NC Has opportunity to lead in environmental justice
One of the most important things to understand about human-driven climate change is that it does not (and will not) affect everyone equally. The concept of environmental racism—or how climate change exacerbates already existing systemic injustices tied to housing, healthcare, law enforcement, and public health—has thankfully become a more prominent talking point within conversations about climate change. Yet what many may not realize is that our understanding of “environmental justice,” at least in the United States, began here in North Carolina.
In 1978, a trucking company illegally sprayed 31,000 gallons of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) along country roads in northern parts of our state. At the time, PCBs were used in the manufacture of electrical equipment and have since been banned because they have been found to be a cancer-inducing agent. In response to the illegally sprayed PCBs, the decision was made to transport the roadside-contaminated soil to an open landfill near the predominately Black community of Afton in Warren County.
Recognizing the obvious dangers of living near a toxic waste site, residents of Afton organized lawsuits and protests over the next several years, even going so far as trying to physically prevent trucks from bringing in more PCBs to the landfill. More than 500 protestors were arrested, but the dumping of thousands of truckloads of PCB near Afton continued. One of the arrested protestors, Ben Chavis, coined the phrase “environmental racism,” a term which has since become a rallying cry for climate justice advocates across the globe.
Yet environmental racism persists across our state. For residents of Blanden County who live near some of the largest meat processing plants in the country, hog farms spray actual fecal matter over their fields, causing increased rates of asthma among children in nearby communities among a host of other problems ranging from higher blood pressure to difficulties breathing. In response to these dangerous living conditions, a coalition of environmental justice groups— including the Waterkeeper Alliance, NC Environmental Justice Network, and the Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help—formally filed a civil rights complaint with the Environmental Protections Agency (EPA) in September of 2014. The EPA finally launched an investigation in January 2022, though this investigation is ongoing.
Another example of environmental racism in North Carolina includes the events surrounding the Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood near Chapel Hill and Carrboro, where Orange County rezoned a portion of this historically Black neighborhood to serve as the county’s landfill in 1972. After four decades of complaints about toxins in the local water and local organizing to convince the county to act, the landfill was closed in 2013. The city water system never extended to this neighborhood, so residents were dependent on wells for their drinking water, wells which over the years became infected with leached toxins. Under the leadership of the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association, locals finally won a hard-fought victory in 2019, when a major sewer line was laid through the neighborhood.
Similarly, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill continues to operate a coal plant on West Cameron Avenue near historically Black neighborhoods, prompting local community leaders to file a lawsuit against the EPA for failing to protect residents from ongoing air pollution. This lawsuit is ongoing. All the while, the city of Chapel Hill continues to build affordable housing developments on sites where coal dust has been found. According to Linda Brown, a member of Chapel Hill Alliance for a Livable Town, “It is an environmental injustice to place affordable housing on toxic coal ash heaps.”
The list goes on and on. We still have much work to do to guarantee clean water and clean air not just for our fellow North Carolinians but for all Americans. Environmental justice can’t be achieved without cleaning up the dumping grounds that have so often been relegated to areas that poor and minority residents call home. The unfortunate reality we face, here in North Carolina and elsewhere, is that climate change will continue to afflict even greater harm on communities of color. We must use federal dollars, funds earmarked for North Carolina, wisely by addressing the cleanup in disadvantaged areas—cleanup that is long overdue. We must understand that the solutions to increased pollution and climate change need to be considered together.
We therefore need candidates with a nuanced understanding of the inequities that climate change creates, candidates who will both protect our natural environment and our state’s most vulnerable populations. North Carolina, the state where environmental justice was born, can grow into the state where environmental justice matures.
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