepa-ninja" target="_blank">recalled</a> how the act gave her community a voice against the dumping of nuclear waste and unchecked widening of the Savannah River for container ships.</p><p>"If it had not been for NEPA," McClain said, "the community would not have been a part of the process."</p><p>It's important to recognize that taking communities of color out of the process is a major goal in the administration's efforts to gut NEPA. When President Trump announced the rewrite, he was — by no small coincidence — flanked by a <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/01/10/fossil-fuel-interests-applaud-trump-weakening-nepa-environmental-policy" target="_blank">nearly all-white</a> phalanx of supporters as he <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-proposed-national-environmental-policy-act-regulations/" target="_blank">claimed</a> with a straight face, "We're maintaining America's world-class standards of environmental protection. We have some of the cleanest air and cleanest water on Earth. And for our country, the air is, right now, cleaner than it's been in 40 years."</p><p>For the past two generations, NEPA has offered a powerful tool for the protection of the nation's environment. If the Trump administration succeeds in ripping it apart and turning environmental reviews over to industry, we will risk the dirtiest air and water of any developed nation on Earth, cementing this nation as a hotbed of environmental racism.</p><p>The deadline for public comments on the proposed changes to NEPA closes this Tuesday. <a href="https://secure.ucsusa.org/onlineactions/5J0luZa4YkiUmcMR656c9g2?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=tw&ms=twitter" target="_blank">Submit your comment today</a>.</p>From Your Site Articles
- One of Our Most Important Environmental Laws Just Turned 50 ... ›
- NEPA Is Under Threat—Here's Why That Matters - EcoWatch ›
- Youth-Led Petition Urges 2020 Democratic Candidates to Hold ... ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Read More
Show Less
View of asbestos warning signs at the Turner Construction project in downtown Bellevue, Washington in December 2019. Colleen Michaels / iStock Editorial / Getty Images
By Derrick Z. Jackson
In the U.S., gun violence kills nearly 40,000 people a year and has killed nearly 40,000 or so children and teenagers since 1999, and yet the nation is still without serious gun control. Another 40,000 people die each year in traffic accidents, including 1,200 children 14 and under. Yet we eschew policies used abroad that could cut the toll by half.
<p>As the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) documents in its new report, <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/endangering-generations" target="_blank"><em>Endangering Generations: How the Trump Administration's Assault on Science is Harming Children's Health</em></a>, asbestos is a lesser known, but no less potent member of the American annual "<a href="https://www.asbestosdiseaseawareness.org/newsroom/blogs/adao-announces-new-findings-show-asbestos-related-deaths-estimated-double-previously-reported-united-states/" target="_blank">40,000</a> <a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/derrick-jackson/as-asbestos-toll-mounts-trumps-epa-ignores-it" target="_blank">Death Club</a>." The current attempt by the Trump administration to severely limit research on asbestos exposure may create a whole new class of victims: today's children who attend crumbling old schools and breathe in poisonous fibers from damaged asbestos boiler and pipe insulation and floor and ceiling tiles.</p>
<p class=""><em>Derrick Z. Jackson is a UCS Fellow in climate and energy and the Center for Science and Democracy. He is an award-winning journalist and co-author and photographer of <em>Project Puffin: The Improbable Quest to Bring a Beloved Seabird Back to Egg Rock,</em> published by Yale University Press (2015).</em></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from the <a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/derrick-jackson/asbestos-is-killing-our-kids?_ga=2.152329776.821918874.1581088098-261021692.1565969924" rel="noopener noreferrer">Union of Concerned Scientists</a>.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/asbestos">Asbestos</a> is a carcinogenic mineral now banned in more than 60 nations. But it has never been fully prohibited in the U.S. even after asbestos makers were exposed in the 1970s for having covered up the potentially lethal effects of their products in manufacturing, building insulation, and fireproofing. Raw asbestos is no longer mined in the U.S. But it is still being imported, primarily for the chlorine industry. It is also still found in automotive brakes and some building roofing and ceiling tile.</p><p>Like cigarettes, asbestos is a time bomb causing disease in victims decades after exposure — in this case lung cancer and mesothelioma. Historically, the people at risk from asbestos-related disease were those who worked with asbestos in the 20th century, primarily men in the construction trades, miners, millers, auto mechanics, and ship builders. But today the toll is broadening out. As sure as our unchecked proliferation of guns haunts us with school shootings and teen carnage among the poor, the failure to ban asbestos has resulted in widespread and potentially deadly chronic risks that reach down to our youngest citizens and their teachers.</p>
First Responders, Maintenance Workers, Women
<p>The first mesothelioma deaths have now occurred among 9/11 first responders who worked in toxic clouds at Ground Zero after the collapse and fires of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 2001. Also, a <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6608a3.htm" target="_blank">2017 report</a> by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that exposure continues today to workers involved in the maintenance, demolition, and remediation of buildings with asbestos. "Contrary to past projections, the number of malignant mesothelioma deaths has been increasing," the report said.</p><p>In 2018, the New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/business/baby-powder-asbestos-johnson-johnson.html?module=inline" target="_blank">obtained memos</a> under the Freedom of Information Act that exposed that officials at Johnson & Johnson were aware in the 1970s that the company's iconic baby powder talc could be contaminated with asbestos and yet worked to discredit or silence research that suggested contamination. Two years ago, a St. Louis jury awarded $4.7 billion to 22 women who claimed their ovarian cancer was caused by the baby powder, often used as a feminine hygiene product. Five months ago, Johnson & Johnson recalled 33,000 bottles of baby powder after the Food and Drug Administration <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/business/johnson-johnson-baby-powder-recall.html" target="_blank">found trace</a> amounts of asbestos in samples.</p><p>Will we soon be adding children and teachers to the toll? Nowhere in America is the wholesale disintegration of asbestos installed decades ago as evident as in the nation's schools.</p>The Threat to Schoolchildren
<p>The UCS report notes that school buildings built from 1946 to 1972 likely contain asbestos, with the highest proportion of unacceptable structures being found in low-income communities and districts where most students are of color. All of that is on unconscionable display in Philadelphia where the teachers' union is suing the city's school board for hazardous levels of asbestos dust in decrepit buildings.</p><p>In 2018, the Philadelphia Inquirer conducted an <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/news/inq/asbestos-testing-mesothelioma-cancer-philadelphia-schools-toxic-city-20180510.html#loaded" target="_blank">investigation</a> of many schools, finding levels of asbestos dust on school surfaces 11 to 1,700 times higher than the levels mandated by federal cleanup requirements for apartments near Ground Zero. The newspaper also found unacceptably elevated levels of lead.</p><p>By spring of 2019, when the Inquirer was <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/news/toxic-city-inquirer-pulitzer-finalist-20190415.html" target="_blank">named a finalist</a> for the Pulitzer Prize for its exposé, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf announced more than $100 million in emergency lead cleanup and general hazardous cleanup funds for Philadelphia schools. Last month, Wolf <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/news/gov-tom-wolf-asbestos-lead-schools-1-billion-20200129.html" target="_blank">proposed</a> $1 billion for statewide remediation of asbestos and lead in schools.</p><p>But that could not contain the crisis in a system with $4.5 billion of documented <a href="https://www.philasd.org/capitalprograms/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2017/06/2015-FCA-Final-Report-1.pdf" target="_blank">deficiencies</a> in its school buildings. This school year, seven schools have been closed for extensive asbestos damage. One <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/education/a/mesothelioma-philadelphia-school-district-lea-dirusso-cancer-20191121.html" target="_blank">teacher,</a> who worked in a 90-year-old building and often swept up dust from flaking heating pipe insulation and busted ceiling tiles before class, is undergoing chemotherapy for mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer triggered by asbestos.</p>Environmental Injustice
<p>In at least one school closure, the stench of race and class environmental injustice was on vivid display. Ben Franklin High School, comprised almost entirely of youth of color who qualify as poor, <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/education/ben-franklin-sla-school-construction-asbestos-inequity-privilege-20191011.html" target="_blank">was not closed until</a> after it also became the home of a magnet school that is 38 percent white, with half of those students above the poverty line. As Ben Franklin teacher told the Philadelphia Inquirer, "When it was us, the district didn't feel like they needed to have any immediacy."</p><p>The lack of immediacy has existed for decades. Jerry Roseman, chief environmental science and public health expert since 1985 for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said it galls him that his sense of outrage and disbelief in school conditions is the same today as it was <em>35 years ago</em>. In an interview with the Union of Concerned Scientists, he said he had just inspected an overcrowded school where playful children were literally banging into damaged asbestos pipe insulation, damaging the asbestos even more, calling it a systemic failure including school district leadership and politicians.</p><p>"What is clear across the country is that school boards neither understand facility conditions and leave them alone to deteriorate and definitely don't understand the impacts on the health, safety, and welfare of children and staff," Roseman said. He noted how parents and teachers are taking things into their own hands with a <a href="http://www.phillyhealthyschools.org/" target="_blank">mobile app</a> to photograph and report disintegrating infrastructure. "You can have great teachers and great principals," he added, "but you do not get great or safe education if you do not take care of a foundational need—the facility."</p><p>Nationally, the threat of toxic school buildings has barely been studied despite the 1986 Asbestos Hazardous Emergency Response Act (AHERA) to address airborne asbestos in schools. A <a href="https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2015-12-Markey-Asbestos-Report-Final.pdf" target="_blank">2015 report</a> commissioned by senators Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Barbara Boxer of California found that two-thirds of the school districts in 15 responding states had asbestos. Thirty states did not respond to the inquiry at all. Noting that the Environmental Protection Agency had not seriously analyzed school asbestos since 1984, the Markey-Boxer report said the carcinogen remains "ubiquitous" in schools, with the extent "unknown."</p><p>The EPA, under flat funding for most of the last decade, conducts so few inspections under AHERA that a 2018 Inspector General <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-09/documents/_epaoig_20180917-18-p-0270.pdf" target="_blank">report</a> said, "The EPA has not documented that the risk of asbestos exposure in schools has diminished significantly under AHERA."</p>Reinvestment, Then Divestment Again
<p>President Obama worked with Congress to try to strengthen scrutiny of toxics like asbestos with the 2016 <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?411615-1/president-obama-signs-chemical-safety-bill" target="_blank">Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act</a>. But, when it comes to asbestos, the Trump administration attempted to gut the act by trying to exclude asbestos already installed in places like schools ("legacy use") from calculations of risk assessment. Never mind that the White House understands quite well that asbestos is a major health threat. Last summer it conducted $250,000 asbestos <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-21/white-house-relocates-top-aides-for-asbestos-abatement-project" target="_blank">abatement</a> in the West Wing office areas occupied by President Trump's daughter Ivanka, presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway, policy adviser Stephen Miller, and economic adviser Larry Kudlow.</p><p>Environmental groups, including the Union of Concerned Scientists, joined with labor unions and family advocacy groups to challenge the EPA and a host of chemical industry groups and the US Chamber of Commerce in court. In November, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals declared the administration's attempt to exclude legacy use was <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/tsca-opinion-20191114.pdf" target="_blank">unlawful,</a> agreeing that workers face major risks when "equipment or structures are demolished, repaired, or refurbished."</p><p>That ruling, combined with a science-minded federal government, should easily be applied to children who currently go to schools that should have long ago been demolished, repaired, or refurbished. As it is now, Linda Reinstein, co-founder of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, which was a co-petitioner against the EPA's attack on legacy use, says America is rolling the dice by letting children study and play in asbestos dust. As Reinstein notes, health effects will not manifest themselves until these children are well into adulthood and long since removed from the source school of their disease. Reinstein lost her husband Alan to mesothelioma and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/opinion/asbestos-epa-trump.html" target="_blank">an asbestos ban bill</a> has been filed in Congress in his name.</p><p>"Even though the latency period is long, I've seen parents tearful and terrified," Reinstein told UCS, "worried that every cough is a precursor of something worse about to happen. If you're a student and you know you've been exposed, you lie with the fear the rest of your life that you've been exposed to something that is life changing. . .The fact that we haven't been studying legacy exposure should be a crime."</p><p>In 1984, the EPA found that, of the 2,600 schools testing positive for asbestos in its sample, only 500 had a plan to deal with it. Today, the Trump administration is trying to avoid testing for legacy installations altogether, in the obvious effort not to be responsible for a remediation plan. That effort was ruled illegal, but given the spiteful nature of this administration, it is more likely to respond by dragging its feet rather than leaping to protect children. That leaves the time bomb ticking, with the risk of asbestos exposure today exploding in the lungs of today's children tomorrow.</p><p>For more on this and other threats to children's health, including what you can do about them, you can read the new UCS storybook — <em><a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/breathe-smog-drink-lead" target="_blank">Breath in the Smog, Drink in the Lead: A Grim Scary Tale for People Who Care about Kids</a> </em>— and its accompanying <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/protecting-childrens-health-and-safety" target="_blank">resource guide</a> and report, <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/endangering-generations" target="_blank"><em><u>Endangering Generations: How the Trump Administration's Assault on Science is Harming Children's Health</u></em></a>.</p>From Your Site Articles
- Asbestos Contamination Found in More Claire's Cosmetics: New ... ›
- Claire's Cosmetics Test Positive for Asbestos, FDA Warns - EcoWatch ›
- EPA Is Failing to Protect School Children From Asbestos, Internal ... ›
- EPA Places Children's Health Leader on Unexplained Leave ... ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Read More
Show Less
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
New U.S. Oil and Gas Emissions Could Nearly Erase Environmental Gains From Decline in Coal
09 January
Energy
A gas flare from the Shell Chemical LP petroleum refinery on Aug. 21, 2019 in Norco, Louisiana. Drew Angerer / Getty Images
One of the more positive environmental developments in the U.S. in recent years has been the shutdown of deadly, high-emitting coal-fired plants. But now, a study has found that new oil and gas infrastructure could counteract much of that progress.
<p>The <a href="https://www.environmentalintegrity.org/reports/greenhouse-gases-from-oil-gas-and-petrochemical-production/" target="_blank">report</a>, <a href="https://www.environmentalintegrity.org/news/oil-and-gas-industry-expansions-could-add-as-much-greenhouse-gas-pollution-as-50-coal-plants-by-2025/" target="_blank">released by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) Wednesday</a>, found that the oil and gas industry is building or expanding 157 plants over the next five years and increasing drilling operations. Together, these projects could release the greenhouse gases of 50 new coal-fired plants by 2025.</p><p>"The US is already struggling to meet climate commitments and transition to a low-carbon future," EIP Research Director Courtney Bernhardt said in a press release. "This analysis shows that we're heading in the wrong direction and really need to slow emissions growth from the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries."</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="150" scrolling="no" id="twitter-embed-1214918288754593792" src="/res/community/twitter_embed/?iframe_id=twitter-embed-1214918288754593792&created_ts=1578494066.0&screen_name=EnviroIntegrity&text=Our+new+report%2C+%E2%80%9CGreenhouse+Gases+from+Oil%2C+Gas%2C+and+Petrochemical+Production%2C%E2%80%9D+finds+that+oil%2C+natural+gas+and+pet%E2%80%A6+https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2F3v5pT92dzB&id=1214918288754593792&name=Environmental+Integrity+Project" frameborder="0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="IGQ8DI1578578708"></iframe>
<p>The findings cast doubt on the argument that natural gas could be a "transition fuel" from dirtier energy sources to renewable energy, <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/report-oil-and-gas-petrochemical-growth-could-stunt-climate-benefits-from-coals-decline/" target="_blank">Courthouse News Service pointed out</a>. While the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/fracking/" target="_self">fracking</a> boom, and the cheap natural gas that followed, has encouraged utilities to move away from coal, the continued growth of the sector threatens to undo the good it has enabled. While greenhouse gas emissions at U.S. power plants decreased by around 322 million tons between 2012 and 2017, new infrastructure and production is set to increase emissions by 227 million tons by 2025. That would mean a 30 percent increase over the industry's 2018 emissions, the report found.</p><p>"So that pretty much erases a lot of the progress since 2012," Bernhardt told Courthouse News Service.</p><p>This is backed up by other researchers. A study <a href="https://rhg.com/research/preliminary-us-emissions-2019/" target="_blank">released Tuesday by the Rhodium Group</a> found that U.S. emissions fell less in 2019 than they would have if it weren't for the oil and gas sector: While coal plant emissions fell 18 percent, almost half of this was offset by rising oil and gas emissions, <a href="https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2020/01/08/us-oil-gas-production-greenhouse-gases/" target="_blank">Climate Liability News reported</a>.</p><p>The EIP based its data on projected oil and gas field outputs from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and on the greenhouse gas limits included in Clean Air Act permits granted to the 157 large projects it considered. The sector's total emissions by 2025 will likely be higher than the EIP figure because that figure does not include smaller oil and gas projects that did not require permits.</p>
<p>All this new infrastructure has consequences beyond contributing further to the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate crisis</a>. The non-carbon pollutants the 157 large projects would emit include</p><ul><li>119,000 tons of volatile organic compounds, which contribute to smog.</li><li>47,200 tons of nitrogen oxides, which help create "dead zones" in water that kill fish.</li><li>11,100 tons of deadly particulate matter <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/air-pollution" target="_self">air pollution</a>.</li><li>8,800 tons of sulfur dioxide, which can harm the lungs.</li></ul><p>The new oil and gas facilities would also increase the pollution burden in places that already struggle with <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/public-health" target="_self">public health</a>.</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="150" scrolling="no" id="twitter-embed-1215035953452126208" src="/res/community/twitter_embed/?iframe_id=twitter-embed-1215035953452126208&created_ts=1578522120.0&screen_name=EnviroIntegrity&text=A+map+of+the+locations+of+major+future+emission+sources+from+the+oil%2C+gas%2C+and+chemical+sectors+in+the+U.S.+from+20%E2%80%A6+https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2F3TkoF7PE14&id=1215035953452126208&name=Environmental+Integrity+Project" frameborder="0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="N7RV2F1578578709"></iframe>
<p>Around half of the new projects will be built in Texas and Louisiana, Climate Liability News reported. This includes a new Formosa Plastics facility in St. James, Louisiana, a majority black community that already has one of the highest cancer rates in the U.S. The facility could release more greenhouse gases than any of the other 156 projects EIP considered.</p><p>"This is a slow death. I think this is genocide — you're intentionally killing people," Sharon Lavigne, the founder and president of grassroots, anti-fossil-fuel group <a href="https://www.facebook.com/risestjames/" target="_blank">RISE St. James</a>, told Climate Liability News. "We are not about to give up."</p>
<p>EIP made four recommendations for countering the rise in greenhouse gases and other pollutants from oil and gas facilities.</p><ol><li>Issuing permits that included measures for limiting emissions.</li><li>More funding for state and federal environmental agencies so they could monitor more effectively.</li><li>More accurate methods for assessing emissions and pollutants from tanks, equipment and flares.</li><li>Permits that required "fenceline monitoring" to make sure concentrations of gases were discovered before they left a plant and entered a community.</li></ol><p>"We need to get on top of the runaway growth in greenhouse gas emissions from oil, gas, and petrochemicals and get standards in place to restrain that growth before it's too late," EIP Executive Director Eric Schaeffer told <a href="https://grist.org/energy/oil-and-gas-emissions-are-reversing-progress-from-coals-decline/?utm_content=buffer83dac&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer&fbclid=IwAR2P80ndeBJ3yWMs35mg1PJVTo7vGTUx3rzb14TMwajavf9DVLg1zNHnSJ8" target="_blank">Grist</a>.<br></p>
From Your Site Articles
- U.S. Oil and Gas Industry Is Drilling Us Towards Climate Disaster ... ›
- How to Reduce Methane Emissions From the Oil and Gas Industry ... ›
- Oil and Gas Operations Release 60 Percent More Methane than ... ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Read More
Show Less
Banners for the event hanging in Buckingham County Middle School gym by Friends of Buckingham, a community group that fought the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, leading to this victory. Katja Timm / VCU Capital News Service / CC BY-NC 2.0
A historic African American community in Virginia has dealt another blow to the embattled Atlantic Coast Pipeline.
<p>A federal court threw out a permit Tuesday that the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/pipelines" target="_self">pipeline</a>'s owners needed to build a <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/natural-gas" target="_self">natural gas</a> compressor station in Union Hill, a community founded by freed slaves after the Civil War. In doing so, the judges sided with the community and their lawyers, who argued that the compressor would disproportionately harm the health of the mostly African American residents who would live near the station, <a href="https://apnews.com/0bf7f96d018ae292f53ad3618bcbc786" target="_blank">The Associated Press reported</a>.</p><p>"Five years ago, Dominion told us that there was going to be a compressor station in Union Hill and there was nothing we could do about it. That's not fair, and it's not American. This is a win for a group of citizens who were committed to protecting their community and never ever gave up," Chad Oba, a Union Hill resident and president of <a href="https://t.co/nX23VoXeL0?amp=1" target="_blank">Friends of Buckingham</a>, a community group that fought the pipeline, told <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/477199-atlantic-coast-pipeline-loses-permit-battle-with-historically-black" target="_blank">The Hill</a>. "Today we showed that our community, our community's history, and our community's future matters more than a pipeline."</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="150" scrolling="no" id="twitter-embed-1214606423168110592" src="/res/community/twitter_embed/?iframe_id=twitter-embed-1214606423168110592&created_ts=1578419712.0&screen_name=FriendsofBucki1&text=We+Won%21+You+Won%21+The+Fourth+is+sooo+with+us+3-0.+Today+vacated+the+Atlantic+Coast+Pipeline%27s+Buckingham+compressor%E2%80%A6+https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FdvHuNXLf0f&id=1214606423168110592&name=Friends+of+Buckingham" frameborder="0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="VUHLF21578495851"></iframe><p>Dominion Energy, the pipeline's lead developer, argued that the compressor station would have fewer emissions and more air quality monitoring than any other station in the U.S., according to The Associated Press. The State Air Pollution Control Board accepted that argument when it granted the permit.</p><p>The board's Deputy Solicitor General Martine Cicconi said during a hearing in October that the board "absolutely grappled" with environmental justice issues when making the decision, but granted the permit because the station's emissions would be much lower than other compressor stations in Virginia and would meet national air quality standards.</p><p>However, the three judges from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected those arguments, ruling that the state did not consider the "unequal treatment" of people living near the compressor site. They also ruled that the state failed to consider zero-emission alternatives such as electric turbines.</p><p>"The Board rejected the idea of disproportionate impact on the basis that air quality standards were met. But environmental justice is not merely a box to be checked, and the Board's failure to consider the disproportionate impact on those closest to the Compressor Station resulted in a flawed analysis," Judge Stephanie Thacker wrote, according to The Associated Press.</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="150" scrolling="no" id="twitter-embed-1214687218272493570" src="/res/community/twitter_embed/?iframe_id=twitter-embed-1214687218272493570&created_ts=1578438975.0&screen_name=selc_org&text=%E2%80%9CEnvironmental+justice+is+not+merely+a+box+to+be+checked%E2%80%9D+said+the+Fourth+Circuit+Court+of+Appeals+in+its+ruling+ag%E2%80%A6+https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FJKt7SUvynQ&id=1214687218272493570&name=SELC+%28Environmental+Law%29" frameborder="0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="6SYGV61578495851"></iframe>
<p><br/></p><p>The judges' decision marks the eighth time since May 2018 that a permit for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline has been tossed or suspended, <a href="https://www.southernenvironment.org/news-and-press/news-feed/court-delivers-win-for-union-hill-citizens-over-atlantic-coast-pipeline" target="_blank">according to the Southern Environmental Law Center</a> (SELC), which represented Friends of Buckingham in the case.</p><p>The pipeline is intended to carry fracked natural gas 600 miles from West Virginia to North Carolina, according to The Hill. But it has been beset by legal troubles, and less than 6 percent of it is in the ground, SELC said. Construction has been paused for more than a year. </p><p>In a statement <a href="https://www.nbc29.com/2020/01/08/court-throws-out-permit-needed-atlantic-coast-pipeline/" target="_blank">reported by NBC29</a>, Dominion insisted it could resolve the disagreement with Union Hill and complete the pipeline. </p><p>"In its opinion today, the Court recognized the stringency of the permit, while requiring more explanation and analysis from the state to support its approval. We will immediately begin working with the state to resolve the procedural issues identified by the Court and are confident this can be completed in a timely manner. We expect the project will still deliver significant volumes to customers under our existing timeline, even as we work to resolve this permit," Dominion said. </p><p>However, the pipeline faces other challenges. In December 2018, a <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/atlantic-coast-pipeline-permits-trees-2623387334.html" target="_self">Virginia appeals court tossed a permit</a> allowing the pipeline to cross national forest in the state, including part of the Appalachian Trail. Dominion and Duke Energy, another pipeline developer, have appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments in February, SELC said.</p><p>"For the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, it's the same story again and again," SELC Senior Attorney Greg Buppert said in a press release. "Dominion tried to force a pipeline compressor station into a community where it didn't belong, just like it has tried to force the pipeline through a national park, national forests, and steep mountains. But the people of Union Hill never backed down. Today they've won an important victory, not just for themselves, but for every community in Virginia facing the unjust burden of industry and pollution."</p>From Your Site Articles
- How This Energy Company's Deep Influence Is Tainting Atlantic ... ›
- Court Orders Atlantic Coast Pipeline Work Stoppage Over Impact on ... ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Read More
Show Less
Trending
Apartment blocks of a public housing project pictured in Harlem, New York City. Terraxplorer / iStock / Getty Images
Residents of ethnic minority neighborhoods are paying more for utilities than people living in majority-white neighborhoods, regardless of socioeconomic status, new research shows.
<p>A recent <a href="https://climatenexus.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=da69622f37&e=0afd421a28" target="_blank">study</a> published in the Journal of the American Planning Association looks at energy consumption data across 13,000 apartment buildings in Boston, Cambridge, New York City, Seattle, and Washington, DC, finding that residents of primarily ethnic minority neighborhoods making less than 50 percent of area median income are more likely to live in inefficient homes with higher utility prices, resulting in them bearing a 27 percent higher energy cost burden than white city dwellers of the same income bracket. </p><p>"Regardless of income, if that disparity exists, then if nothing else, it's just a consistent statement of the fact that it's race," coauthor Vincent J. Reina told CityLab.</p><h4>For a deeper dive:</h4><p><a href="https://climatenexus.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=4c7508df9c&e=0afd421a28" target="_blank">CityLab</a></p><p><em>For more </em><a href="http://ecowatch.com/climate-change-news/" target="_blank"><em>climate change</em></a><em> and </em><a href="http://ecowatch.com/business/renewables/" target="_blank"><em>clean energy</em></a><em> news, you can follow Climate Nexus on </em><a href="https://twitter.com/ClimateNexus" target="_blank"><em>Twitter</em></a><em> and </em><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClimateNexus/" target="_blank"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>, and sign up for daily </em><a href="http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c84c08aaa" target="_blank"><em>Hot News</em></a><em>.</em></p>
From Your Site Articles
- Environmental Justice Activists Arrested Amid Growing Concerns ... ›
- 3 Reasons Why Plastic Pollution Is an Environmental Justice Issue ... ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Read More
Show Less
'Work Together' or 'Destroy it': Goldman Prize Winner Francia Márquez on World's Second Deadliest Country For Environmental Activists
21 August 2019
Politics
Francia Márquez told Earthjustice that "humanity's greatest challenge is to either work together to preserve this planet or destroy it."
Earthjustice
In April 2018, Afro-Colombian activist Francia Márquez won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, thanks to her work to retake her community's ancestral territories from illegal gold mining. However, her international recognition comes at a very risky price.
<p>Francia was born in Yolombó, a town nestled in the southwestern department of Cauca, where more than 250,000 Colombians of African descent live. In November 2014, she spearheaded a women-run march to protest illegal gold mining, due to the use of mercury and cyanide to break down rocks and obtain the coveted metal. This process has tainted Rio Ovejas, a critical waterway for fishing and drinking water and, as a result, Francia and 80 women walked for 10 days to Colombia's capital, Bogotá, to protest the town's conditions. After 22 days of protests on the streets, the Colombian government agreed to stem illegal mining in the town of La Toma. </p><p>Because of her anti-illegal mining work, she has been a target of organized crime. In 2014, Francia was displaced from her hometown of Suárez following death threats, and last May, armed men opened fire on Francia, as well as a group of social leaders and human rights advocates. Despite all obstacles, she decided to study law and advocate for her community.</p><p>In an exclusive conversation with Earthjustice, Francia addresses environmental racism in Colombia and abroad, her perilous journey as an activist, and why the U.S. is responsible for the current conditions in her community.</p>
What are the effects of environmental racism in your country?
<p>Colombia is a country that has traditionally been run by wealthy families. When Black and Indigenous communities demand that large-scale mining be removed from our communities and we ask for protection under the rule of law, the ruling families say that we're posing a hurdle to economic development. That's when I ask, what kind of development are they referring to, especially when Indigenous and Black communities lack basic utilities? The community I live in has no drinking water, and our river has been polluted with chemicals used for illegal mining.</p><p>Furthermore, the Colombian state does not invest in social projects. Their idea of economic development is to extract ore and territories from ethnic communities. This move is a sheer example of structural racism, and every time a social leader's voice or mine is lifted up to demand rights enshrined in the Constitution, then we end up being military targets by armed groups in our territory, particularly right-wing paramilitaries.</p>How would you describe Colombia’s environmental movement currently?
<p>Colombia is the world's second-deadliest country for environmental activists, <a href="https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/enemies-state/" target="_blank">according to Global Witness</a>. It is unfathomable that we're still witnessing killings in a country that is supposedly making strides in achieving peace after <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/world/americas/colombia-farc-peace-agreement.html?module=inline" target="_blank">the 2016 accord</a>. Unfortunately, interest groups, some economic sectors, and politicians do not want to change the current economic model that leads to what I call "necro-politics," or the politics of death. They don't want to stop fracking, and the Colombian government thinks of extractive industries as the only means of development.</p><p>With respect to aerial coca fumigation, the government doesn't seem to understand that coca won't be eradicated and that people will instead be displaced. In order to stop coca crops, the government should invest in social investment in farm products so they stay away from growing coca, but there is no willingness from the government, and aerial spraying of glyphosate will deteriorate our environment.</p>According to Global Witness, more than 1,700 environmental defenders were killed worldwide between 2002 and 2018. What should environmental organizations do to stop this?
<p>Much of the pressure environmental leaders experience comes from developed countries. The U.S. is responsible for what happens to us as environmental leaders because of its multinational companies' work in our communities. These companies, directly or indirectly, are complicit of this genocide. If there weren't economic interests in these territories, we wouldn't have to get up and fight in order to have a decent life. We're risking our lives to stop harmful extractive industries, because the latter are enjoying benefits at the expense of the many people who have died. </p>You are holding the U.S. accountable for the current state of your community. How can individual Americans make a difference when the Trump administration keeps rolling back environmental protections while siding with industry?
<p>The population has the power to change the course of history. The U.S. will have presidential elections next year. Will Americans re-elect him? This is America's greatest challenge. Otherwise, U.S. powerful companies will keep pouring in here while we're in the midst of a crossfire. </p>So how can we be more aware of the challenges the environmental movement is facing?
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="87c5d7f031b851833b70ddf2d9703b62"><div class="fb-post" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/FranciaMarquezMina/photos/a.143553102970314/357331348259154/?type=3"></div></div><p>Sometimes I believe we're victims of our own invention. We elect legislators who only cater to interest groups and other harmful industries. People must be more conscious about the kind of officials they elect, because it's not just the lives of social leaders that are at stake, but the very existence of humanity today. </p>Is there something else you’d like to add?
<p>Humanity's greatest challenge is to either work together to preserve this planet or destroy it. It's up to us to assume our own responsibility and defend life. In Colombia, we're creating campaigns to incentivize reforestation, as well as recycling. We want to raise awareness about the products that can be composted and how we re-use certain items. There is so much we can do. </p><div class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="594bb94cd78d1e5ff7b7b98ed933b2c1"><div class="fb-post" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/FranciaMarquezMina/photos/a.134889813836643/152818912043733/?type=3&theater"></div></div>
<p class=""><em>Editors Note: </em><em>For decades, Colombia sprayed tremendous quantities of the cancer-linked chemical glyphosate over the countryside in an attempt to wipe out the coca plants that feed the country's cocaine trade. Earthjustice worked with partners at the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (</em><a href="http://www.aida-americas.org/en" target="_blank">AIDA</a><em>) to end the dangerous spraying program, which was suspended in 2015. Recently, Colombia's president has </em><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/colombia-politics/colombias-duque-in-court-defends-use-of-herbicide-to-destroy-coca-crops-idUSL1N20U0O0" target="_blank">pushed to begin spraying again</a><em>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
Related Articles Around the Web
Read More
Show Less
Sponsored
Hazardous materials strewn throughout the neighborhood in Watts, California. Better Watts Initiative
By Daniel Ross
For decades, the South Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts has been hemmed in by dangerous pollutants.
<p>On one corner sits the Jordan Downs housing project, at the center of which is a toxic former industrial site. Children in Jordan Downs <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/30/lead-contamination-los-angeles-housing-project" target="_blank">have been found </a>with elevated levels of lead in their blood, and the industrial site's toxic legacy has complicated plans to <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2017/6/6/15722756/jordan-downs-redevelopment-construction-ground-breaking-phase-one" target="_blank">redevelop </a>the estate.</p><p>Just south of Watts is Ujima Village, a 300-unit subsidized housing complex. It was abandoned less than 10 years ago by its residents because of dangerous levels of soil and groundwater contamination stemming from an oil storage site that had never been remediated. Two busy freeways—the I-110 and the I-105—crisscross the fringes of Watts, which is one of the most heavily industrialized neighborhoods in LA. Indeed, most of Watts is ranked in the top 5 percent <a href="https://oehha.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=4560cfbce7c745c299b2d0cbb07044f5" target="_blank">most environmentally burdened regions </a>of California, in terms of the accumulated toll from a variety of different pollutants and their impacts on people's health.</p><p>"We're living in the midst of all of this," Watkins added, "and the Better Watts Initiative was founded to address this unabated environmental racism that's been going on for far too long."</p><p>Watkins has lived all his life in Watts, which is predominantly <a href="http://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/neighborhood/watts/" target="_blank">Black and Latino</a>. Residents there live <a href="https://planning.lacity.org/cwd/gnlpln/PlanforHealthyLA.pdf" target="_blank">on average 12 years less </a>than those from the much more affluent neighborhood of Brentwood and where certain sections suffer some of the highest rates of cardiovascular disease, asthma, and low birth weight babies in all of California. The son of famed civil and poverty rights activist Ted Watkins, he launched the Better Watts Initiative back in 2015 with the intention of accomplishing a number of important objectives—the primary one has been to educate residents on toxic pollution in their air, soil, and drinking water. "And when you're educated, that's when you become aware of other things going on around you," he said.</p><p>That educational approach has included <a href="https://www.scpr.org/news/2016/05/10/60505/dwp-to-investigate-murky-tap-water-in-watts/" target="_blank">a broader effort </a>to highlight contaminated drinking water supplies in the area, particularly at <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-south-la-schools-report-murky-tap-water-20160511-story.html" target="_blank">local schools</a>; in 2016, the attention BWI had placed on contaminated school drinking water systems helped force local school authorities to flush their drinking water fountains more consistently, removing lead and other contamination that had built up in the pipes, said Watkins.</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODE2NjU5OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTU5MDk2NzM0MH0.WmBm-4Qpz460mFkLJmtqBwh2A-ESKxmTFimyBwp1XxY/img.jpg?width=980" id="9e592" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ca671f92654adf3eadf4826da6d2269c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">Town Hall meeting held by the Better Watts Initiative on environmental issues in Watts, California.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">Better Watts Initiative</small></p>
<p>The initiative is a partnership between the WLCAC and a number of other organizations from within or very near Watts, including the Charles R. Drew University, the Black Community Health Task Force, and Cal State University Dominguez Hills.<br></p><p>Hard data can be a crucial weapon in effecting change. That's why BWI has also partnered with an international clean-air coalition to install an air monitoring system for common air pollutants at a busy Watts intersection. The system produces real-time air results that can be <a href="https://www.purpleair.com/map?&zoom=14&detailsshowing=6236&lat=33.92670714375192&lng=-118.25068279999999&clustersize=23&orderby=L&latr=0.03909879349264145&lngr=0.10136604309082031" target="_blank">accessed online</a>, so that people with respiratory problems can check air quality in the area. Watkins hopes the data will also trigger actions to improve public infrastructure and introduce road impediments to curb and slow traffic.</p><p>Last year, the BWI collected its own data by surveying 200 randomly selected residents and found that "about 90 percent of the people surveyed had to buy bottled water because the [tap] water's not good enough to drink," BWI director Ava Post said. She estimates that the average Watts resident spends at least $319 buying bottled water each year. If 90 percent of Watts has to buy bottled water, that sets the neighborhood back nearly $12 million per year—this, in a neighborhood where the <a href="http://www.city-data.com/neighborhood/Watts-Los-Angeles-CA.html" target="_blank">median household income </a>is almost $25,000 below LA's. "There's a lot of problems, and some are very expensive problems for the people here," she said.</p><p>On the back of this survey, the BWI went home to home distributing information and talking with residents about how to protect themselves and their families from lead poisoning—such as keeping children away from lead contaminated paint and the importance of foods rich with vitamin C, iron and calcium.</p><p>Local schools remain a primary focus. "Schools should not be allowed to dispense water that is knowingly tainted," Watkins said. "A key Better Watts Initiative mission challenge is to understand what the intersection of these exposures are with human behavior."</p><p>Last year, ground broke on a multimillion-dollar <a href="https://wlcac.wordpress.com/tag/mudtown-farms/" target="_blank">2.5-acre agricultural park</a> in the heart of Watts that will include space for community gardens, where residents can start to build healthier lives. For Watkins, the work for the BWI is far from over.</p><p> <em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/how-residents-of-south-la-are-tackling-environmental-racism-20180709" target="_blank">YES! Magazine</a>.</em><em></em></p>
Related Articles Around the Web
Read More
Show Less
Trending
Sponsored