environmental justice

February 17, 2022 - The House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing this week on the Environmental Justice for All Act, which would strengthen protections for vulnerable communities from environmental health threats. We share the official testimony of Amy Laura Cahn, director of the Environmental Justice Clinic at the Vermont Law School, who discussed waste dumping in Alabama and pipeline construction in Virginia in making a case for the bill's transformative power.

September 21, 2021 - Chapel Hill has a reputation as a liberal town, but it's always been a racially unjust society — in large part because of the actions of the University of North Carolina, the nation's oldest public university. The same school that once denied clean water to its Black workers and their families now dumps toxic coal plant pollution on them.

September 10, 2021 - Hurricane Ida's devastation of Louisiana's electric grid and the deadly power outages that resulted show the risk that highly centralized generation systems present in an era of increasingly destructive climate change-driven weather events. Yet Entergy — a Fortune 500 company that's the main power provider for the hard-hit southeastern part of the state, including New Orleans — has fought plans to move toward cleaner community-based generation. Will Ida mark a turning point?

July 23, 2021 - In 1982, a rural, Black North Carolina community suffered damages from a timber company's careless aerial application of toxic pesticides. The fight that ensued with state authorities led to local resident Billie Lee Rogers becoming a lifelong advocate for pesticide safety and environmental justice. Rogers passed away in June, and we share pesticide safety advocate Allen Spalt's remarks about her life and work delivered at her memorial service.

January 29, 2021 - Tied for the hottest year on record globally, 2020 also brought the most $1 billion disasters ever in the U.S., and they took a disproportionate toll on the South's most vulnerable communities. With most states in the region controlled by a party whose platform downplays climate change, environmental advocates are looking to the new president for help. Here's what the Biden administration has done so far.

October 23, 2020 - Across the rural South's Black Belt, the lack of adequate sewage and water infrastructure has created serious public health problems. We spoke with Catherine Coleman Flowers, a longtime environmental justice activist in rural Alabama and the recent recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant, about her work to draw attention to the region's intersecting crises and how grassroots activism can impact federal policy. 

September 11, 2020 - A storm of historic proportions in a record-breaking year, Hurricane Laura and the damage it wrought are symptoms of the worsening global climate disaster. Striking a heavily industrialized corridor along the Louisiana-Texas border, Laura exacerbated ongoing environmental crises that are disproportionately hurting communities of color in the South.