environmental-justice

Your Place in the New Economy: Tools and Opportunities for Jobs and Economic Development (featuring Majora Carter)

This past week I had the great privilege of travelling through eastern North Carolina with Majora Carter on a series of workshops titled “Your Place in the New Economy.” This was put on by the Elizabeth City State University Center for Green Research and Evaluation, which is partnering with the Majora Carter Group to craft a plan for developing a green economy in Eastern NC. The three workshops were held in Elizabeth City, Tarboro and Henderson, NC and were an opportunity to bring a message of economic recovery through green jobs to the people who need it most.

Eastern North Carolina is one of the most impoverished areas in the country, and for years has dealt with industries packing up and taking their jobs overseas, but leaving a legacy of environmental devastation behind. Adding to that are some outrageous utility and energy costs--families have seen their rates rise 35% in the last two years and, in some cases, are forced to make decisions between paying their utility bills and feeding their families.

The tour was focused on showing this community that “green” wasn’t all about polar bears and spotted owls; instead we were talking about the green that you can put in your wallet. In fact, one area of the green economy that really caught on was energy efficiency. What many people are now calling “weatherization” is simply making your home or business more efficient so that it wastes less energy. This not only saves people money by lowering utility bills, but also puts people to work as energy auditors, weatherization technicians and crew leaders.

We also stressed the need for bold federal action on clean energy jobs legislation. While the jobs that have been created in NC through the policies of President Obama’s stimulus plan are great and necessary, what we need is a long term and far-reaching investment in clean energy and green jobs that will create hundreds of thousands of new green jobs here in NC, and up to 5 million new green jobs nationwide.

The tour was a great opportunity to take the message and the theme of the 1Sky Campaign out of the realm of the merely theoretical and into developing and implementing practical solutions for a struggling community.

As much of the political debate in America remains primarily focused around health care right now, this report serves as a good reminder that health and clean energy reform are clearly linked together:

Physicians for Social Responsibility has released a groundbreaking medical report, “Coal’s Assault on Human Health,” which takes a new look at the devastating impacts of coal on the human body.  Coal combustion releases mercury, particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and dozens of other substances known to be hazardous to human health. This report looks at the cumulative harm inflicted by those pollutants on three major body organ systems: the respiratory system, the cardiovascular system, and the nervous system. The report also considers coal’s contribution to global warming, and the health implications of global warming.

http://www.psr.org/resources/coals-assault-on-human-health.html

The Environmental Working Group has all sorts of great information on toxics, their effects on humans, and how to best avoid them. I can easily spend hours browsing around their website reading reports and news coverage on all of their issue work.

One thing I found today is their Everyday Pollution Solutions. It's a sort of top 10 list for going green and keeping healthy. Check it out for yourself, here. In addition to their top 10 tips, you can take a body burden test and a "step-by-step tour of your home to learn the toxic truth about how household products contribute to your body burden of industrial chemicals."

Happy Friday!

On December 22, 2008 a coal ash spill took place at the Kingston Fossil Plant, a Tennessee Valley Authority generating plant. Truly, the stories that have come out since that morning have shown what sort of environmental catastrophe we are dealing with.

For some of the best coverage of this issue, I urge you to check out our friends at App Voices who are waist-deep in this issue (literally). They have done an amazing job covering every angle of the story since the dam broke. They have even created a website to specifically cover the TVA spill, which includes photos and videos. Below is one video taken on the Emory River documenting the spill and the lack of any clean-up by TVA.

Our respect and admiration go to App Voices and all who are involved in telling the truth about the spill.

[This blog entry has been cross posted from Toxic Free North Carolina's weblog, Fair Ground, where it was originally posted by Fawn.]

A Task Force convened earlier this year by Governor Mike Easley to address pesticide exposure hazards in agriculture has sent its recommendations to the Governor (read the press release). The report contains some good ideas and some welcome changes, to be sure, but misses the chance to bring much-needed basic workplace protections to farmworkers who face the threat of pesticide exposure on the job.

Within the report's recommendations you'll find budget requests for several of the agencies that were represented on the Task Force, ideas for the expansion of many voluntary and educational programs, and very little reform. Only one of the recommendations brought by farmworker advocates, a provision that would outlaw retaliation against workers who report workplace safety problems, was adopted by the Task Force.

The Task Force faced several challenges in its structure, including the absence of any farmworker representatives. Because the recommendations were made by consensus, any Task Force member was able to prevent recommendations from going forward. One Task Force member in particular, Commissioner of Agriculture Steve Troxler, was extremely effective in preventing the Task Force from taking up several of the reform measures they discussed.

There were some key issues exposed by the Ag-Mart case that the Task Force chose to put off for future study:

• Keep workers' names confidential when they report workplace safety problems.
• Require growers to keep records of compliance with Worker Protection Standards by recording when workers are sent back into the fields after spraying.
• Increase minimal pesticide fines and remove the standard of "willful" violations.

Panelists also recommended solutions including: require crop-specific pesticide safety training; redesign pesticide labels and ensure that they are also provided in Spanish; encourage the use of organic farming, Integrated Pest Management and less-toxic alternatives; improve regulations of pesticide drift; require adequate showers and telephones in employer-provided farmworker housing; screen workers regularly for health impacts; increase the number of bilingual pesticide inspectors, and many others. None of these were mentioned in the final report to the Governor.

Whether Governor Easley and the NC Legislature can look beyond the limitations of this report remains to be seen. But they will have to if they intend to fix the problems that Ag-Mart has so painfully pointed out.

You can download the report (PDF, 232 KB) by clicking this link.

Thought I'd share an editorial in today's News & Observer, reflecting on the most recent developments in the Ag-Mart case (see The Tip of the Injustice Iceberg, Ag-Mart Part II, and It's Not Over Till It's Over).

Yesterday I actually went to meeting of the Governor's Task Force on Pesticides, in support of pesticide safety for farmworkers. Activists in the community are urging this Task Force to require employers to keep accurate pesticide records, ensure the anonymity of workers who wish to file a complaint against their employers, require employers to provide phones and adequate showers for workers' safety, and increase the fine of pesticide violations, as triggered by the Ag-Mart case.

We'll keep you posted as the saga continues...

Ever since I cut red meat out of my diet about six years ago, I'm always fielding the question "so...why don't you eat pork?" Usually, I site environmental reasons attributed to the disposal of hog waste in unsound hog lagoons and sprayfields, as well concerns about hog farms and environmental justice. However, there's much more to it than that. 

North Carolina is the second-largest pork producer state in the United States. According to a recent article from the The Daily Tarheel, the Smithfield Packing Plant in Tar Heel, NC slaughters 32,000 pigs a day. 32,000!!! A day!!! The pork is then shipped all over the world—creating a huge carbon footprint. And as for the thousands upon thousands of workers at the Smithfield Plant and their rights and treatment, well...that's another story.

But there's an emerging trend in the agricultural community: sustainable, local, organic hog farming. These farms offer smaller, more environmentally-sound practices, pasture-raised hogs, less of an impact to surrounding communities (in terms of odor and waste disposal), and, of course, the ability to buy pork locally—supporting communities and reducing ye olde carbon footprint.

The main concern, of course, is that buying local, sustainable pork means paying more up front. Some businesses and schools find it hard to support the organic farms due to these monetary constraints. The good news is that there are groups like NC Choices and FLO Foods to help support local farmers, develop community partnerships, and promote sustainable agriculture. 

The good news (for meat-eaters, at least)? This little piggy went organic and went to market.

I was introduced this week (via the web) to an amazing individual. And, I've been so inspired that I wanted to share this individual -- and her mission -- with you.

Faithful blog readers, let me introduce you to Majora Carter, with Sustainable South Bronx.

Majora was in NC this week giving a speech on Tuesday morning at the Emerging Issues Forum. Just listening to her online, I was blown away. Her content is heavy, but her outlook is so hopeful. She's humble, but knowingly justified in her cause, which is to inspire solutions for environmental injustice.

She speaks very freely and truthfully about growing up in the South Bronx and relates it to communities across the world, including Duplin & Halifax counties here in NC. One of the most truthful lines from Majora's speech on Tuesday is that if things like landfills, power plants, and hog farms...

"were dispersed in every neighborhood, if they located them in rich communities as quickly as they did in poor ones, then our economy would have been clean and green a long time ago. But instead, poor communities are becoming more and more toxic, not less. And in certain zip codes unemployment rates are rising faster then sea levels."

What's different, I think, about Majora is that she then goes on to focus on some of the solutions for the majority of her speech: creating a green economy and green jobs. And, even more specifically about "clean tech job training and placement" for low-income people, which would help get these individuals out of poverty and help green our environment. It's a win-win solution.

To learn more for yourself:
1) Listen to Majora's presentation,
2) Visit the Sustainable South Bronx website, or
3) Check out another one of Majora's projects: Green For All.

And then tell us what you think:
1) Where does North Carolina look first to implement some of Majora's solutions to better our environment and our people?;
2) Who would we need to convince that the solutions that Majora provides are the right ones?;
3) What are our major challenges for achieving the success seen in the Southern Bronx community?; and finally
4) What is one thing you can do today to begin to address the problem of environmental injustice in NC?

If you want to share your thoughts with us more privately, feel free to email me personally.

One of the key issues impacting North Carolinians these days is that of environmental justice. As opposed to water and air quality issues, environmental justice issues haven't seen as much publicity until rather recently. Just last year, however, the legislature decided to form a commission to study environmental justice issues in our state--a great step in the right direction to ensuring that all North Carolinians, regardless of race, ethnicity, or income, are treated fairly and equally when it comes to environmental legislation. But just how far have we really come as a country in solving these issues? According to an article from United Press International, a recent study conducted by the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University:

...found more than 5.1 million people of color, including 2.5 million Hispanics or Latinos and 1.8 million blacks, live in neighborhoods with at least one hazardous-waste facility. Overall, more minorities reside near hazardous-waste sites than in 1987.

What's more is that in another study (not published yet), researchers

...found minorities are already present when hazardous waste sites are put in. Although the numbers of people of color and poor increase, these changes had already been set in motion before the facilities were sited.

While having this information can certainly help our states pass effective legislation on environmental justice, we still need legislative champions to support the legislation as well as a federal government that takes environmental justice seriously. And being that just last year the Environmental Protection Agency decided that federal facilities no longer have to report their toxic chemical releases to the Toxic Release Inventory, it's hard to believe environmental justice is an important issue to the administration.

To me--it's all about equal opportunity, fair legislation, and good, sound, environmental decisions based on science (shall I mention the Navy's OLF proposal and the mega-landfills proposed for our state?) Don't we all deserve the chance to live without fear of toxics, without putrid fumes, without declining property values? Don't we deserve to feel comfortable in our own homes--despite our racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds?

This week the Triangle will get to hear from Tyrone Hayes, a biologist and herpetologist of UC Berkeley, on his experience with frog populations as an indicator for cancer risks from contaminated water sources.  He’ll be speaking at NC Central University on Thursday thanks to a collaborative effort between the Department of Environmental, Earth and Geospatial Sciences at NC Central and PESTed.  He will also be speaking on the UNC Chapel Hill campus on Wednesday. 

In an online bio, Hayes explains that he is currently assessing the affects in frogs that have been exposed to the world’s most common herbicide and contaminant of ground and surface water:  Atrazine.  According to Scorecard: The Pollution Information Website, Atrazine is a potential carcinogen.  Hayes is interested in effective public policies that address environmental and social concerns and is in particular

concerned about the adverse impacts of Atrazine on endangered species and on racial/ethnic minorities. Prostate and breast cancer are two of the top causes of death in Americans age 25-40, but in particular Black and Hispanic Americans are several times more likely to die from these diseases.

His experience in biology, environmental justice, and the environmental impacts of pesticides should provide for a fascinating lecture.  Be sure to attend and let us know how it goes!

PS. Check out your county’s pollution profile in English or in Spanish!