Environmental Justice
Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2022 10:17 am
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate- ... l-justice/
EPA unveils new office to place environmental justice at agency’s core
In creating a high-profile new Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, the administration hopes to enshrine a focus on equity for long-polluted communities that will “outlive all of us,” says Administrator Michael Regan.
WARREN COUNTY, N.C. — Forty years ago, Dollie Burwell was a young mother in this rural farming region, determined to fight North Carolina’s decision to dump thousands of truckloads of contaminated soil nearby.
Fearing the site could sully groundwater and become a magnet for other toxic waste, Burwell and other local Black women organized fierce protests that carried on for weeks. Protesters lay in the road to block rumbling trucks. They marched, chanted and prayed. They got arrested, again and again.
Ultimately, they failed to stop the 22-acre dump. But their efforts spurred other pollution-burdened U.S. communities to take notice and band together to fight what became known as environmental racism.
A historical sign now marks the place that “sparked [the] environmental justice movement” — and Burwell, now 74, is widely acknowledged as a mother of that movement. But as she returned to Warren County on Saturday, even she struggled to grasp what her long-ago protest had achieved.