It has been one year since the massive BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster that killed eleven workers and created an environmental nightmare on the U.S. Gulf Coast.  While the media devoted round the clock coverage of the well capping and cleanup efforts, not much attention was given to where the oil waste was being dumped. Environmental justice leaders were the first to raise concern about BP’s waste management plan that was approved on June 13, 2010. They questioned a plan that would turn their communities into the “dumping grounds” for BP oil waste—a dumping pattern they have been fighting for decades.

Anyone interested in the timeline and milestones of the national Environmental Justice Movement over the past four decades should check out these two papers I co-authored as part of a report series at the Environmental Justice Resource Center (EJRC) at Clark Atlanta University: Environmental Justice Timeline-Milestones 1964-2002 , one of the first comprehensive reports to chronicle the accomplishments of the EJ Movement and The State of Environmental Justice Since Summit II – 2002-2011, a 2011 report that covers the most recent decade of the national movement.   

The U.S. has over 136 million cars, 110 million trucks, and about 1 million buses for a total of 247 million registered vehicles accounting for nearly 70 percent of our oil use and more than 65 percent of that amount is for personal vehicles. This accounts for almost one-third of the world’s vehicles. Car ownership is almost universal in the United States with 91.7 percent of American households owning at least one motor vehicle. According to the 2001 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), 87.6 percent of whites, 83.1 percent of Asians and Hispanics, and 78.9 percent of blacks rely on the private car to get around.

The movement to renewable energy is the preferred strategy to clean energy future for our nation. Clean energy market is growing. More than $243 billion in new investments were made in clean energy in 2010. Yet, coal is still king—accounting for half of U.S. electricity in 2009.  The time has come to dethrone this dirty king and shift investments to clean renewable energy.

I will be participating in two separate climate justice summits this month.  Both summits are in Florida cities and are sponsored by a mainstream environmental group (National Wildlife Federation) and a mainstream civil rights organization (NAACP).First, I will add my voice to the Southeast Fair Climate Summit on May 19-20, 2011 held at the Wyndham Jacksonville Riverwalk Hotel in Jacksonville, FL. The Summit is an activity of Fair Climate Project—an initiative of National Wildlife Federation's Global Warming Solutions Program. The goal of NWF's Fair Climate Project is to build and engage a national network of leaders representing underserved communities to advance equitable and just solutions to climate change.  This is also a major goal of the Environmental Justice and Climate Justice Movement in the United States.

It has now been six months since the historic November 10, 2010 meeting with Gwen Keyes Fleming, the first African American to head EPA Region 4 (which includes eight southern states, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and 6 Tribal Nations), where more than three dozen environmental justice, civil rights, faith, community based organizations, and leaders from polluted communities delivered their eleven-point Environmental Justice Call to Action for EPA Region 4. The plan demanded fundamental change, a new culture, and a new enforcement framework at EPA—one that actually protects the environment and public health.  They also made it clear that major change in the senior level staff was a high priority on their list.  Regional administrator Keyes Fleming agreed to report back on the short-term (6 months), midterm (12 months), and long-term (24 months) progress on the “Call to Action.”  The leaders anxiously await the first status report.

The African American community in Dickson, Tennessee, located about 35 miles west of Nashville, has been used as the dumping ground for garbage and toxic wastes dating back a half century. Dickson County is 4.1 percent black.  Five generations of the Harry Holt family have lived on their 150-acre farm located in a Dickson community created by “Jim Crow” segregation. The community dates back to slavery. The deadly chemical trichloroethylene or TCE was discovered in the family’s wells—located just 54 feet from the Dickson County Landfill.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – I have attended dozens of public health conferences over the years.  However, I am especially excited about participating in the 139^th American Public Health Association (APHA) Conference & Exposition held this year at the Convention Center in Washington, DC since I will be signing my latest book, Environmental Health and Racial Equity in the United States: Building Environmentally Just, Sustainable, and Livable Communities, at 2:00pm, October 31, 2011.

It has been three weeks since I rejoined the faculty at Texas Southern University in Houston as the Dean of the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs. My first stint at TSU was in the 1970s and 1980s. TSU was my first academic job out of graduate school. Houston, and especially Black Houston, was subject of my early environmental justice research and policy work.I wrote two books on Houston: Invisible Houston: The Black Experience in Boom and Bust (Texas A&M University Press 1987) and Houston: Growth and Decline of a Sunbelt Boomtown (Temple University Press 1991) and started the research on another, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality (Westview Press 1990), while at TSU.

DETROIT, November 9, 2011 - The Fourth National PolicyLink Equity Summit 2011: Healthy Communities, Strong Regions, A Prosperous America opened on Monday in Detroit.  This afternoon,  I will be speaking on a panel entitled “Tackling Poverty and Pollution: New Directions in Environmental Justice”  from 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. The afternoon panel will explore some of the promising strategies communities across the country are using to build successful alliances, develop foresighted agendas, and secure policy wins. Many of the strategies,  milestones, and trends detailed in my talk are gleaned from my latest book, Environmental Health and Racial Equity in the United States: Building Environmentally Just, Sustainable, and Livable Communities (APHA Press 2011), a project sponsored by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.