environmental justice
February 17, 2023 -
The Environmental Protection Agency is accepting public comments until March 6 on closing a regulatory loophole that exempts hundreds of polluting coal ash landfills from its oversight. The move is part of a proposed settlement in a lawsuit brought last year by environmental health advocates.
January 27, 2023 -
The North Carolina Utilities Commission's newly adopted plan to limit Duke Energy's climate-disrupting pollution calls for new gas-burning plants — even though they leak methane, a greenhouse gas that in the short term is even more potent than carbon. Forty-five scientists recently called Duke's planned gas expansion "entirely indefensible from a climate and public health perspective," and advocates vowed to fight the proposed plants.
September 30, 2022 -
Wood pellet giant Enviva wants to expand production at its plant in poor, rural, majority-Black Hertford County, North Carolina. It's facing a fight from a coalition of local residents and Southern forest advocates, who worry about the environmental health and climate impacts.
September 30, 2022 -
To mark the 40th anniversary of the groundbreaking protests against North Carolina's plans to dump toxic waste in a rural Black community, we reprint from the 1988 Southern Exposure book titled "Environmental Politics" an essay and photos about the struggle by Jenny Labalme, who reported on it as an undergraduate at Duke University.
September 28, 2022 -
The famed civil rights leader who coined the phrase "environmental racism" in a North Carolina jail recently delivered the Robert R. Wilson Distinguished Lecture at Duke University Chapel in Durham. Titled "Environmental Justice: Past, Present, and Future" and shared here, his talk commemorated the 40th anniversary of protests over toxic waste dumping in a rural Black community that sparked the environmental justice movement.
June 23, 2022 -
An explosion at a liquefied natural gas terminal in Freeport, Texas, in early June sparked a fire that emitted toxic air pollution. The national conversation about the incident quickly pivoted to global energy economics, but residents of fence-line communities worry about what the rapidly expanding industry means for their safety.
May 13, 2022 -
With almost 20 new natural gas projects slated to open this year alone in Louisiana and Texas, environmental health and justice activists in the region say the Biden administration's recent restoration of transparency provisions in the National Environmental Policy Act, rolled back by its predecessor, will provide a critical shield for them in their battle with the industry.
