environmental justice

This story was published in partnership by Inside Climate News and the Texas Observer.  Juan Benito Mancias draws his identity from the landscape at the Rio Grande’s end not because he owns it, but because it owns his people, literally. His ancestors lie buried in it, going back millennia. Sadly for Mancias, U.S. law provides […]

Clutching a sheaf of typed notes with one hand and the steering wheel of her electric car with the other, Maya van Rossum was driving west on I-276 and practicing the message she planned to deliver to Pennsylvania’s governor later that morning when she realized—belatedly—that she was going to need a cough drop. The plan […]

SHILOH COMMUNITY, Ala.—Their land is bound forever.  The deeds of three homeowners—Pastor Timothy Williams, Aretha Wright and Page Jones—all living in the historically Black Shiloh community of south Alabama, tell the tale.  Restrictive covenants attached to their deeds limit the ability of current and future residents to file actions against the state. The legal instruments […]

RESERVE, La.—For Robert Taylor, it should have been a moment of celebration. For 60 years, he has watched with apprehension as the curved and winding pipes of the nation’s only chloroprene rubber plant discharged plumes of exhaust over this stretch of the Louisiana bayou long known as “Cancer Alley.” The nickname is regrettably apt: Environmental […]

When rain comes down in some parts of Charleston, S.C., sewage comes up. In the neighborhood of West Ashley, storms trigger waste overflows so often into a pond near Nell Postell’s home that she has a wet-weather routine based on forecasts: she buys surgical masks, clears her garden and then listens for the sewage to […]

LOUISVILLE, Ky.—When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency responded to a “surface water pollution emergency” on farmland 17 miles south of downtown in 1979, federal officials joined state regulators in removing 17,000 barrels of hazardous waste from an illegal dump site. It would become notorious nationally as the “Valley of the Drums.” But the EPA didn’t […]

COFFEE COUNTY, Ala.—Ronald McKinnon thinks six years is long enough.  Residents of the Shiloh community, the historically Black neighborhood where McKinnon grew up, have faced repeated flooding for six years now—the result of an expanded highway state workers elevated above nearby homes, they have said.  McKinnon grew up in Shiloh, attending nearby Elba High School […]

Hazel Chandler was at home taking care of her son when she began flipping through a document that detailed how burning fossil fuels would soon jeopardize the planet. She can’t quite remember who gave her the report — this was in 1969 — but the moment stands out to her vividly: After reading a list […]

The Green Energy Justice Cooperative recently placed first, second and fourth in the Illinois Power Agency’s second round of community-driven community solar project selection.  Being selected for this solar development program, made possible through the Illinois Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, represents an important step in developing and building clean energy projects in Illinois communities. […]

PRICHARD, Ala.—Sometimes it’s the water that plagues them. Other times, it’s the fire. Da’Cino Dees has waded through the water in the Alabama Village neighborhood nearly all his life. Now 31, Dees said he often walked to school through the floodwater as a child. Rainwater, he said, has always stood in the streets.  “When it […]