environmental justice

July 16, 2020 - Pamela Rush of rural Tyler, Alabama, recently passed away from complications of COVID-19. But far before the coronavirus infected her body, the Poor People's Campaign activist was battling the viruses of structural racism and poverty.

July 14, 2020 - Facing mounting costs and legal challenges, the Southern energy giants have canceled the $8 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline planned to carry fracked gas from West Virginia to Virginia and North Carolina. The move came after intense opposition to the project from environmentalists, racial justice advocates, and local communities, and it will allow the companies to focus on meeting state renewable mandates.

April 24, 2020 - A decade after the BP oil spill set off an environmental health disaster in communities across the Gulf Coast, the company and the rest of the U.S. oil and gas industry continue to inflict pain on vulnerable populations across the South — and they're now implicated in raising the death rate from the novel coronavirus in African-American communities across Louisiana.

November 18, 2019 - The Trump administration is taking comments on proposals to ease coal ash regulations that the EPA adopted after the catastrophic 2008 spill at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in East Tennessee. Critics say the proposed rules would take a toll on public health by allowing more pollution, and on the public purse by letting utilities shift costs.

July 3, 2019 - The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been researching how the climate crisis will affect farming, but it's withheld the findings from the public. That's just one example of how the Trump administration is making it harder for farmers across the South — a region especially vulnerable to climate change — to prepare for a warming world.

April 22, 2019 - State regulators recently issued a new general permit for industrial hog farms, and it dashed the hopes of environmental advocates who say it represents a failure to address the unequal pollution burden borne by nonwhite communities. They're calling on the agency to take environmental justice into account in future permitting decisions.

March 1, 2019 - A new coalition seeks to end Duke Energy's electric monopoly in North Carolina in hopes of hastening the shift to clean energy. There's also an effort underway to bring competition to the electricity market in Florida, where Duke operates as a regional monopoly.